Thanks Mdm NG for the great and interactive teaching!  
I understand that Directed Reading Thinking Activity make lesson interesting and exaggerating and expression can be well used to plant knowledge into the sub-conscious mind of the students. 
Under social power of Alderman’s likeability, it makes the teacher well like and will listen to them. 
Energy can make the students get extra boost and makes them stay focus and into the story.
Non-Threatening classroom always allow student the chance to continue to give feedback. 
Notice that new vocabulary word can be learnt when teacher is able to emphasize it.

 

Reciprocal Teaching video was well done and kudos for the effort!! Now we learn how to put the fabulous 4 together. 
Predictor, Clarifier, Questioner and Summarizer. 
It promotes self-independency as students can think about their own ideas during reading. Students also can be involved to check their own comprehension as they read along thus students are more willing to ask questions as they read and makes the text more understandable and easier for the student to comprehend the text or book they are reading.

We understand Phonics is gonna be quite an important skill to learn as students need to acquire basic reading skills in order not to look lost in class and whichever reading strategy will not work fully on them.  During the short time, Sara and I were looking at these 2 phonograms ed and ough. 
How do we teach when ed is at the front and any good way to teach ough?

DRTA lesson by Joshua, Sui San and Sara was super engaging. The positive energy level, expression in reading, exaggeration of Mdm Ng was enough to extinguish all my morning sleepy spells. I learnt that even though we are teaching comprehension, we can still incorporate phonograms while reading the text eg. ng, sm-ugg-ling. Students love to see their teacher do silly things with props. So it is definitely something that I can learn to do too. The background music definitely made the atmosphere more thrilling as we read the passage. Non-threatening climate, teachers make mistakes too, giving specific affirmations are some takeaways from that group. 

Reciprocal Teaching by Edward, Vaani and Chee Bing was impressive. They managed to put up a video in a short amount of time. It teaches me that in our job, we always need to adapt to changing situations and I foresee that happening a lot in our job. Delivery was concise, clear and the video clip explains the specific roles clearly. Predictor, Questioner, Summariser and Clarifier – I learnt that with so much info to learn at one go, it is good to break it down to 4 parts to allow students to learn a bit at a time. Roles can be rotated in another activity.

The last breakout with Hang Chi, we discussed about the ir, er, ur. The sounds are all the same to me. Are the shape of our lips/mouth different for all 3 sounds? Another confusing sound is w. My mouth just couldn’t figure out its shape when making the sound.

During the phonics sharing during the last segment, Boon Ee and I discussed that the sounds that we find more challenging would be sounds that involve two letters such as /wh/, /th/ and so on and also letters that have more than one sound such as /o/, /e/, /c/. 

The group introduction was great and had shown enthusiasm which they are transferring positive vibes to the students. Sui San has modelled the expressive/fluency reading with role play. The students do not feel stress by looking at large chunk text as the story went interestingly. Sui San created a non-threatening climate where allow the student to come up with predictions by affirming the student it was ok to give wrong predictions. The teacher leads the students by questioning and specific positive comments. Given specific praises when the students paying attention and follow the class rules like raising up a hand. 

Good job for the group has done a nice video production in a shorter time. Edward has shown enthusiasm by giving specific affirmation and good reasoning. Edward added the value by affirming words like “I am impressed with you”. This is a great illustration of the HBL lesson too. 

Joshua has shared in ‘O’ letter that his mentor taught him the words “Oh my god”. We also discussed the pronunciation of ‘j’, ‘o’ and ‘s’. I find it was fruitful as we share and practice pronunciation correctly. 

DRTA

Sui San definitely stole everyone’s thunder today with her engaging, expressive and dramatic portrayal of a teacher (which is not a far cry from whom she really is). It really brought up the energy and she had my full attention on zoom. What the group did well was to create a non-threatening environment where everyone had a chance to participate, regardless of whether they had the right answers or now. The predictions made might not all be correct, but they were after all, just predictions and this activity also stimulates the students to think and use their inference skills. Using the picture at the start makes it less stressful for the students as compared to showing them a long passage. I also liked how they highlighted certain words in the passage as ‘evidence’ to support the predictions made. This is a good reading comprehension skill that students can use. Good job to the group!

Takeaway #2: The strategy itself

Reciprocal Teaching

Wow, I must say, I am truly impressed by the level of professionalism that this group had, it must have not been easy on them when the sudden switch to zoom occurred and their segment required them to role play. But it was a good move to record the video to minimise any confusion. I really like Edward’s calm portrayal of a teacher with Vaani’s inquisitive student roleplay. I really like this strategy as it gives the students the responsibility to take ownership of their learning. By delegating out the rules, each student will have a chance to share about the story from different perspectives and this will in turn help them to comprehend the story better. 

In the phonics breakout room, Amalina and I agreed that phonograms that sounded the same like ‘oi’ and ‘oy’ (it is similar to ‘ai’ and ‘ay’) might pose a problem to students if they do not know how to spell. As though they have the same sound, but the position of the phonograms in a word differentiates them. The ‘th’ sound was also pretty hard to pronounce (like the ‘th’ in ‘both’ which we usually pronounce is like an ‘f’ sound which is incorrect and ‘th’ in ‘that’). 

On a side-note: It is a bit dampening now that our classes are back on zoom though I know it is for our safety. Looking forward to when we meet again face to face.

Lots of Love, Clare

For Reciprocal Teaching microteaching, I learn to be mindful to select videos for illustration purposes. For pupils with dyslexia, I might consider having auditory reading and visuals instead of just visual and background music videos. The length of the video to keep under 2 min. I might consider slowing the speed of the video, getting the pupils to take notes, and summarise the point they learn from the video to check for understanding. The content itself is a very good strategy to teach reading at the text level. Perhaps if I’m looking at 1-to-1 withdrawal, I might get the pupil to experience all 4 perspectives using a few sessions.

For Directed Reading Thinking Activity(DRTA), the microteaching was very well done. Having an expressive reader like Mdm Ng who includes props and background music makes the whole zoom reading lesson engaging. Long passages seem very short. The content is also very guided which helps pupils learn to find evidence from the passage. 

During Aha Moments sharing with Dee, Mar, Clare, Nur, I shared about improvising the ‘ai’ and ‘ay’ spelling strategy of exposing words with ‘ai’ and ‘ay’, get pupils to highlight ‘ai’ and ‘ay’ in the words and make they categories the words based on ‘ai’ and ‘ay’. By looking at the pattern, students will probably understand the rule better than just telling them what the rule is about.

During phonics sharing with Siti, we clarify ‘ou’. What might help is to build more words that produce the 4 different sounds.

Edward’s group sharing about Reciprocal teaching illustrates how lessons can be done during HBL and allows students to take ownership of their learning. It allows students to reflect on their thinking process and develop interpersonal skills.

In the phonics discussion, we agree that even adult learners can get confused with certain phonograms. I reflected that early exposure to sounds for young children will help them grasp phonics better. 

 

Reciprocal Teaching
Thanks to Edwards and Vaani.  We managed to produce the video in such a short notice.  It is also a very good experience to adapt changes fast.

Reciprocal reading help students to break down big chunk of reading into smaller bite sizse thus easy for student to digest. Predicting role helps students become more imaginative and creative. Summarizer make students learn to write only the gist of the story. Clarifying and questioning roles make students think more in depth of the passage. Peer also learn better by sharing the knowledge they know with their peer group friends.

Having said that, the pre-recorded was seamless despite the short notice! I envy how efficient you guys are!

Sharing on Phonograms:
Saiful and I agreed that the challenging part is how do we teach the different conditions to students. We can a tip or two from our peers whilst here.

Take-away from Tutorial 5:
Dr Liz emphasized how important it is for an AED (LBS) to be flexible and to be able to think on our toes; the two groups have definitely exemplified these qualities well - from what was planned to be a physical presentation, given the current situation, they have adapted well to the last minute changes. Not only that, the objective of the lesson was met in addition to the astounding presentation skills. Undoubtedly, it is a skill that I have yet to learn. 

Sui San make reading more interesting as she asked her students to make predictions as to what will happen next in her story. She is very animated and engaging and this will make her students to actively participate in her reading activity. She also encouraged her students and praised them when they answered it right. If I am in her class, I will want to be a reader like her. Thank you Sara, Joshua and Sui San, for presenting DRTA.

 

I never knew that there is a recording function for PowerPoint slides. It is a good resource since we are going back to HBL lessons for NIE. I’ve learnt that it is good to chunk into 4 different parts when there are too many information given. The 4 roles which are the predicting role, questioning role, clarifying role and the summarizer role will not make the students feel overwhelmed with the reading comprehension. This strategy allows collaboration among the 4 students in the group. Great effort Vaani, Edward and Chee Bing.