Observing, Teaching, Learning

Week of Monday, 29 January - Thursday, 1 February

I know that from my blog it sometimes seems that I fill my days with exploring the tropical island of Singapore with Bren and eating.  And while those are things we have definitely filled a lot of our free time with, I am definitely working and learning a lot about the Singaporean education system and mathematics curriculum.  Here is a brief overview of what a week looks like work-wise:

Monday:

• Lesson observation of an express Sec 3 class (Ms. Nadia), lesson focused on completing the square as a method to solve quadratic equations
• PLT (Professional Learning Team meeting) with visiting master teacher from China
• Meeting with my faculty advisory at NIE, Dr. CHUA 

Tuesday:

• Lesson observation debrief and planning with the teacher whose class I observed yesterday
• Psychology of Learning Primary Mathematics class 6:00-9:00pm

Wednesday:

• Meeting with teachers to co-plan upcoming lessons I'll be teaching in their classrooms
• Lesson observation in Mrs. Chuah class, a Normal Technical (NT) Sec 4 class, lesson focused on pythagorean theorem and using trigonometric ratios to solve right triangles for missing sides and angles.
• "Get to Know You" meeting at the U.S. Embassy

Thursday:

• Lesson observation with another teacher, Ms. Amy, Express, Sec 3, lesson focused on completing the square as a method to solve quadratic equations
• Taught a lesson in Ms. Nadia's classroom, focused on applications of quadratic functions (word problems)

Friday:

• Worked from home on research and writing for Fulbright Inquiry project 

Through the lesson observations I am learning a lot about the school culture and the focus for learning in mathematics classrooms.  The focus seems to be heavily weighted towards fluency, computations, and accurate calculations.  There are rarely opportunities for students to discuss their methods for solving a problem, analyzing each others work, or explaining what their final solution means in context of the problem or question posed.  Last week the PLT discussed increasing dialogue in math classrooms as the focus, which makes sense because there are few opportunities for students to communicate in class.  Instead I have been surprised at the amount of "teacher talk" and direct instruction that happens at the front of the classroom.  It has been exciting to teach classes too which started this week.  When I began to share some ideas and practices with teacher, they asked if I would be willing to teach their class and model some of these strategies and practices.  It is a unique opportunity to just be able to jump into someone else's classroom in another country and teach a math lesson.  The students were quite responsive and excited to have a "foreign, American" teacher for the day.  Although they were hesitant to participate actively in the ways I was encouraging, it was exciting to see that by the end of the class period they were discussing problems with their partner, explaining solutions in front of the class, and sharing their work in writing on the board.  I wish all teachers could have this type of co-learning opportunities.  It really has been invaluable for me and for the teachers I've gotten to work with so far.  

The whole school is open-air hallways and open window/fan classrooms.  The school is 3 or 4 stories and the courtyards all look so green and tropical, like this:

The classrooms get fairly warm, but the ceiling fans and light-weight student uniforms help. Although all the kids say they love going into the "air con" computer lab.

Also, I had a real "I love math so much!" moment while in the PLT meeting.  There was a master teacher visiting from China for the week at the same school.  She only spoke Mandarin and was meeting with me (English speaker) and 6 teachers from Singapore (4 who ethnically identify as Chinese, 2 who spoke Mandarin fluently, and 2 teachers who ethnically identify as Malay and don't speak Mandarin at all).  So we would ask a question, and one of the teachers who speak Chinese would translate the question, the teacher would answer, and then someone else would try and quickly translate.  I'm sure there was a lot that I missed in this conversation, but their was a moment when she was explaining how they teach pattern recognition through math classes in China, and started writing....because it was numbers and symbols, we all leaned in and understood immediately.  Mathematics is truly a universal language, and I'm thankful to speak it.

Chinese? Cantonese? Mandarin?  Want to understand more about "How A Dialect Differs from a Language" click here.