Drama Class in St.Ignatius Riverview

RivRiverview School in Sydney is a Private Catholic School that is one of the most competitive, and most expensive, schools to get into in the Sydney area. It offers exceptional learning opportunities to the students including field trips, extra music training, and intense sports training. While I was there, I got to observe many of the elective classes that the students got to take such as art, library, computers, drama, band, and music. Each one of these classes was very different than the way I have seen elective or "specials" done in the US. The most interesting of these classes that I saw was the drama class. The teacher was doing a lesson on improvisation was doing activities with the students to get them thinking creatively in drama. The first activity he started with having the boys in four corners of the room. One boy from a corner would come in the middle of the class and start the activity by acting out a profession. When the teacher said freeze, a boy from the next corner would come out and assume the exact position that the boy who froze was in. He then would use that position to start acting out another position. No boy could go twice until all of the boys in their corner had gone. The biggest challenge that the teacher had with the boys was the they somehow turned everything into something violent. It was interesting to see this happen and I had never been in an all boys school before so it got be thinking about how this activity would have gone if it was done in an all girls class. The next activity was playing a game called "Things". This game was conducted by having everyone stand in a circle and the teacher would say a phrase such as "Things you would never say to your teacher" and when the students had an idea they would step into the circle and respond to the phrase. The students had to think on their feet and try and come up with humorous responses to the phrases that were provided. The boys did very well with this but it was very obvious which students were very confident and which students were very shy. The teacher had to scaffold for certain students by coming up with phrases that were easier or more common to respond to. This was very different than the schools that I have seen in the BPS because many schools do not have the time or flexibility to conduct classes like this. Many classroom teachers do what they can to include drama into their teaching but I have never seen an actual class dedicated to drama. I think it is an excellent way to not only further passions of children who may be interested in drama but also to develop confidence in all of the students in being in front of their classmates and using their creative minds in a different way than they do in music or art. The assessment is based on effort and improvement which creates a safe environment for the students. However, this is not a possible class that can be conducted in any school. This school is fortunate enough to have enough room to have a drama room filled with costumes and props. I would love to take some of the activities that I observed in lessons in drama and implement them into my classroom one day.

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Observed English Lessons at the Pioneer Primary School

I mainly observed English lessons since my main CT is an English teacher.

Singapore is very heavily dependent on the books that they use. Students would be carrying a minimum of 3 books for each subject: a textbook, an activity book, and a homework book. The English lessons would be taught according to the textbook. In Singapore, the textbooks are carefully written and updated for each grade level. The higher streamed classrooms would receive the higher level textbook, A and the lower streamed classrooms would receive B. There would be more materials and information in A than in B.

My CT would first begin the lesson by showing a video that is related to the lesson Topic. She would then teach from her PowerPoints. Sometimes, she would dive right into the textbook and teach from it. Then, she would assign worksheets from the activity book for the students to complete in class. If all of the students are near complete, she would review the worksheet with the whole class. Sometimes, she would have the students create a writing piece in the format of a different writing style such as letters, emails, biographies, fiction, newspaper articles, etc. Most of the lessons observed were similar as described.

This type of teaching style that I observed was similar compared to those used to teach high school students. Students would face the teachers and the teachers would start teaching the content for the topic. After the teaching session, the teacher would assign group work or individual work. The teaching styles used in elementary schools in the States are quite different compared to the ones used in Singapore. There would usually be more group work and more interactive learning. There would be plenty of discussion between the students and teacher; however, I feel that in Singapore, it was more explicit teaching and the students were assigned to complete their assigned work in their activity book.

I feel that in the States, teachers usually use discussions and questions to assess whether the students have acquired the concept that taught; however, in Singapore, the activity book is used to assess the students. If the students are able to complete their worksheets without many problems, then they are learning the materials taught.

I feel that the classroom layout plays an important part to the teaching style. In the elementary schools in the States, I have seen desks in groups of 4 or 6. It promotes group work and interactive learning. When the desks are placed in columns, facing the teacher, it allows the students to give the teacher their full attention. It promotes more individual work than group work.

One challenge that my CT faced teaching was having the students speak in proper English. Students would sometimes answer in Singlish, which is a colloquial Singaporean English. Since it is an English class, my CT would always correct the students by repeating the response in proper English or she would ask the students to respond in proper English. She would always have to remind the students that they are in English class, and thus they had to speak English properly. Some examples would be when a student asked to use the restroom, s/he would say, “Can use toilet?” My teacher would thus ask the student to ask in proper English, “May I use the restroom?”

Another challenge that she faced that was similar to the challenge above. When the students write essays, their essays usually contain a lot of grammatical and sentence structure mistakes. Usually, when students first learn how to write essays and other writing styles, they usually write how the sentence would sound in their head, or how they would say it. Since students speak Singlish, their writing pieces would usually have many grammatical mistakes. Some students would learn from them, but some would have the same repeated mistakes. It takes Singaporean students a bit longer to produce a grammatically-correct sentence.

There would always be challenges in teaching and there isn’t one correct teaching style. Teaching varies across cultures and I am glad that I was able to observe the education system in Singapore.

Different Teachers, Different Management (Singapore)

Sorry for the sudden bombardment of posts!

Classroom management in Singapore (or at least in the classes that I have seen) finds its difficulty in the amount of students in a classroom. During my first pre-practicum in the US, there were 18 students in the classroom. In my second pre-practicum, I had 22 students in the classroom. I already felt the added difficulty with just four more students. In Singapore, each classroom has around 30-40 students. A general class is normally 40 students but because of pull-out programs, 20 or so students may leave during math or English. With so many students in classroom, I really understand the necessity of “having eyes everywhere.” Even with two teachers in the room, it is hard to keep an eye on each student. Since my students sit in rows, you can imagine that the students in the last few rows are actually quite far from the front of the room, where the teacher and the board is. It is not too hard for these students in the back to fool around during the lesson and teachers need to remind ourselves to pay attention to the back of the room. These students in the back may also fall behind because the teacher is in the front doing the work on the visualizer and it is easy for the students in the back to be distracted.

Although the large class size is a challenge, my experience with classroom management in Singapore is something I consider positive because of the respect students seem to have for teachers. While I did not hear about any official classroom rules, it seems like students are expected to know proper behavior and they are generally disciplined in the classroom. When a teacher walks into a classroom for the first time, the students stand up and say, “Good morning/Good afternoon, Miss. ___/Mr. ___.” Then they would bow their heads to you and you reply to them and tell them to be seated. This took a while for me to get used to. I think I was still awkward about it towards the end. Thirty students bowing to you is something I do not think I will ever experience again. The times that students do get rowdy or misbehave, teachers usually give them verbal reminders of how they should be acting and that is usually enough to solve the problem. There are times when the verbal discipline can get a bit harsh (by American standards). For example, once when the students were getting dismissed class by class from the auditorium, they were ordered to be quiet and a teacher had said, “Why do I hear talking? Your feet are not so stupid that you need your mouth to tell them to move.” However, the students seem immune to this and take it as they would any other form of discipline.

When verbal reminders are not enough or when students misbehave on a larger scale, parents are involved. I remember an instance where students were skipping their remedial, supplementary, or enrichment classes and going to an arcade instead. These three students changed out of their school uniforms after their regular classes and changed into casual clothes to go to the arcade. When the school had found out about this, the teacher called each student’s parents and informed them of the situation. The teacher also informed the parent that the students would be punished by having to stand against a wall for the first fifteen minutes of their lunch break. The teacher asked the parents if it was an appropriate punishment and all the parents agreed. I had asked my CT if there were any instances of caning (hitting students). My CT replied it is very rare and used only as a very extreme form of discipline. She said that she has never seen it happen in the school and general teachers are not allowed to hit students. If caning is being considered as a punishment, the school will definitely ask the parents if they agree to it. My CT also informed me that there is something called public caning for secondary students, when students are caned in the auditorium in front of everyone else.

It is difficult to give a general description of the classroom management for Singapore because, just like in the US, different teachers have different management techniques. I was lucky enough to be able to work with two different teachers and it reminded me that I should not take what I see to represent all of Singapore but just the particular classroom that I was in. For example, the two teachers I worked with had different ways of dealing with students who did not do their work. The math teacher would write down the names of the students who had not done their homework and put it on the visualizer. She would say that these are the students who I did not receive the homework from and then she would proceed to ask the individual students why they have not handed it in. The English teacher I worked with seemed to have a lot of faith in the honor system. She would just ask students, “Who did not read? Who did not do the work?” Students would raise their hands and she would make a mental note but it did not seem to be that big of a deal. (Most students did their work anyway.) She trusted the students to be in honest. The students in each class were well-adjusted to the technique their teacher was using.

The math teacher had the students in different groups that each had leaders. When work is assigned, once each member of the group has finished his or her work, the leader collects the work and races to get it into the work bins. Whichever group wins this race ggets 10 points added to a chart. At the end of the unit, the group with the most points gets a prize. This is similar to some positive reinforcement techniques I have seen in the US. I think that, in the end, classroom management is really more a representation of each teacher’s own values rather than a representation of a whole culture. Each teacher manages their own classroom the way they find the most effective and the students adjust accordingly. There will be similarities and differences across all cultures.

Singaporean School Culture

The culture of Singapore is definitely reflected in its school culture. The four major subjects in the school curriculum are math, science, English, and mother tongue. Mother tongue is a class that allows the students to further their knowledge on their first language. There are three options for mother tongue: Malay, Chinese, and Tamil. These are the three major languages (and cultures) in Singapore. Although Singapore strongly emphasizes the importance of learning how to speak standard English, Singapore also wants to retain the culture that makes Singapore unique. Singapore prides itself on the being the Southeast Asian country where one can experience three different cultures. Singapore wants to modernize without losing its culture so in order to have the students retain their mother tongue, they must take the class in school. There is much less of an emphasis on social studies in the classroom (compared to the four major subjects).

At the end of the year, there are school-wide exams on the four major subjects. These are like finals given by the school but all schools are required to prepare for these examinations although they are not a standard nationwide assessment. This may be one of the reasons that add to the stress of students. Singapore has a very high value on education and based on my conversations with other students at my university, there is a lot of pressure to do well on the exams because they determine the class students will be streamed into the following year. Streaming is a very controversial topic and it actually starts very early in Singapore. Official streaming starts from the PSLE (the exam the students take before entering secondary school). This shows the importance of assessment in the Singapore education system. After the PSLE, the students are separated into four tracks that have an effect on their academic future: Special, Express, Normal Academic, and Normal Technical. Although I do not know specific statistics, my classmates say that the tracks definitely influence their future educational and professional lives. There are different exams that are taken and not every student is qualified for university. Students who do not qualify for university go to a polytechnic school. Normal technical students take vocational subjects. My CT had mentioned that they believe vocational learning will provide these students with a different path that is more suitable for them.

I find that many students in Singapore are very disciplined and strict on themselves. Students arrive in the main hall (which is like an auditorium without any seats). They arrive on or before 7:15 am. The sun rises at 7:00 am in Singapore so this usually means that many of these students are going to school in the dark. (I went to school in the dark too!) Announcements begin at 7:15 and if a student arrives earlier than that, they know that they should go to their assigned seats on the floor and pull out a book. Students are not supposed to be talking during this time. They should be reading. (Although chattering does happen and teachers are there to remind the students what they should be doing.) Students have a break at 10:30 am, which is pretty much like recess. They have lunch at 1:30 pm, which is also the end of the school day. However, this is rarely actually the last period of the day for most students because many students have extra classes. Students who are behind on their work have remedial classes, students who are advanced have enrichment classes (these are not mandatory), and all students have enrichment classes on some days of the week (music, drama, etc). All students are required to wear the school uniform. When I told students that most public schools in the US do not require uniforms, they were shocked and extremely jealous.

I also feel as if teachers are very well-respected in Singapore. If something is wrong with a student’s academics, it is the student’s fault, not the teachers. I thought this was a bit of a contrast with the U.S. where parents tend to put more blame on the teacher. In Singapore, parents seem to put a lot of trust onto the teachers. My CT even mentioned that some parents had called her and given her permission to hit their child if they were misbehaving in class. Just to clarify, teachers in Singapore are not allowed to hit their students but I just thought it was interesting how much trust these parents were giving my CT. Another thing to note is that only the teacher’s lounge and offices have air-conditioning while classrooms only have fans. Teachers that have been teaching for a while become specialized teachers. For example, my CT only taught English and another teacher I worked with only taught math. They may also teach other minor subjects such as pastoral care with their homeroom classes. Therefore, there are periods throughout the day when they do not have class and they may go back to the teacher’s lounge to plan lessons.

Physical education was emphasized in the school. The school hallways were decorated with trophies from competitions. Some of the morning announcements involved congratulating students that had won a competition. There is even an event called Sports Day, when classes are canceled and students go to a track field for some friendly competition within the school. Apparently, the students train for a very long time and only a selected few get to compete. However, those that do not compete are expected to cheer on their classmates. I had the opportunity to go to Sports Day and I thought the students were all enjoying themselves. It created an exciting atmosphere that gave students a break from the stress of schoolwork.

The classroom for my sixth grade class was set up in rows. The walls are pretty bare except for some calendars and Chinese New Year Decorations. I thought this was very different from the elementary schools I have seen in the US. Classrooms are typically lined with student work so that the teacher and students can be proud of themselves. However, I guess there is less to distract the students from their work. (There is nothing else to look at besides the teacher and the board!) There is much more decoration outside of the classrooms, such as the sports trophies I mentioned. There are even occasional math problems for the students to solve and the stairs are decorated with the multiplication table. There are also many decorations around the school for the “Speak Good English” campaign. This is an education campaign in Singapore that is aimed at having students use standard English instead of Singlish. Singlish involves a mixture of English and other languages, such as Malay and Hokkien. It may even just include grammar from other languages spoken in the English language (which produces incorrect English grammar). For example, one of the signs depict that the wrong way to ask to go to the bathroom is to say, “Teacher, toilet?” and the correct way to ask is to say, “May I pleased be excused to the bathroom?” I believe this is pretty much showing the two extremes in the situation but it is true that students most often use the first way. Singlish is still rampant in Singapore and having students speak standard English is a prominent part of the school culture.

English lesson in Singapore

The lesson I had observed was an English lesson about situational writing. The objective of the lesson was to prepare the students for the situational writing section of their Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), which is the test that determines what secondary school they will be attending. The test includes a writing section that requires students to write a response to a situation that they are given. For example, during this lesson, the students were given a graph depicted the results of a survey asking students what is their favorite weekend activity. They are asked to write a summary that describe the results of the survey. This may seem simple for the 6^th so I would like to point out that students in Singapore struggle with the English language due to English being their second language.

My CT had planned the lesson using resources of the PSLE booklet the school had given out to the teachers. She had taken an example of situational writing out of the booklet (which was the graph) and presented it to the class. Then she asked the class what they observed and worked through their conclusions with them (as a whole class activity). At the beginning of the lesson, she reminded the students of what they should think of in all their writing, P.A.C.T.: Purpose, Audience, Content, and Tone. She also gave the students helpful hints and reminders as they voiced their observations to her.

One of the challenges my CT faced while teaching lesson was focusing on content as well as grammar. Since the students are still struggling with English as they study for the test, my CT must remind them of correct grammar in addition to what they should write about. Students in the class were using phrases such as “most favorite” and my CT would stop to remind that that favorite already implies that the activity is most liked. Another challenge was having the students focus on using the graph to write instead of spending too much time on the content of the graph. The students were starting to discuss each activity individually and saying things like, “I think the students who chose reading are lying.” She had to remind the students that they just need to extract the graph for specific factual information instead of discussing their inferences. The students would get sidetracked into talking about their own activities during the weekend and asking to look at the other survey graphs. They also wanted to do a class survey of their own. It was a challenge to keep them focused on the task at hand. The students never actually got to writing during the lesson and they were given the writing assignment for homework.

The teaching style for this lesson was less structured than previous classes. Students were allowed to sidetrack for a bit when discussing the content of the graph. This resulted in students that were energetic about contributing what their favorite activities were on the weekends. The information was presented to the students on a “visualizer,” which is similar to a projector here but it is more high-tech. Instead of having to use transparencies, you can just put a regular sheet of paper on the visualizer and it will show up on the projector slide as it should for the whole class to see it. Every classroom in Singapore (that I have been in) has one. The class also started the lesson on a whole class discussion about what they observe. This is similar to many of the lessons I have observed in the United States. While the classrooms in the United States have usually had the students on a rug during a whole class discussion (or at least in group seating arrangements), the students in Singapore were in rows. This resulted in students having to speak up and some students becoming distracted due to be far away from the person who was speaking.

Usually, after a whole class lesson in the United States, students break off into a group or individual activity. This usually happens in Singapore too but, for this particular lesson, discussing the graph took up the entire period so the entire lesson was a whole class discussion. During this discussion, I noticed a teaching style that my CT had mentioned to me before, drilling. Since students in Singapore continue to struggle with their English, especially their writing, teachers provide useful “hints” to their students to help them produce well-structured writing. For example, a hint for students is to begin their reports with, “The aim/purpose of this report is…” and a hint for students to end their report is, “In conclusion, the survey shows…” or “On the basis of these findings, it would seem that…” These hints are brought up during the lessons to continue to “drill” them into the students’ minds so that they remember to use them on the PSLE. They are recommended to choose one that they know how to use and are comfortable with. They are also told that hints are just suggestions and if they have a better phrase, they should use it.

The students were informally assessed based on their participation in the lesson. Since we did not get to their writing assignment, there was not a chance to walk around the room and assess their writing process. They were given the writing assignment for their homework and it would be collected the next day for assessment. My CT informed the students that there will be class editing the following day for their homework assignment so it is important that everyone completes the assignment and has something for their classmates to edit. Class editing is something I have also observed back in the US but one thing I found interesting was that the students in Singapore find it very easy to give criticism to their classmates’ writing and find it harder to give compliments. My CT must remind them that they should start by giving compliments instead of just criticizing each other. I always found that it was easier to give compliments instead of criticism. My CT mentioned that this may be due to the different cultures. She said that students in Singapore are typically hard on themselves so it is easy for them to be hard on others. It seems as if positive reinforcement plays a smaller role in Singapore (although it is definitely not absent).