Dzongkha rhyme downloaded for the rhyme competition.

Like every school has the rhyme competition, we too have the trend of having nursery rhyme competition. It was held on 27th September, starting from class PP-III. As a fact, teaching a pre-primary children is very challenging as well as it is time taking. It was confusing as to teach what type of rhyme I was to teach within a given limit of time.

I downloaded a Dzongkha Rhyme called "nga dang chi kha lhap" and I personally felt like it was relevant to them. I collected the resources such as speakers, laptops and managed time for teaching. The moment I showed them the laptop and the speakers, students showed a keen interest in it. The silence was broken and then it was followed by a cheers and smiles. Firstly I showed them the rhyme and dances and asked them if they liked it. There was a positive response from all and then I played the song, pausing line after line.  They repeated after the song and danced following the steps shown in the video. They were extremely happy.

picture . Students during the show.

Besides, it was a great help for me too. I was able to pay my attention to the slow learners and teach them separately. No students were left behind. I went round the class and whenever they required some more effort, I paused the lesson. I gave feedbacks during the time of monitoring them.

As it was an audio visual learning, the retention power was considerably more and they were able to sing and dance even after the practice was over. This rhyme also helped me to recapitulate the content of the lesson which was already taught in previous class.

However, teaching through video for lower classes entails a lot of challenges. They were unable to grab some words as pronounced in the video. As a child they don’t reflect on the meaning of the song but their interest was more on just the song and pictures.

But in general, teaching rhyme through video is more of fun and they were able to comprehend the meaning through pictures and actions.

This given video is the one which was downloaded and taught to them.

Use of Camtesia

On 13th September, I used the video made myself using camtesia to keep the students engaged in absence of teacher.  The topic was an integer which was based on addition and subtraction. In aligned to my objectives, the video tutorial made using camtesia was provided to students of class VII during a substitution class to ensure that teaching learning is comprehensive, I have considered the different learning ability of the child and provided them with a very simple tutorial clip so that they can understand well even in the absence of teacher.

The moment I showed the video clip, the students got exited and showed interest more than usual teaching. Students were able to learn in their own pace by altering the speed or pausing the video. Students were able to revisit the video anytime they feel they should go through unlike approaching the teachers. If it for approaching the teachers, students have to depend on teacher's time but if they have the video, they can play the video whenever they have doubt. Students did not have to depend on teachers for the lesson. By giving the lesson in the form of videos, teachers can create a platform for self learning. By this, it is increasing the self responsibility and concern for learning.

Moreover, after the recording I was able to evaluate and reflect on my teachings. Making a video tutorial was versatile process as I was able to reflect on my lesson and rectify the mistakes. I personally feel this strategy is very useful because it is accessible and I was able to impart knowledge to all the students present in the class and to those who were absent by giving them the lesson videos. In case of our usual teaching, if the student misses the class than they will not get remedial or any input from the teaching but irony to our usual teaching, students who missed the classes get an opportunity to update. Moreover, we can maintain systematic and consistent flow of teaching.

 We all know that with every advantage there are disadvantages aligned with it, so I encountered with many disadvantages while implementing this strategy in class VII. Social interaction is the prominent key to make teaching and learning effective and efficient but I found this attribute miniature. There is no conducive teaching learning environment and students lack hands on experiences. The lesson becomes monotonous as it becomes more of teacher centered class or it is based on traditional teaching.  As a result, students are not engaged in activities and I personally felt that they learn not by doing but by listening which is not recommended in the teaching profession. Students revisit the lesson video if they are not clear but through my experience I found that revisiting to the lesson video isn't effective because there is no scaffolding and guidance from teacher. I found that the Video tutorial does not cater the unique pattern of learning ability of every individual because they lack interaction and we are not able to access child's behavior and their learning pattern.

Use of music during a role play in the class

On 17th September, I made use of back ground music for a role play performed by class 1 students. The main objective of the role play was to make themselves aware of name of the king and queen of Bhutan. There were dancers who danced in the rhythm of music played. A boy and a girl was selected to act as a king and queen respectively. They were made to perform even during one of the shows as it was very relevant to them. The materials that I used were just my mobile and a wire to connect it to  speakers. The speakers amplified the loudness of sound.

Music ignites all areas of child development: intellectual, social and emotional, motor, language, and overall literacy. It helps the body and the mind work together. Exposing children to music during early development helps them learn the sounds and meanings of words. Dancing to music helps children build motor skills while allowing them to practice self-expression. For children and adults, music helps strengthen memory skills. 

The students came up with positive responses when they were told that they would be acting when the music is played. It is challenging to teach such a long lyrics to a class 1 or PP students verbally, therefore playing music helped me save time and moreover their interest was more into acting with the background music.
In conclusion, i would always suggest people to use ICT where

fig 1. students during a role play

As the song was played, the characters entered into the scene to act their roles and through the song, they learnt the roles and songs too (figure 1). It was very effective because they were able to remember the roles and lyrics easily when they are taught in the form of song. They easily understood the meaning of lyrics in the process of dancing step wise.   

So in conclusion, I would suggest through my experience that to make a role play more exciting, a background music can be used so that they learn faster and know the meanings easily. Children also show more interest when they are made to dance in the rhythm of musics.

Graffiti a source

On 12th September, I made a lesson to create a platform whereby students will be  able to scribble their creative ideas into written arts in class one during an arts period. I used projectors, laptops, and whiteboard.  

figure 1. graffiti as a worksheet.

This graffiti (figure 1) was printed on the papers as a worksheet and then  students were made to draw over it with their analysis and ideas. They were given freedom to draw anything that came into their mind within a given time(15 minutes) which was also set in a massive digital timer projected on the white board. They had to complete the given diagram or pain it making the picture meaningful. By this, i was able to test the individuals creativity levels. 

Using printed worksheets to let the students draw with their own creativity seemed very interesting as there were many different arts from many different students. It created a unique way of expressing their ideas in the form of drawing meaningfully in a given time. Some of them created a very good picture out of it while some of them landed up with very funny pictures. Some of them weren’t able to draw anything within a given time.

By using this technique, I was able judge the different abilities of them and also discovered that even the low achievers could do better than the high achievers in some case.  This means that students are having different abilities in different fields and moreover, it engaged all the students together. 

In general, the class was interesting and the students showed much interest in it. 

Following are the worksheets completed by students.

 

Power point presentation by students

Power point presentation is one of the unique ways of presenting in the class.  Unlike the yesteryear of presenting in the chart paper, I encouraged the students to use laptops. They already had the idea of creating power point including those animations, sounds effects and those different backgrounds.

fig.1.  power point on 'Pulley'

I gave them the presentation topic ‘pulley’ where they had to present how to find the mechanical advantage and velocity ratio. They also needed to explain the meaning of mechanical advantage and the velocity ratio along with calculating the efficiency of it.  Unlike the presentation on the chart papers, they were asked to download the pictures using internet. Some of them even hyperlinked the video related to pulley and explained after projecting it on the whiteboard. Instead of pointing with a stick I made them use pointer tool which appeared after the right click button.

fig. 2. power point

I observed that the students paid more interest in it as it was very different from what was taught normally in the class. The presenter used some other fun videos to grab the attention from their peers. They explained the concept, point by point and the lesson went as per the plan. They showed the pictures and videos which further made the concept clear and understandable.

Some of the disadvantages of this kind of presentation were that, they did not have hands on experience to draw the pictures as it was all downloaded and presented. They depended fully on Internets.  They focused more on animations and effects rather than on the contents.

But in general, the concept of using power point presentation help the learners with good visual aids and the ideas can be shown in many different ways to make the concept easy to understand. It provides many different ways to show our ideas such as by hyperlinking a different source, animations which can make the students boost interest in it, back ground color and sound effects which will make the presentation more attractive. 

Google earth

On 8th September, I taught class seven on the 'topic reliefs of Bhutan'.  I started by giving a brief account about the different land features.  I gave all the information given in the text. I gave a list of famous names of mountains of Bhutan so that in the next class I was able to take them in IT lab to use GOOGLE EARTH to locate those places.

figure 1. Google earth

Google earth (figure 1) is one of the best free satellite model of earth on the net. Using Google earth can help you locate different landmarks from all over the world. We can also use directly as a presentation tool or save as a graphic for using it as a teaching aids.

figure 2. Students using Google earth.

This needed an installation of Google earth software. The students were divided into groups of five and then they were given a computer in each groups as in figure 2. Some of them read out the list of mountains and rivers to the group while one of them typed in the search button. They were very happy to see the 3 D view of land features and they even searched many other countries and locations they knew (shown in figure 3). I observed that some of them were so excited that they even started searching their hometowns. They told me that they felt like they were travelling from one place to another.

One of the drawbacks I came across while using Google earth was, out of eagerness, they always went on searching their choice of places. This was more of distracting their focus on the lesson.

But in general, the software was very useful in showing them the land features and locations of the places. It was very useful especially in geography classes. 

video clips on farm animals

Video clips on the topic “Farm Animals”

The teacher guide demands that students should visit the farm and observe the animals. Once more I took the opportunity to use ICT, instead of taking them to the farm which is quite far away from the school.

On 6^th September, I taught English in class one on the topic “Farm Animals”. The objectives of the lesson were to identify the farm animals, choose one of their favorite farm animals and write at least three sentences about it.

I have generally found that writing sentence level can be hard and writing is often the skill that is their weakest. Students often find writing activities too rigid and possibly on a topic that they have little knowledge of or interest. So, I decided to introduce the topic through video clips. Using video in class can change the pace and captivate to the group of students.

I divided the students into groups of five with six members in each group. I provided a laptop to each group and showed them a short video clips on farm animals. The students were really excited when they saw different animals in the video. The clips really benefited students, not only they learnt about the farm animals, they also learnt about the sound produced by each animal

After showing the clips, I asked few questions and the students responded with excitements. Most of the students could write few sentences too. Lastly I am happy to remark that my lesson went well  as I could not only actively engaged my students in learning but also meet all the objectives of the lesson. 

                                         video clips on farm animals

Student's work.

                                                                                                           

Use of projector to 'Line of symmetry'.

                                                                         Blog I

On 5^th of September, I taught my lesson on the topic “Line of

Symmetry” in Class I. The lesson was for 45 minutes. The main

 objectives of this lesson were to make a student to understand and 

make symmetrical shapes.The computer and the LCD projector have 

been used to teach this lesson. I stressed the importance of 

articulating how this technology would translate into improved 

learning for students.

I started my lesson recapitulating the previous lesson and then I initiated conversation by talking about the shapes that they have learnt. There were good responses from students.Then a short video about the Symmetry Line was presented to the students. I found my students very attentive and amazingly watching all the details. After the video lesson, few brainstorming questions were raised and I was glad with their response. The students were instructed to discuss and draw the line of symmetry for the given object and also to identify and colour the symmetry line from the activity given on page no 52

In general, my lesson went well and I could fulfill the lesson objectives. I feel that the using LCD Projector to teach this lesson was successful. I was surprised to see how much the students really knew and how eager they were to participate. This strategy allowed me to see where the students were in reaching all the learning goals.Instead of a teacher just talking at the front of the classroom or writing words on the board, I found the projector allows the presentation of text, audio, and video. Students enjoy seeing, hearing and interacting with technology rather than simply reading a textbook or listening to a lecture. Additionally, students can ask the teacher to repeat a slide if they missed information. This was more entertaining for the students.