Tutorial 5

The Micro-Teaching lesson on My Neighbourhood, surfaced the oft forgotten fact, theat teachable moments often present themselves at the most unexpected times (and they had a habit of occuring, just when the teachers were short of time).

A point raised by Ms Ananthi, that was pertinent, was how foreign nationals in our classrooms, often get insulted and ostracized by fellow classmates. This is also overlooked by teachers, who are constantly struggling to beat the clock/bell in order to "cover" the syllabus.

I argue that it would speak terribly of teachers, if we do indeed manage to "teach" the concepts on friendship, tolerance and racial harmony, but fail to address intolerance and blatant bullying in the classroom.

Personal experience in teaching ostracized Filipino, Chinese, Indian, Korean, and Pakistani students, has reaffirmed in me, the need to address the affective domain of teaching and learning - which, in my view, is more crucial and more permanent, than the effective domain. What use is "teaching" the Social Studies syllabus, if students don't see the need to be accepting of fellow classmates who look and sound different?

The thinking models covered today were also most useful - several were familiar, but Richard Paul's Elements of Reasoning, Marzano's 5 Dimensions of Learning, Swart's Critical & Creative Thinking Models and Costa & Kallick's 16 Habits of Mind, were entirely new to me.

Please click here to view insights into the various thinking models, gathered from the tutorial.