The challenges of our SCI: Improving Secondary Two students' History essay skills through Mind-maps

The challenges that we faced during the SCI implementation:

1) Timeframe of the SCI implementation is too short- The SCI implementation period is over a span of 1 term or 10 weeks. Also, the number of History periods is too short as the students only have 1 History lesson (40 min) per week. Students had to go for training, which takes about 2 weeks and resulting in the ending of the SCI being pushed on to the next term. Also, not all the lessons can be used to train students on the essay skills. Content still need to be covered and the teacher also needs to train students on other skills such as the answering of Source-Based Questions. Effectively up to date, students have done one mind-map practice related to essay and another mind-map for their essay test. In total: 2 practice sessions related to mind-maps for writing of essays. Is this enough practuce for them to write good essays?

2) Mind-map template- The vendor gave an essay template which is used as a start-up for students to write their essays. It serves as a guide for students to put a structure to their essay by initiating them to list, describe and explain. In short, it helps students to organise their points. However, which part of the essay is attributed to the mind-map? In an essay, students are marked based on afew critera- one of them is how MUCH the students are able to list, describe and explain their points. In essays, the content plays an important part too.

3) Essay as a high-level thinking process- When writing an essay, students are required use their analytical and synthesis skills. Does a mind-map allow students to do that? From my perspective, the mind-map template allows some form of structure to take place but does it give the students the ability to analyse and sysnthesise so they can write good essays?

4) Research Activist (RA) not an expert in the subject area- It is CRUCIAL that in future, the research person involved in conducting the research should be someone who is familiar with the subject area. As I am more of a Science and Mathematics, I have no problems understanding and analysing of data. However, alot of time was spent on grappling the concepts and the terminology used in the History subject. Time was also spent to understand the teaching and learning processes and the thought processes that comes with essay writing. If the RA is a person who is familiar in the subject area, lesser time could be spent on communicating of instruction and things could be done faster. Until now, I am still trying to understand the whole process behind essaywriting and still wondering whether I have gotten it right this time...

5) Focus is on mind-maps for improving essay skills. Often, we forgot that and there were times when we dwell on mind-maps for content instead.

These are the challenges that we faced. If we were to carry this out next year, the team will need to look into these issues and see how we can improve on them.

SCI outcomes- what if it is NOT met?

We discussed the possibilities of not meeting the SCI intended outcomes during the network meeting yesterday. Several issues came up during the discussion:

1) Timeframe of the SCI project- timeframe to carry out the SCI could be too short. Students need time to adjust to the intervention being used in class. Furthermore, the carrying out of the SCI ususally spans over a period of about 1 term. There were cases shared whereby just when the students were about to get used to the intervention and found the intervention meaningful, it was stopped as data needs to be measured and collected.

2) Teacher development- teacher needs to be very good in using the intervention. Beginning Teachers who are carrying out the intervention might be grappling with other factors such as classroom management and pedagogy. It would be ideal if a senior teacher with years of experience and who is an expert in classroom management is deployed to carry out the intervention with the project class but not all schools might have the resources to do this.

3) Not meeting the expectations of the SCI outcomes- posttest results shows that the effect size is small or trivial, indicating that the intervention did not result in an increase in the students performance. Worse still, sometimes data might even show a decline in the performance, so the big question: what comes next?

I believe that if such an occurence happen and if the results did not meet the intended outcomes, we must be open and upfront about it. Report the results as it is without any qualms about it. The whole idea of the SCI project is NOT the success of the SCI itself. Of course, the success of it will be an added bonus! However, what is more important is the reflection and the depth of the level of thinking that the TEAM went through during the deliberating and the evaluation process. What is more important are questions such as : Why is the SCI useful? Why did it meet or did not meet the intended outcomes? What can be changed or what can be done better in future?

Hence, not meeting the SCI outcomes is actually OK! :)

The Silent Artist : Creativity, artistic intelligence, making decisions and reflection

Master Teacher Alice Poh shared this activity with us yesterday during our network meeting. I found this activity very creative and meaningful.

Activity 1:

Draw a house. Draw a garden round the house. Include some trees. There is a playground near the house.

We were given 5 minutes to draw the items as mentioned in the instructions. No further instructions were given and no questions were to be asked. At the end of the activity, we were asked to peer-mark based on the marking scheme as such:

• 1 mark for a single storey house.
• 2 marks for a double storey house.
• 3 marks for a triple storey house.
• 1 mark for a fence round the garden/house.
• 1 mark for 2 trees.
• 2 for more than 2 trees.
• 1 mark for 1 playground item.

This was what I drew and I was given 3 marks by my partner. There is no limit to the number of marks given. However, I felt indignant with the marks I received because I didn't know that drawing a double-storeyed house would give me 2 marks. If I knew, I would draw a HDB flat! So the effort of me creatively trying to draw a kampong house did not give me extra marks.

Activity 2:

Mr and Mrs Tan live in a double storey bungalow with their two young school going kids. They have two cars. Mr Tan is a man who loves nature. The family spends a lot of their time in their well-shaded garden. Mrs Tan loves swimming and spends a lot of time by the poolside with the kids. Because of this, Mr Tan is very concerned about security and safety of the children.

At the end of the 5-minute activity, we were told to exchanged papers and then peer-mark based on the marking scheme as such:

House:

• 1 mark for a double storey bungalow.
• 2 marks for the two cars parked either inside or outside the house

Garden:

• 1 mark for each tree or shrub planted.
• 1 mark for the swimming pool.
• 2 marks for furniture at the poolside.
• 1 mark for fence round the pool
• 1 mark for fence round the house with a gate.

I was awarded 11 marks for the second activity and was happy with myself for it! Again, there is no limit to the toal number of marks.

What strikes me as interesting is that in Activity 1, there was no context set for the drawing of the pictures. I was clueless of what to draw as there were no particular rubrics given. In the second activity, the context of the Tan family is more extablished and the ideas can be deduced from the instruction. Also, the key words assist us in the drawing and we were more aware of the rubrics of the marker as we had gone through those in the first activity.

To sum up, performance of students would definitely be better if they have a clearer idea of the deliverables (rubrics) and what to do (instructions). Performance of students would also be better if the goals are clear and the task at hand is more focused. How do we translate that to our daily teaching?

T3W5: Feedback in graph drawing

While I was co-teaching with a colleague during a Practical Session, I was not very satisfied with the way the students were drawing their graphs. Although they have been reminded before to draw graphs 'which occupy more than half of the graph paper', many were still drawing small graphs which will definitely not meet the O-Levels standards.

After consulting with my colleague, we decided to do another session on graph drawing. I was determined that that will be the last session that I will spend on graphs with the class and they must draw 'acceptable graphs' from that point onwards. I was aware that perhaps, I was not being very clear during the previous lessons that I spent on graph-drawing. I look through their previous work and came up with a list on the 'possible crimes' that are committed in graph-drawing.

Common mistakes in graph-drawing:
1) AXES: incorrect labeling of physical quantity and unit, labeling of the wrong axes (students labeled the vertical axes as the horizontal axes and vice versa).

2) SCALE: not labeling the scale for every 2 cm on the scale, using inappropriate scale, vertical distance from maximum to minumum y-coordinate not occupying at least 12 cm, horizontal distance from maximum to minimum x-coordinate not occupying at least 10 cm.

3) POINTS: points incorrectly plotted, not using crosses while plotting points.

4) LINE: not drawing of best fit line

During the lesson, a worksheet was given which highlighted the common mistakes made. Special attention was given as to how to use an appropriate scale, how to measure the vetial and horizontal distances from the maximum to the minimum point and what it means by a best fit line. Samples of students work was shown to highlight the common mistakes made so students are aware of them all.

At the end of the lesson, the students were tasked to draw a graph, given the data points. Their work was collected and marked. To ensure that there is a progress in their learning, verbal feedback was given during the lesson and written feedback was given in the marked assignments. The following shows the samples of 3 different students work and the feedback that was given in each piece of assignment.

The first on the right shows a 'Good' piece of work. Marks are given based on 4 points: A (Axis), S (Scale), P (points) and L (line).

The second and third below shows an 'Aceptable' in which the student scores 2 out of 4. The third piece of work shows one which requires 'improvement.' In this case, the student scores 1 out of 4 marks. The mistakes for the second and the third case is shown in the paper as a form of writen feedback for students.