StockholmNIE2018

And we're done! 5 weeks fly by so fast. This week only consists of 2 days, one on Monday where the students clean up their lockers and play games for the rest of the day, and the other on Tuesday where students carry out their chosen activities for choice days. In more detail, I spent Monday giving my goodbyes and tokens of appreciation to all the teachers who I interacted a lot with. We returned the key fobs given to us and packed up all our things. I didd my very last lunch duty as well, doing crowd control as the students trickle in after their classes. At the last few periods, I went down with Qi Ting to observe the fashion show carried out by the Year 9s. From that show, we saw that the students are more open here, with their extremely daring and creative outfits as well as the cheering from the younger students. It was heart-warming to see the juniors supporting the year 9s enthusiastically, giving the models of the fashion show high-fives and fist bumps as they walked down...

This week was really chill since students are winding down before their summer holidays and most time is spent playing math games as well as other strategy games in math class.  Wednesday and Thursday, I spent with another teacher since my CT was away with his mentor class on a 3-day class trip. Ms Joedicker, as the students address her, teaches mostly Year 4s and 5s from what I've seen and her class size is significantly smaller than my CT's, Mr Garratt's. Hence, the class was a lot quieter and easier to manage. It doesn't hurt that the students enjoy the classes now since they get to play games. Thursday evening, we gave a presentation about Singapore at the farewell dinner at Stockholm University. We also met other international students and heard a presentation on their school life here in Stockholm. Friday was the reflection seminar at Stockholm and went into more detail on what we learnt as well as any differences we found between our education systems that we w...

This week marks the (un)official end of practicum as school's out! :) The students are on holidays after this week, and in this particular week, I got to see how my mentor, Mr Daniel, handles the grading scheme for the students' final grades. It was a tiring Tuesday as both of us marked many tests (P.S. the students were all requesting to do retests to push their grades up and my mentor complied) in order to finalise the results for the submission on Wednesday. In the blink of an eye, 4 weeks have passed in Stockholm, Sweden. Teaching in Rödabergsskolan has made me become a better teacher, as I begin to explore the various teaching methods available, the various teacher authority bases and so on. All these experiences are memorable, and will definitely be of use in Singapore. The motivations of the students in Sweden may be different from the students in Singapore, but they have a common goal: to do well for their studies. It is interesting to see how the students in Sweden r...