Muhamad Hafiz Ismail's Blog, page 12

Have You Lately?

Have you looked up to the sky lately?Watch the beautiful blue sceneryThe pure white cloudsThe shining sunshine
Have you looked up to the sky at night time yesterday?See the moon glowingCheck out the stars blinkingSaying hello to the universe
Have you been to the sea last week?Appreciate the sound of the wavesWalking on the sand with your bare feetSwim happily
Have you been to the forest last month?Smell the natureTouch the wood of the tallest treeListening to the sound of the jungle
Have you appr...

Does the shoe fit you?

Every time I move to a new place, these questions start to ring a bell: Will I survive here? Will it fits my needs? Will I be able to fit the place's needs?
I believe that you never know know until you try to be there and experience it on your own. Rather than listening to other people's advice only, you are better off getting to know it on your own. When you go shoe shopping, I believe you will try them first before you buy them right? Of course you can just buy shoes according to your size,...

Role play with my students

Role play is another fun activity to do with your students. This week, in my Foundations of Education class, we were discussing the topic of Educational Reforms and School Improvement. The discussion started from a big picture f educational reformation where we discussed the issue globally. We mainly looked at the educational reforms that have happened in the US and also in Korea.
Then we came back to the educational reforms in Malaysia and the issue of school improvement. I asked my students...

Ideas flow like a river

Nowadays, since I have been back teaching, I have started to have a lot of ideas about how to involve my students in learning and get them doing some active learning with me in the class. I want them to think critically and to respond to me and among themselves. I really like my class to be busy. I also have a lot to reflect on and to write and learn.

When people around me and my students start to ask em how do I manage to come up with the ideas, I paused for a while. They asked me where I fin...

teaching in uni vs teaching in school

OK, it's time to reflect on my experience so far. Now that I have been teaching for almost 2 months, I think it's time to relate back with my previous experience a little bit, just to compare and contrast the experiences of teaching in school and teaching in university. 
1. Lesson Planning

In school, a teacher needs to have comprehensive lesson planning of what to teach daily. In university, the plan consists of topics to teach each week. While a teacher will have different learning outcom...

the singing students

One thing that I really like about teaching my students in a university is that there is capacity for me to introduce complicated activities. I'm not saying that I can't do complicated activities with school students but sometimes it requires a lot of time for them to come out with the right outcomes.
On Wednesday, in my Foundations of Education class, what I did with my students was to discuss the topic of equality in education. We were discussing issues of race, religion and gender biases re...

A jar of your first impressions

This week I got the idea to get my students to be brave and write their own understanding and definitions of certain terms in the class. I have used this activity throughout all my classes.

It was a simple activity yet powerful to get students to discuss their understanding. You just need an empty jar! Yes, the empty biscuits jar! What I did was in the first few minutes after I introduced the topic to my students, instead of going ahead with explanations I got them to write their first definit...

comment critically please!

Last week in my Research Methodology classes, my students and I discussed on the topic data collections - the methods that can be used to carry out social science research. We discussed the effectiveness of some of the methods to be used like questionnaires, surveys and interviews. We also talked about how methods support the methodology of the research, for example methods to use to do quantitative research or qualitative research.

At the end of the discussion and lecture, I decided to get my...

The Key Word Game

This is another activity that I have been doing in my class this week - The Key Word Game. I think you will be familiar with the game later when I describe how the game works.

First of all, I wrote the key words that the students have been learning during the classes on small cards. For example in Curriculum Development = curriculum, school, teacher, etc.; Foundations of Education = theory, education, syllabus, etc.; Research Methods = methodology, experiment, explore, etc.

Then, one students n...

3 Stars and 1 Wish

I was introduced to the 3 stars and 1 wish activity during my B.Ed time. We learnt that giving peers feedback is one of the way to get students to involved in their own learning. Today, in my Curriculum Development class, I introduced the activity to my students.

The number of students in this class is small. There are only 13 of them. So, it is always easy for me to prepare materials for learning to them. Not much to prepare! I made some small cards with 3 stars and 1 wish and distributed the...