1st Visit (10/10/14)

When I did International Baccalaureate back in pre-u there was a requirement for us to participate in the community. It was called Creative, Action, Service. In short, CAS. There is also a requirement for us to make reflections for every single participation so the writing of reflections is not something new to me. However, an experience of having activities with these SJK(T) Ladang Semenyih kids is a new one as I never did activities with school kids before.

After arriving there first thing in the morning, all of us introduced ourselves to the class we were assigned to. The first activity that we did was the "Ball Throwing Game". The name in itself is self-explanatory that it involves throwing balls around. The rationale of this activity is to let the students familiarize themselves with the teachers and their peers as they have to call the person's name as they throw the ball. As trivial as it seems, the activity does help a lot in terms of student-teacher interaction. I experienced this firsthand as after the activity the students approached the teachers more and often called upon them too.

The next activity was the "Signature Bingo" where the students need to fill in boxes filled with specific points by searching for other students with the points stated in the bingo boxes. The teachers also took part in this activity by giving one statement of their own that fits some of the points in the bingo. This activity aims to make the students communicate with each other and make them use proper sentences in asking others of the points in the bingo.

"Fear in a hat", another ice-breaking activity that we did was very insightful in my perspective. The activity was for the students to each write their fears of going into secondary schools on a piece of paper and fold them before putting them into a hat. What intrigued me were the students' answers to some of their fears. When the teacher asked whether they would miss their primary school friends, they said they have facebook. When we asked them whether they would miss their primary school teachers, some said no because the teacher was always scolding them. Right after that, we did "dreams and ideals" with them. This activity requires them to draw and write their dream job, school, and things they want to have when they grow up. This activity also got me thinking that children nowadays are being more and more creative in the way they perceive things. The boy who would not miss his teachers earlier wanted to be a photographer and he wanted his dream school to be that without teachers. I, for one would never even think about it when I was in primary six. There are also lots of other unique things that the students come up with during this activity.

Before recess, we did "connecting stories" with the students. We gave them a theme to start a sentence and each student in the group was to continue the sentences to make a story. It was during this activity that I saw some students are weaker than the others in constructing sentences and speaking in english as each student has to contribute a sentence to the story. However, as we introduced a lighter and more general theme for the story which was to start the sentence with "Once upon a time", the students in the group participated more in connecting the story. This may be due to the fact that its easier for them all to connect to a general theme rather than a specific one.

After recess, we used most of the time to brief the students about the scrapbook project that we are going to do with them on our next visit and to be presented when they come to the university two weeks after that. Here, again I would like to repeat what I said earlier above that these students are very creative. The group that I was with was assigned to do the "Fears" part and as we were discussing on the arrangements of the material, one student suggested something very interesting. He suggested that we do a pop-up version of a hat and as the scrapbook opens up, the materials inside would pop out of the hat as well. I was very amazed at his idea on the scrapbook.

Another peculiar thing that I found out about the class that we were assigned to was that there is this one particular kid who was very excellent in both his communication skills and his writing. When everyone else were busy doing the acivity, he had finished first and went around doing other stuff as in my opinion, it is not that he lost interest. It is just that he was too advanced already. When How was speaking to him about robotics, he listened eagerly and he understood the complicated things that How was explaining to him. It turns out that his father was an engineer and he had learned all those stuff from his father as well. This really shows to me that a person's personal upbringing really affects how they do in schools to a certain extent. I know, it has been proven in research but to see it for myself is quite the experience.

There was only one thing that I think is lacking in the way that we conducted these activities and that is obviously the abundance of students. The activities that we carried out does have to have active participation by the students but too many students participating in the activities decreases the effectiveness as some more passive students would just be concealed by the crowd of active students. The number of students also made it quite hard for us to control them at times and these would be during the times where the activities involved lots of action like the "Signature Bingo" game. The classroom practically became a hive full of bees, buzzing as they flew around. In terms of speech, there were no problems as the students were able to fully communicate with the teachers in english. They only sometimes communicate with their friends in their native language. That being said, I hope during the next visit I get to experience more and more of these students' creative minds.