Ms. Ting's Strategies for student attention and participation

To Ms. Ting, gaining student attention is one thing, their participation is another. Achieving those two aren't necessary a difficult problem once you get know your class and take the time to understand them. From my perspective, achieving those two require, like what Ms. Ting has mentioned before, showing the students that you as a teacher care about them (studies, progress, well being & etc) as well as making your lessons interesting and fun for the students to learn. From this basis, once you get to know your students such as their interest, you can gain inspiration and ideas from there and begin creating activities, resources and worksheets based on them. That way it is like killing two birds with one stone.

But of course it is easier said than done. Ms. Ting answered that the students' interest should always be taken into account of, then their prior knowledge to further modify and fit to their interest as well as the Learning Intention they were supposed to fulfill. Another thing to note when ensuring the students' participation is to create activities that are challenging but achievable based on their potential level or ZPD. This method should be able to encourage students to accept challenges as well as practise the habit of risk taking to improve themselves. When it comes to attracting the students' attention, Ms. Ting didn't seem to have much difficulty in doing so. Like in most classes, she used verbal cues, rhetorical questions, images, videos, claps & etc and in a second, the whole class would have their ears and eyes on her. As far as we were concern, most teachers would fail or struggle to maintain their attention. Ms. Ting has emphasized on student interest and activities that allows them to be occupied on. No repetition of activities should be implemented, that will easily lose them.

Everyone took part in the
Show and Tell session

Ms. Ting always does encouragement, probably because of this, the students seem to enjoy taking part in various activities. Another factor that influences class participation was the usage of her principles- teacher-student relationship. She would emphasize on the notion of respect for those who are older or those who are willing to educate you, and one of this demonstration of respect is to focus their attention on the teachers whenever they speak and take part in activities proposed by the teachers.

We also believed that the implementation of rewarding could have also contribute to class attention and participation - ClassDojo. By awarding them points in response to their good behavior, this motivates them to put effort. However, there were no "punishments" in the said website, she would not deduct the points when they didn't fulfill the quota or desired behavior in class. Encouragement seems to also be one of the key principles practised by Ms. Ting as we can see her praising and clapping for the students who have tried hard to achieve or improve.