#Second Week in Bangkok: The Fellowship of Princess Chulabhorn School Teacher

Story of SEA Teacher Participant #BATCH 5

#Second Week in Bangkok: The Fellowship of Princess Chulabhorn School Teacher

(29^th January – 2^nd February 2018)

Time to go back to school! Cheer up!!! Cheer up!!!Cheer up!!!J

As last week was our class observation so, this week we were assigned to teach all Matthayom 5. Since the teacher of Matthayom 5 moved to France so there was no teacher at all for one semester. There were six classes of Matthayom 5, start from Matthayom 5/1 to 5/6. In Thailand, to say the grade level they used “Matthayom”. Matthayom 1 to 3 for Lower Secondary School and Matthayom 4 to 6for Upper Secondary School. It was different from Indonesia. In Indonesia we just say Grade 7 to 9 for Lower Secondary Schooland Grade 10 to 12 for Upper Secondary School.

Princess Chulabhorn Science High School just as the same as general school. It has five days of teaching and learning process. In each day has ten periods and each period was about 50 minutes. The teaching and learning process started from 08.00 a.m until 16.20 p.m. The break time was at the fifth period at 12.10 p.m until 13.00 p.m. Before the teaching and learning process students and teachers would attend the morning assembly first at 07.20 for every day. It was like daily routine in Thai school.

The school time table. It was written in Thai

#Team Teaching in Action!

So in the #firstday we had 5 classes 5/6, 5/1, 5/2, 5/5, and the last 5/4. Oh I almost forgot, because we were assigned to teach these six classes our mentor told us to do a team teaching. So there would be me and two of my friends, Afifah and Arma. Because this was our first day and on Monday we just have 50 minutes for each class so we just did the warming up. We had the students to introduce themselves in front of the class but in different way. The student who came forward first must describe his / her friend not describe himself / herself. The boys would pick a girl and otherwise.

In the #secondday we had three classes 5/1, 5/5 and 5/6 each class was about two periods (100 minutes). The content of what will be taught was provided by our school mentor. Our mentor gave us a text book (it was belong to the previous teacher) as the sources and guideance to teach the students. Actually the learning sources not only from the text book, it could be from workbook and internet. These sources were the most used sources by the teachers in order to prepare the lesson for teaching in class. Moreover, there were some additional learning sources for the students in order to develop and increase their knowledge and skill on certain subject they were Study Tour and Competition. These kinds of learning sources were not formal, but it was believed that these sources were important to support the development of knowledge and skills (soft and hard skills) of the students on certain fields especially on Science and Mathematics as well as Technology.

The topic for this week was Causative Verb. Before we started to teach, we set up a little game to got students’ attention and built their awareness about what the topic was. The game called “Guess the Word”.

After that, we got into the lesson. Since this was team teaching, we have divided our part to teach. So I got the first chance. My part was to explained the use of “Let and Make”, then Afifah’s part was “Have and Get” and the last Arma’s part was “Help”. To make sure the students understanding, we asked them to make a simple sentence consist of those Causative Verbs and did the exercise in the book then we discussed it together. For the #thirdday #fourthday and #fifthday we did the same thing to all classes for this week.

The Text Book used for Matthayom 5

Teaching was not easy sometimes, the problem we faced was misscommunication and missunderstanding with the students and otherwise. We spoke English and the students spoke Thai. We found it challengging yet frustating hahaa.. but we did not give up that easy, for the best solution we used broken English and more gesture in teaching.

# Meeting with the Principal of Princess Chulabhorn School

Today we have meeting with the principal also with some teachers from Foreign Language Department and Science Department.  As we entered the principal room, he was warmly welcomed us. He asked about “How is it going? Is everything oke? How’s this school? How’s the students you teach? Do you have any problem in the dorm?”. Then we said “Everything is just fine and undercontrol” ;) we could see in his face saying “That was such a relief then” he also thanked us to teach all the Matthayom 5, as I said before, there was no teacher at all so he was worried about their students very much. The principal gave us a brand new edition of Princess Chulabhorn Science High School sport T-Shirt. A yellow shirt which we can wore on Wednesday for exercise in the morning.