28th Day: Suratthani-Bangkok-Medan

Hello,

The last blog for this program and my last day on the land of Surat Thani, Thailand. Around 05.30 a.m. we all except one of my friends named Micah because he came home the next day, we are prepared to leave for Surat Thani Airport from the hotel near Suratthani Rajabhat University. The air still felt cold, the dew still covered the trees around the road, and the sun had not yet appeared.

One month we have run this teaching program in Thailand, it seems only a week here and wants to stay much longer. It's hard enough to leave the land rich in culture and rich in good people. Yes, this knowledge-filled and loving experience will be hard to erase from memory, perhaps the curiosity of returning to Surat Thani will remain with me forever.

If I have a Doraemon bag, I'll probably come back at this one month, and feel again the warmth of their smile. But all right, I still have one more hope. Hope is in me that someday I will meet them all and talking again about our memories here, at Phetphadungweingchai School, at Suratthani Rajabhat University, Surat Thani, Thailand.

On behalf of Students Batch 5, I thank all those who helped us during the program. Kwap Khun Krap.

Finish

 Teacher Pun (My Mentor)

My Friends : Teacher Jane, Teacher Palm, Teacher Numwan and Teacher Neen

27th Day: Presentation At Suratthani Rajabhat University

On the 27th day on Friday morning, I rushed to bring my suitcase and my bag to go to Suratthani Rajabhat University with Teacher Pun, Teacher Jane and Micah with the van. The last day I set foot and looked around the neighbourhood Phetphadungweingchai School. The steps are quite heavy considering moments like this only once in a lifetime.

Not long after arriving at Suratthani Rajabhat University, I and my friends who joined SEA Teacher Bath 5 immediately made a presentation. The presentations we present are about our activities and about the self-reports we have carried out during the practice at the schools that received us. On that occasion, we gave some souvenirs from our university and the memories we gave to Mr.Potjanat and Mr.Adisorn. Student teacher SEA Bath 5 also got some souvenir from Suratthani Rajabhat University.

The day that was a happy and a sad day. The happy day because the next day I will go back to Indonesia and meet my family and friends. But a sad day too because this is my last day meeting Teacher Jane and Teacher Pun and with my friends who different university, Ihsan, Jefri and the most beautiful friend from us Micah from the Philippines. I hope that on my last day to perform the duty of the SEA Teacher Bath 5 program is not my last day in Thailand, I will visit Thailand one day and reunite with my teachers in Thailand.

23rd Days Until 26th Days: Preparing for The Presentation

Hallo, in my last week in Surat Thani, I had an activity to present my activities during my practice at Phetphadungweingchai School on Friday morning. So for four days starting from Monday until Thursday, I prepare for a presentation at Suratthani Rajabhat University. The things I need for a presentation are powerpoint and prepare the words to be presented.

Here is the powerpoint that I present in Suratthani Rajabhat University:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dfQ6HhXufI7zGV8lnEvEyn1vaLPQgPBR/view?usp=sharing

In this past week, I also attended some activities at school and enjoyed my last week with friends, mentors, teachers and directors. In the last week, I have been saying goodbye to the children in front of the podium all at once to all the teachers and staff of the Phetphadungweingchai School. Four of my friends from Suratthani Rajabhat University and Khon Kean University also say goodbye to the children and teachers, because next week they will also leave school because the one-year teaching practice at this school is over. Simply sad this farewell, because I do not know when I will be back at this school and meet with them all. New life stories, new experiences, and new friends will always be remembered in my memory.

The 21st and 22nd Days: Start Making Self Report

In this fourth weekend I started to make a self-report, this report is a task that I have to do before passing the deadline. Here are the points I have to fill in my self-report:

1.      School: General Information and Academic Administration

2.      Pedagogical Contents

3.      Teaching Plan

4.      Observation on Teacher(s)

5.      Teaching Practice

6.      Summary and Suggestions

I have told the five points above on my blog posts in the previous day are:

1.      School: General Information and Academic Administration (The 3rd day until the 6th day)

2.      Pedagogical Contents (The 7th day until the 8th day)

3.      Teaching Plan (the 14th day until the 15th day)

4.      Observation on Teacher(s) (The 9th day until the 13th day)

5.      Teaching Practice (The 16th day until the 20th day)

6.      Summary and Suggestions (Not yet)

So I will give you information about the 6th point:

Summary and Suggestions

1.      Purpose

The teaching practice aims to provide opportunities for students to gain experience, skill, knowledge, attitudes, and to be more confident for the professional in the future educator and also this program useful for stronger cooperation among ASEAN countries, the teacher students can learn about a culture, social habit and educational system in host country.

2.      Procedures

Orientation, Observation, Teaching assistant, Teaching Practice, Evaluation and Reflection.

3.      Outcomes

a.    The student's teacher can improve the knowledge, skill, confidence, experience attitudes in an educational institution in their country and abroad.

b.    The student's teacher gets to know the local culture and works culture in order state agencies that are expected to be an inspiration in creating a better system in their country.

4.      The challenges

a.     At the first time of teaching, there is a sense of awkwardness and tension when interacting with students in the classroom.

b.   The difficulty of creating a fun classroom atmosphere

c.    Language differences become the main obstacle when first teaching.

d.    Language differences also make it difficult to condition the situation in the classroom.

e.    Requires a long adaptation due to differences in situations, conditions, customs, and culture.

f.    The difference in teaching time in a single meeting with teaching time in Indonesia makes it difficult for the writer to share a time when delivering the material in the classroom with such a short time of about 40 minutes in a single face to face.

g.   Teachers really must be patient with various characteristics of students, especially with minimal language mastery sometimes students do not understand where the time is serious and where time is relaxed.

h.   Formulate teaching and learning activities, in this case with respect to the use of appropriate methods and learning strategies for the lesson plan results are made in accordance with the situation and conditions at that time.

i.    The absence of syllabus by the school causes the making of the lesson plan to be more or less following the rules of making lesson plan in Indonesia.

j.    The form of learning is so simple that making the lesson plan is so short and dense.

k.   There is difficulty in determining appropriate learning methods and models

5.      Overall Impression

a.    This activity as one step for the student as teacher candidate to know school activity with all problem, apart from teaching and learning activity in class.

b.  The one-month teaching practice has also given so much experience and insight into the practice of being a teacher.

c.  Intensive teaching opportunities make students more motivated to develop the materials, methods and strategies used in teaching. So that will arise teacher professionalism as expected.

d.   With the practice of teaching and learning directly and manifest to make students realize that teaching or becoming a teacher is not just enough to master the material /materials to be taught. A teacher must also be able to recognize each character of the learners so that in the way of delivering materials the teacher is able to choose and choose the methods and strategies to be used.

e.  SEA Teacher Activities has given the opportunity for students to apply and develop the knowledge and skills possessed in the learning activities in the actual situation in the school so as to provide the provision to become professional personnel and ready to enter the work world.

6.      Suggestion for Future Improvement

a.     It is expected for the implementation of teaching practice SEA-Teacher Project further in order to take into account the execution time longer than before for activities teaching practice SEA-Teacher Project is more effective for students.

For Students

b.   Before teaching should make a good preparation both materially and physically and mentally because it is very influential in the learning process.

c.    Able to maintain the good name of the campus by behaving politely, interact well with all the citizens of the school and carry out the task with full responsibility.

So on the 21st day and the 22nd day I started compiling the information I had made before and then I made it into a self-report. Enough for the 21st day and the 22nd day, I will give more information in my next blog post.

16th Days Until 20th Days: Teaching Practice

The third week at Phetphadungweingchai School is my schedule for classroom teaching practice. After two weeks of observing how the teaching and learning process, I will practice it in the 1/5 and 3/4 classes. Here is the process of teaching practice I conducted in the third week at Phetphadungweingchai School.

Teaching Practice

I teach on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in Grade 1/5 and grade 3/4. I teach six times a week. Three meetings for grade 1/5 and three meetings for grade 3/4. Before that, my mentor has given me a topic about Adition and Subtraction for Grade 1/5 and about Geometric Shapes for Grade 3/4. I set up my lesson plan and sent it to my mentor on Friday the week before my pre-school teaching. For First Grade 1/5 I explain about Addition of Number with Sums Not More Than 100 and word problem on addition, this material is quite easy because students are only asked to calculate the result of the sum with a number not more than 100. 

However, I have to give example on the board by using many pictures and objects as a medium and explaining it to students how to add them. After some examples I give and they already understand, then next I give worksheet to the students as a material assessment of their knowledge of this material. After they finished the first worksheet, I took some of their worksheets and explained it to the students. I went on the second worksheet and shared it after I explained the various problems to the sum in life.

A second meeting for grade 1/5 about Subtraction of Numbers with Minuends Not More Than 100 and Word Problems on Subtraction and third meeting for Grade 1/5 on Relationship between addition and subtraction and Word problems on addition and subtraction. The second meeting step and the third meeting on the 1/5 level are the same as the first meeting step.

The material on Grade 3/4 is about Geometric Shapes, with the steps I did in grade 3/4 the same as the step in grade 1/5. Overall they do it well and systematically.

For Classroom management, I am assisted by mentors because sometimes students do not understand what I am saying and my mentor must translate my explanation to them. The students can understand the lesson. Once I gave them an individual test, and they could answer the question correctly, they were so awesome.

14th and 15th day: Vacation at Night Market and Make a Teaching Plan

The second week's holiday has arrived. This Saturday in the second week, we are invited by Mr.Adisorn to take a vacation in the night market at Surat Thani, about an hour from my school. Just eliminate tired after the move in five days earlier. A pretty awesome night with the charm of the night market on the edge of the river which is accompanied by a beautiful garden.

On the next day, in the morning I started to write about a teaching plan that covered the curriculum and lesson plan.

Teaching Plan

1.      Curriculum

School have used the curriculum of the government but the school are the modification for the curriculum because in Thailand for each district there are some different culture. So, the school match the local habitual in the curriculum for easy use with the teachers and useful for the students.

2.      Teaching plan

The process of making a lesson plan by student teacher made through a manual system. Before entering the learning process, the teacher is required to make a lesson plan and send to the mentor for correcting and suggestion. Student teacher’s lesson plan during teaching practice at Phetphadungweingchai School is attached.

For the process of making a lesson plan, I have started since the previous week which is on Monday and already given to my mentor on Friday to get insert and correction. A Lesson plan that I give is a lesson plan for one week ahead that is as much as 6 times meeting. Here are the lesson plans I created manually.

You can download it by clicking the link below!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1emIROwmDPpKU67GvCwgRAg0ugAz01nUD/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zj5oYbX--UFZrXH8IIWuQ2ef19wTZrTx/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10x6_bGEFRifXG30zazEytZOUymLdZaBu/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K6fLiA5Qr9qDtollng5lptZ_QiyuYqvL/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I9TYuCbWu19Pasm-63UQZTCMgi08sku3/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l1aH8hdWi4pgP12rOsq822e9-ifbQYzE/view?usp=sharing

That's the lesson plan I made. On this Sunday I also use the time to create learning media in accordance with the material I will teach in the class later. So many many!

9th Days Until 13th Days: Teaching Assistant and Observation on Teacher

The second week in Thai is my schedule to be a teaching assistant. In this second week, I had to help my mentor while teaching in the class, such as helping to explain to students if they did not understand the material, give judgment and more. I also have to observation on teacher and start making a lesson plan. Here is the observation of a teacher:

Observation on Teacher

            1.      Planning for Teaching

Teachers make a teaching plan (lesson plan) and prepare all of needed before teaching in the class.

            2.      Preparing Lessons and Materials

The teacher has already prepared the lesson and the materials to explain the lesson easily and clearly.

            3.      Teaching in Class

The teacher starts the lesson by asking the students to stand up and greeting for making student ready get the lesson. Before explain about next topic teacher will talk about rule teaches that time and aks student’s homework and check it together. Students paid attention to the teacher while she explaining the topic matter. Teacher gives some example and solves it together with the students. The teacher also gave the students exercises to be done. While the students did their exercise they come to the teacher for asking what they did not understand, a teacher will help them. In the class, there is a good communication between teacher and students.

4. Measurement and Evaluation

The teacher gives an exercise during the lesson as a measure of the students' ability to understand the material and for the teacher's judgment, seen from the student's worksheet that is assessed after the learning is completed.

For a lesson plan, I will explain the next day. Have a nice day!

7th and 8th Day: Holidays at Thai and Writing Pedagogical Contents

The 7th and 8th days are Saturdays and Sundays where schools dismiss the learning process in general. But there are some students who come to school for additional tutoring.

The 7th day I and my friends from Indonesia and Philippines are picked up by Mr.Potjanat to go to the tourist spot still in Surat Thani province, Thailand. The cool weather, the beautiful place and the pampering scenery slightly relax the tired body. On the 8th day, I started writing about pedagogical contents. I obtained this information after observing the teacher's mentor in the class and sometimes interviewing her. Here is information about pedagogical contents:

Pedagogical Contents

1.      Teaching methods

Phetphadungweingchai School for teaching methods of teachers using expository methods and methods of play. The teacher gives some explanations and gives the students some exercise to do. The teacher has prepared lessons and materials. The teacher explains the lesson easily and clearly.

2.      Learning materials and innovation

              Instructional material based on workbook teacher's manual. the teacher has two guidebooks that are in the Thai and English language. one or two subtopics are taught each entry to the class. The understanding of the material is assisted by the various teaching media used by the teacher and the student worksheet.

3.      Sources of learning and technology

Sources of learning are the textbook, some teachers have a worksheet and extra sheets are made by them self-depends on the subjects, and for a teacher, technology can use an image, powerpoint, and learning videos.  

4.      Authentic assessment

For assessment, the teachers use write assessment consist of choosing an answer such as multiple choice and essay test.

I think enough for the 7th and 8th days. I will give you more information about my activity the next day.

3rd Days Until 6th Days: Time for Introduce My Self and Observation on The School (General Information and Academic Administration)

Hello,

Time to tell about my experience on the 3rd day until the 6th day in Thailand. The third day in Thailand was my first day at Phetphadungweingchai School. This school is equivalent to Primary School. Today I have to introduce myself in front of all students and teachers with English speech. As I spoke in front of the podium, they all so funny and adorable.

Then, on the first day, I also went straight into the classroom with my teacher's mentor Miss Malaithip Khonsue as the observation step that I will live. Neat, comfortable classrooms, not too many students, attention-grabbing students, and the teaching techniques my mentor uses are awesome for me.

For information about the school I can inquire with Mrs Chananya Kaewphung as an Academic section at Phephadungweingchai School or via the phetphadung.ac.th website but in the Thai language. I think this source of information is enough for me to gather general information and academic administrators at Phetphadungweingchai School. But sometimes I have to discuss with my friend Micah from the Philippines for other information such as the curriculum used by the school.

The data on Phetphadungweingchai School:

General Information and Academic Administration

1.      School Profile

School Name: Phetphadungweingchai School

School Address: 29 Moo 3, Wiang, Chaiya District, Suratthani 84110. Thailand

School Vision: “To provide quality students to help the society through improvement in academic aspect.”  

Phetphadungweingchai School offers nursery level, kindergarten level and pratum level which is categorized as a Regular Academic School under Private Education Sector and follows the curriculum approved by the Ministry of Education. Phetphadungweingchai School is located at 29 Moo, Wiang, Chaiya, Surat Thani Province, Thailand, 84110. The school started on May 1, 1957, under the ownership of the late Mr.Lom Keawfung. The school is now under the management of Mrs.Amara Thepnuan as the Licensee and Mr.Preecha Thepinya as the Director.

2.      Academic Support System

At Phetphadungweingchai school, the school strives to ensure that every student has every opportunity to succeed. Phetphadungweingchai school has classrooms for Pre Kindergarten, Kindergarten and Elementary School, with details as follows.

 Number of classrooms

Year	Level	Number of classrooms					Included
		Normal	2 languages	3 languages	IEP	SME
2018	Pre-Kindergarten	2	-	1	-	-	3
	Kindergarten	11	3	3	-	-	14
	Elementary School (Years 1-6)	22	-	-	3	4	29
	Junior High School ( 1 - 3)	-	-	-	-	-	-
	Senior High School ( 4-6)	-	-	-	-	-	-
	Other	-	-	-	-	-	-
	Included	35	3	4	3	4	46

The school has two main buildings of the first building for Pre- Kindergarten and Elementary Education consisting of office space for each subject, director room, internet room, library, language room, Thai musical workshop room, toilet for teachers and students, copy room, large canteen , a large dining room for students and teachers, male and female dormitories. The school also has pages for various school activities. Schools also have extra-curricular activities, such as science days, scout, project lessons, art, etc. The second building for Kindergarten and it is near from the first building. Phetphadungweingchai School consists of 484 Kindergarten students, about 1,000 Pratum students and 107 teachers and staffs.

3.Teaching system

Active days in Phetphadungweingchai School is five days, Monday-Friday. Every day the students here come together to the yard for the flag ceremony, praying and meditation. The ceremony starts at 07.45 a.m and the lesson started at 08.15 a.m and the school end at 03.30 p.m.

The school for Pratum consists of grade 1 to grade 6. Each class have to study for 1 year. so the duration of studying at the level of basic education is six years. Each year is divided into two semesters and each six-month semester where eight subjects are taught and exams are held upon completion of teaching.

4. Materials and other learning sources

Phetphadungweingchai School has so many materials and learning sources to support students academically. The government also give supports and give some textbook based on the ministry of education, Thailand. Other learning sources for students such as worksheet and extra sheets are made by teachers depends on their subjects. Every class has facilitated with, Television(TV), Air Conditioner (AC) and fan. The school also have buses to pick up students in the morning and evening.

5. Measurement and evaluation system

Student’s measurement and evaluation depend on government and there are two semesters in each year. One semester separates into two tests there are a midterm and a final examination.

6. Curriculum

Curriculum At Phetphadungweingchai School using core curriculum of elementary education 2008 with the principle of decentralization. The principle of decentralization aims to enable schools to develop curricula according to the school environment and school objectives. The National Exam at this school is coordinated by the Bureu of Education Testing Office of the Basic Education Commission using the Ordinary National Education Test System. National Examination is required for grade 3 and 6. There are 8 subjects that are UN that is:

a. Thai language

b. Mathematics

b. Science

c. Social science

d. Religion and Culture

e. Foreign language

f. Health and Physical Education

g. Art, career, and technology.

While students from pratum 1,2,4, and 5, take the class exams from their respective schools that refer to the Office of Academic Affairs, the Ministry of Education of Thailand, simultaneously.

7. Teaching Plan

In order for learning activities can be done regularly, a teacher is required to prepare learning tools. Preparation of teaching is made in the form of a lesson plan for teachers can have a reference in providing materials to learners. the teacher should make a teaching plan each enter the class consisting of topics, indicators, learning objectives, learning steps, materials and learning resources, assessment and evaluation that has been corrected by supervisor.

These four days I maximized to get the information I needed and I also had to adjust to the environment and the rules in Phetphadungweingchai School. One more thing, at this school I got four friends who are practice taught this school, two students from Suratthani Rajabhat University and two other students from Khon Kean University, one student named Teacher Jane is a person who always accompanies me because she understands English. The professional mentors, comfortable study environment, and friendly friends make me want to know more about this school.