Facilitating of Coursework

I really enjoyed the short course in facilitating coursework which we had during our last week at NIE on 8th and 9th November. There were many areas that I was uncertain of, but through clarification and learning, I have learned some key tips on how to facilitate coursework for upper secondary. Indeed it was quite challenging and through practice at school, we would be able to learn from there. The workshop was only for an about 2 hours on both days, Wednesday and Thursday and hope it could have been longer to look through various samples to get a better idea. It was a good headstart in how to start the coursework and expected areas which were difficult to understand. Through these skills and pointers I would be able to improve with time when facilitating coursework at school.

Product line!

Proudly presenting.......my product line! It was created by Angeline and I.

Theme: Nature.......and everything recycled! :)

Product:

1. Bangle, A pair of earrings, Ring (recycled old wanted earring, bangle and ring, napkin and paint)
2. Jewellery Box (Old watch box, mounting board to create the compartments, paper, craft glue, paint and napkin)
3. Necklace (Old cloth, material from an old dress, pendent from a spoil necklace)
4. Hairband (Old felt from previous project, Embroidery thread, fabric glue, elastic band and lace)

Reflection on my Marco-teaching

As strange as this may sound, I actually thoroughly enjoyed this experience. Although there were definitely moments of stress and distress, I would proudly say that we group managed to make it through and (at least to me) our dishes were more or less pretty good! I would especially give credit to Shi ping who did Roti Jala for the first time and managed to master it after many tried. I also, practiced my ‘Ang Ku Kueh’ dish 8 times! The first 3 times was a total flop! The skin was too thick, the dough was too dry, everything was just wrong. So I asked for advice from my aunt, who gave me the recipe to follow, and through her guidance, the following tries became better and better. I learnt a very important lesson through this, that it is not always about the recipe but also the skills and technique you use. Using my Ang Ku Kueh as an example, the problem I had was that I had mixed the sweet potato to the flour instead of the flour to the sweet potato. This caused lumping and also caused the dough to be very dry. From this, I learnt that cold ingredients should always be added to the hot ingredients and not hot ingredients to cold. I also mastered the shaping and ‘knocking’ out the kueh from the mould after countless practice and tries. There was always a sense of satisfaction after trying the new batch of kuehs and tasting the improvement.

Other skills on conducting the practical class were also learnt. Such as being well-prepared with the different steps ready so time will not be wasted in showing the students how to do it but just showing them how the end-product should look like. Also, to correct mistakes which students may make, instead of the teacher demonstrating, the teacher can ask the student to do it instead to correct them. This way, students will participate and make the demonstration time more interactive and fun. Finally, because these are still students, demonstrations done should not last more than five minutes as any time longer than that, students will tend to become restless.

Also, another important lesson learnt was how to do a proper table setting as I have not done or learnt how to do it before. It is important to have a focus point to prevent the table setting from looking too messy, cluttered or empty. A variation of colors is also crucial as it would give it a lively and more appealing appearance. However, colors should not clash or too blending but a good mixture of colors that complement each other and bring each color out. Giving the dishes different height by stacking or raising the food gives the table setting a ‘movement’ and gives it life also instead of placing it all horizontally down making it look dull and lifeless.

I think the most enjoyable part of this marco-teaching was the whole learning process. Learning a new dish and mastering it, learning how to plate and do a table setting and experiencing how to teach a practical class. Knowing I have brought back so much skills and knowledge with me after this just gives me the sense of achievement.

Practical for messy and unorganized people. (Like me!)

For all those people like me, who like to hide cloths, stationaries and many other stuffs under your working desk, this is for you. Easy and definitely practical. Though I would use at least 2 layers of newspaper to make it stiffer. =)

Why buy new items when you can recycle?!

I bet all of us will one day look in the very near future and..'POOF' sees a messy working desk,no thanks to our hectic schedule. Which brings me  back to my point. Since we have about a few weeks of holidays before school reopening, let's make an organizer!
'Make', not buy, don't waste money. Money is precious! (Remember, money management in one of the Home Economics topics? =P)

Anyway, if you think making an organizer from cheap materials such as newspaper is ugly, view the video above! Not that we'll come up with something as professional as them, but hey, we'll definitely be able to make something that fits our personality. =)

Micro Teaching Group 6 - Kids Birthday Party (*Pink)

What a pink birthday party theme it was...so pleasing and eye catching. When we entered the kitchen to start with our last micro teaching with a heavy heart, the first things that caught my eye was Gp 6 display of their theme which they had already prepared before start of the practical. As can be seen from the photos, the theme was on a kids birthday party so all the foods were 'finger foods' such as - sushi, tempura with a creamy mango sauce dip, swiss roll, cake pop and orange agar agar with fruit salad. Some of the skills used were rolling of the sushi that I have never done before. Making the cake pop was interesting as we made the brownie first and then crumbled the brownie and rollled it into balls, chilled followed by covering into melted chocolate. It's a great recipe that kids can do. Some of the flaws while carrying out the recipe were when doing the swiss roll the surface was cracked and not evenly brown. This was due to the incorrect size of the baking tray. Sushi folding is a technique that required practice and the knife used to cut the sushi into pieces requires a serrated knife with jagged edges for ease of cutting. My partner shiping and I finished all the dishes within time and lots of photos were taken with our other groups. We all enjoyed our last micro teaching. I will definitely use some of the recipes during my teaching to impart new skills and dishes to my students and not just refer to the recipes in the textbook. 

 Cake Pop on a stick.

Table setting: Kid's birthday Party for Girls....

 

Sushi ...........................

 

 

Strawberry Swiss Roll

Vegetable Tempura with a Creamy Mango Sauce

Orange Agar Agar with Fruit Salad on a Stick :)

Product Line ...Kitchen Theme

Finally we were done with your product line last week in Thursday which was based on the kitchen theme. Our products included a grocery bag, photo frame, flower pot, spice box, vendor's apron, small basket for cutlery or napkin holder and a wooden deco display which said 'Home Sweet Home'. There were many challenges that we faced when doing our product line but we had fun doing it as well. I have learnt how to carry out the napkin technique on wood. It was not easy as it required patience. We had to brainstorm and do quite some research to come up with ideas. Jieyi used her old bedsheet for this product line. Thanks Jieyi. Due to a busy time schedule and constrain we did our best to finish on time.
Also as the three of us were not a pro at sewing we used napkin technique skills and painting for our product line. As you can see from the photos we have matched the colours with the colour of the bedsheet being blue and green to give an overall effect matching the entire product line. I also got fantastic ideas from other groups as well. Some of the products done by other groups included - denim bags (chic and retro), baby products, army stuff, items for kids and girl's. Thank you Dr. Mok for all your guidance and inspiration for doing the product line. I enjoyed doing this activity as a group.

Post lesson activity

Now that we are coming to an end of this semester :( this is something that I really enjoyed doing last week on Tuesday. It was fun and engaging and I will definitely implement this while my teaching at school. Although some of the decoration items and paints were a little expensive, it is worth investing. It was creative and reminded me back ti my days in school when doing art and craft. The technique was simple and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Since I did not have a picture of my family and husband, I just used my own picture to create the look. Thank you Ms. Chin for showing us how to do this :)

Textile product line!

Our theme is Military prints and what we did were a shoe bag, a redesigned pair of shoes and a redesigned hat.

Our live model of the day as just nice his clothing colours really suit our theme that day.

Pretty cakepop :)

Sinfully delicious.

I'm guilty to say that as a future Home Ec and F&N teacher, I don't like veggies and fruits.

I guess I will miss having this course where we could learn to cook from our fellow classmates and have good food together at the end of the practical lesson. Cooking is not easy but it's fun when we are able to cook together with friends. :)

Last Microteaching Session

Had our last microteaching session last wednesday. (Just when we were getting used to the kitchen!) Theme for the day: Fruits and Vegetables. As you can guess, there were loads of fruits and vegetables for us to cook. There were the Cake Pop, Sushi (rolled with mango/avocado/cucumber/pickle), Vegetable Tempura, Swiss Roll, Orange Agar-agar and Fruit Salad.

My favourite? Definitely the orange agar-agar. Because I am neither a chocolate-lover nor a vegetarian-lover nor do I love cakes. But the teachers were good and me and my partner for the day, Iva, manage to whipped up all the dishes within the time stipulated. Yay!

Above is a picture we took, just before packing up. (Apologies, the sushi and tempura were already in the plastic container when the pictures were taken)

Product Line Submission, 3rd Nov 2011 =)

Submitted our Textile's product line project and was 'wowed' by many of my classmates' work. It wasn't much of their sewing that caught my eye but their designs and colour combination is really very creative and beautiful. Kudos to everyone in the class, We did it!
Here's a picture of me and Atiqah's product line. HEHE.

Scrapbooking

Did scrapbooking in Home Ec class today. My favourite photo is none other than Wesley, my cat!

End-product

Abit plain ya? But I like simplicity. Was so happy to find the sticker "Wacky" cos that is his nickname given by my mum aka Wesley's grandma. Hahahaha.

Idea for deco?

I was helping my mum prepare vegetables and this came out by accident. Hmm....any idea if you feel this is a visible food decoration? It was very simple to do. Just cut the end of the vegetable stalk (the vegetable used here was xiao bai cai). You have to cut it just at the right. Not to near the end and not to far into the stalk. You can share your views on this! :)

Door Sign (Napkin painting) and Towel (Embroidery sewing)

Our first painting expereience! :) It was enjoyable and fun! Learnt new skills such as blotching and how to use napkins and transfer it onto a product! If possible, i would like my students to be able to experience creating such products too. :)


Here's another really cool thing we did during textile class again! An embodied towel with my big fat name! :) Just the way i like it. :) Thanks Dr Mok for teaching us! :)

Because this is a towel material, we have to place a plastic cover the area we embroil to prevent the stitches from being covered by the towel material. :) The plastic will then be torn off when the embroidery work is finished! Also, another lesson learnt was how to 'fix' the situation if the needle breaks half-way through! Which happened to me twice. :( But all is well, as you can see from the bottom. :)

Tote-bag

This was the first assignment done during our textile class. It was a good refreshing course on sewing once again. :) I worked closely with Angeline to finally get this bag and we faced a couple of problems. Some of which were ensuring that we sewed accurately and also that the size and seams of the bag. All the all, it was a good experience and i LOVE this bag! :)

Presenting my.....'KATE SPADE BAG!' (or so that is what some call it.)

Front View













Back View

Post-exam activity

I really enjoyed this activity and hope to be able to do it with my students. However, my only worry is the potential high cost. Like what Ms chin said, i believe it is an EXCELLENT way of learning about our students. What and who means to them the most. :) Plus its a fantastic way of taking a break from the usual school curriculum. Thanks Ms Chin for teaching us this skill! :)

Here's my piece of work. Proudly sharing it.... :)

MIcroteaching OVER!

Finally, the 'battlefield' that I was waiting for is finally over. I'm referring to Food and Nutrition Microteaching of course.
I was lucky I had strong support from my group members, Shi Ping, Iva and Prabhleen. We had already run through each other's recipe together so each member knows what the other members are doing and even gave each other post-it notes so as to remind them on what we would like them to help out with each other's session. It really helps that all of us have clear communication thus resulting in almost no misunderstanding at all throughout the session.

As a teacher for the day though, my biggest fear was that, none of my students will be able to cook the samosa the way I taught them. I was afraid that I might talk too fast or my instructions was unclear to the point my students may not understand me.  Thus, you can imagine my relieve when almost everyone completed folding the samosas within the time frame stipulated and in the triangular shape I had hoped.
 Of course there were shocks and scary moments in my session. I was advised during my demonstration that I had used my equipments wrongly. Being already nervous, shaking, and getting reprimanded was definitely a test to see how well I can control my emotions and thank god, I manage to handle that calmly and take the advice with an open mind.This is a learning point for me because as a teacher, whatever you are doing might be deemed as 'right' by the students thus using the wrong equipments would most likely result in all of them using the wrong equipments too.

The other shocking moment was when I was told that there was small flood in the classroom which I did not realised. As a teacher, I felt that I had not been vigilant and observant enough to notice this.

Despite my fairly positive attempt on teaching the class on how to make samosa, I know that my microteaching could have failed without the help of people, mainly my teacher for telling me that my folding ways in the consultation was wrong, my extremely supportive groupmates and especially, my friend 'A' who taught me the right way to fold samosa. Can't wait for the next microteaching and be a student again!

Marco-teaching-Gp 1!

Unfortunately, i forgot to take photo....:( But here's what we cooked and my refection!

Theme: Rice and Alternatives

1) Hawaii-O Pizza
This was quite a simple dish which required the skills of kneading, rolling-in and rubbing-in. Sham was the one leading this dish and despite his countless practice, during the teaching itself, his dough did not turn out the way it should have. His dough was too wet. Also, there was too much dough left and being a rule of cooking, no food should be wasted. So thankfully, sham managed to use all the extra dough from everyone and created a HUGE pizza! THe pizza was HUGE because it was left sitting for too long so the yeast present in the dough continued to break down the sugar and produced gas. My group's pizza (shi ping and i) turned out pretty nice too! :)

2) Lemon drizzle cake
This dish was led by Fiona. It required the skill of creaming and grating. I would say this was another fairly simple dish, suitable for the upper secondary students. I would say the main challenge of this dish is to be able to present it in a appealing and appetizing way.

3) Potato and Prawn Cutlet
This was led by mei feng. It was an interesting dish which taught the skill of shaping and breading. While cooking this dish, i realised that the common problem faced was that the cutlet would fall apart while frying and also, may stick to the pan if insufficient oil is added. Therefore to prevent this, we must ensure the cutlet is coated properly and also, sufficient oil added to achieve a nicely shaped, golden-brown cutlet!

4) Spicy Seafood Spaghetti
This was led by Shahidah. I liked this dish because it required us to make our own sauce from scratch which i always wanted to. The skills practiced in this dish were mainly just stir-frying and blending. The only problem that may be faced when teaching students this dish is for those who cannot take spicy (which happened to some of our classmates). They were unable to enjoy this dish as it was too spicy for them. This could be a pointer to take note if we plan to teach it in the future!

All in all, it was a great first marco-teaching session and i think the group did a great job! Was totally exhausted after that!

Micro-teaching Completed!!!!

The day we've been waiting for!

Dishes made during micro-teaching on the 19th October were:

Roti Jala with daal - Me (Shi Ping)

Vegetarian pilaf rice - Prabhleen

Egg and potato samosa - Amirah

Ang Ku Kueh - Iva

Before this micro-teaching, I had never heard of roti jala and really had no confident at all. Roti jala looks like a very easy dish to be made with simple ingredients but the technique really requires practice. I've failed many times at home during practice and was on the verge of changing a dish. Even during micro-teaching practice in school which was just a few days before the real thing, the roti jala was still not up to standard but thank God everything went well on the day of micro-teaching. :)

On the day of micro-teaching, many students failed the roti jala as well but I'm sure with more practice in their own time, they will be able to master the technique like me and pass on the skills to their future students! Practice makes perfect!

Although the dish was a success, there are still areas for improvement. Comments were I was too soft so next time I have to SCREAM. And I should had given an exact quantity of water in the recipe instead of adding water to feel for the right consistency since everyone's sense of judgement is different and that could be a reason why so many students did not succeed in the making of roti jala.

As for my daal, it is another simple dish to make but I think it is difficult to get the right consistency and taste of a daal. I've never tasted daal in my life but according to an Indian classmate, the daal that I taught them tasted differently from what she knows. Perhaps I should try tasting daal someday and figure out how. Even though the daal consistency is still not quite up to standard, I personally like the taste of it. Thanks Prabhleen for the spices and recipe. :)

Overall, I think our group did great as mentioned by our classmates in terms of flow-ability and outcome of dishes. I've asked classmates and most of them like Amirah's samosa the best! Me too! :D

Thanks to all members for the encouragement and support. Good job Group 5!

Home Economics Micro-teaching

Sorry for the lack of update and the belated post regarding my Home Economics Micro-teaching.

I chose a bus-stop activity on the topic - Different Methods of Cooking

Feedback given by students were the activities were engaging but time at each station was insufficient. And I personally feel that Station D which students were required to do a sensory evaluation of the meats cooked by different cooking methods was a wastage of food. I bought two packets of meat and woke up 4.30am in the morning to cook but many students did not dare to try saying that they have turned cold and hard. :(

Learning outcome:

- Learn how to facilitate bus-stop activities by taking note of students' answer and asking questions

- Give sufficient time at each station

- Make the food more appealing by heating up prior to the activity or choose a different kind of food

Group 4 Theme: Oktoberfest :) - The presentation was very creative ans well liked. Some chilled 'non-alcoholic' beer gave it a refreshing look. Dishes were: Beef Kebabs, Stuffed chicken drumsticks, Chicken Stew pie and Minced beef cabbage rolls...ymmmm:))

 

Dishes made by me :)) Chicken stew was still in the oven .....

Micro Teaching Group 1

Gp 1 : Based on Royal Theme

Micro Teaching Gp 1 : Done by Amirah and Prabhleen
Seafood Spaghetti, Potato Cutlet, Hawiian-O Pizza and Lemon Drizzle Cake

Micro Teaching Gp 2: Royal theme: Scones, Choux Pastry, Chewy Chocolate Orange Cookies, Egg Tart. I really enjoyed the recipes and the presenation layout complementing with the royal tea set. The gold and bronze colours blended well with the colours of the dish presented.

Food Photography Tips

Hi Everyone,

I found this on you tube on food photography and found it very useful..check it out :)

Tips on food photography

Came across this while doing project for another course. It's regarding the Healthy Diet Pyramid. :)

And remember, the most important ingredient is LOVE!

Saw a video on a little girl baking heart-shaped pizzas for her mother on Valentine's Day. I'm not exactly a believer of Valentine's Day but I thought it was cute and interesting the way she bakes the pizza. So enjoy the video!

I call this the ' Get Ready Poem!'

Cooking Poem
When you're cooking in the kitchen,
You're learning all the while --
To pour and measure, mix and stir
And sift flour into a pile.
         Scrub your hands before you start
         Then gather up the gear --
         Like pots'n pans and measuring cups
         That you use throughout the year.
Go over the recipe, step-by-step,
So you'll know just what to do.
By carefully following the directions,
It won't be hard for you.
         Have a hot pad handy
         And an adult standing by --
         So you won't hurt yourself
         When using the stove or baking a pie.
Besides the fun and learning,
There's always cleaning up to do,
And even though it's quite a chore,
It's part of cooking too.
         But after all the work is done,
         It will soon be time for dinner.
         And when someone asks for seconds,
         You'll know you've cooked a winner!

---

Taken from: CanTeach, http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/songspoems77.html

Lesson Plans

Tables that can be placed into our lesson plans to make it more organized.

Timeline	Job Description	Done
5days prior to lesson
4days….

Resource	Description	Quantity

Time	Duration	Teaching and Learning approaches/activities		Resources/skill
		Teaching activities	Student anticipated response

Finally, the most important point i took home that day from the lesson was how essential it was for us teachers to ensure all the topics we teach are linked. Especially during our re-capitulation and when we move on to the next topic. Show the students how they are interrelated. As much as possible, also related back and apply to their daily lives to promote interest in the students.