Week 2 @ Linghemsskolan (Yk)

This is week 2 and i finally figured out why the Swedish drink so much coffee. I figured it is because the weather here is always nice to sleep in and i would never fail to feel lethargic over here. When i finally had my first cup of coffee since a month ago, i never felt so alive.

This week, beyond the cup of coffee, the focus was alot on learning about the motivational strategies my teacher use. My teacher mentioned about how learning is not just about memorising, but it is about understanding. I think one of the motivations she utilises is to incite curiosity and also to ride on the motivation gained from test effects. This is definitely one skill I will bring back to Singapore as well.

Her method of teaching and learning has to base a lot of independent learning. She places a lot of trust on the student’s ability to be independent learners. After she has covered a topic, she would get the students to ask themselves questions about the topic and seek the answers themselves, be it through the textbook or some even, from online sources. As such, they do not learn to just find the right information but seek to ask the right questions. After they have asked themselves questions and found their answers, they will then post their questions on the Kahoot system, in their teacher’s account. So, the students take turns to input questions of their choice, as well as options. This Kahoot quiz will then be used to test the knowledge of the students. 

This activity alone motivates the students at two levels. One level, students will be motivated to ask themselves really profound and good questions so they can have an edge in the quiz, as the chances of their question being shown is high (the teacher picks the good questions out of the big pool of questions or omit those that are not too good). Another level is for the students to gain more knowledge and the drive to ask themselves better questions and seek to know more knowledge so they themselves can answer the questions their friends posted.

 

This does not require me to ask my CT too much about the quiz and the motivation because by participating in the quizzes, it got me googling for answers and finding more about the topic on Islamism, Judaism, and even my own belief, Christianity (as I couldn’t believe I got some of the questions wrong). Believe it or not, it extended my motivation further to know how the syntax of the Swedish language works so I can read a little of Swedish to attempt the quiz. It is truly an activity with adequate (and I would say more than sufficient) learning and inherent motivation as well.