Meeting #2 and initial task dissemination

After sharing different ideas and suggestions here, we met earlier today to consolidate what we have and voice our concerns and opinions. The main agenda of the meeting was to finalise the lesson idea and the accompanying activities. Here are some of the points of contentions that were brought up:

- How should the fieldtrip be conducted? Should it be done in pairs, groups, or individually? Logistically, is the National Museum able to accomodate a full class of 40 students? What are some of the issues that need to be taken care of when conducting such a fieldtrip for an entire class? Should students be allowed to roam free? If so what happens if some of them stray? What happens if they do not take the trip seriously and decide to play around mischieviously? Is one teacher enough to take charge of all of them? How much time do we need to spend at the museum? Should it be during school hours or outside curriculum time?

- Some have suggested that the students should be given a handout to guide them to pick out the more important aspects of the exhibition. What format should it be like? Should it be a list of pointers or guiding questions? Or should students be required to answer the questions by filling in the blanks? The difference lies in the motivation of the question. The former format allows for questions that encourage reflective, interpretive and analytical thinking skills such as "Look at the bicycles. Why do you think it was chosen as a form of transportation by the Japanese?". In contrast, the latter demands factual accuracy for eg. "Which year did the Japanese officially annex Singapore?"

- The idea of conducting an online assessment after the trip was well-received. We think it is highly necessary to ensure that the students have learned what they are expected to and that what they have taken back from the trip are factually accurate. This is especially necessary since students are presumably still new to the idea of independent learning. This assessment also needed some consensus from all members. What format should it adopt? Should it be just MCQ, or just Fill in the Blanks (Cloze), or a combination of both as well as other relevant formats? What are the questions that are relevant to the level syllabus? Should it be graded? When should it be conducted, immediately after the trip or at the next lesson? How long should the assessment be? Should it be done online at home or in school?


After much deliberation, we have thus agreed that...

- the fieldtrip should be conducted outside curriculum time possibly on a weekday after school hours. Exploration at the museum will be done individually but students may roam in groups as they wish. To prevent students from getting distracted by other exhibits, students will be pre-informed of the boundaries of the exhibition. They will focus mainly on the exhibits related to the Japanese Occupation. Through our own personal experience at the museum, the trip should not last more than an hour. So students will be given one hour or at most one and a half hour to walk through the museum and study the exhibits. Teachers will have to make this clear so that students do not take their own time and be continuously aware of the limited time they have to gather as much information as possible. This gives students a sense of responsibility of their own learning as well. Manpower should not be a problem but teachers may wish to bring an additional colleague if deem necessary.

- the handout will serve both as a guidance in addition to the Companion provided by the museum as well as a method to allow students to record down crucial information. As such it will incorporate both open-ended and close-ended questions. Students will need to note down and fill in important details such as dates and names and there will also be questions that encourage students to think critically and form their own opinions. This teaches students that the studying of History requires one to go deeper beyond the surface in order to truly make meaning of the content. This also shows students that in History there is a certain amount of flexibility given to create assumptions and to speculate as long as there is enough evidence to substantiate.

- the assessment should incorporate the use of MCQ, Cloze, and Crossword Puzzle. These formats are available in Hot Potatoes. It has been agreed that the assessment should be conducted during lesson time in the next History period that follows the trip. It should not be done at home as there is a tendency for cheating to occur. Students could choose to read up their books to confirm their notes and observations before the test if they wish to. It will not be graded but answers will be checked and teachers will need to rectify errors and ensure that students are clear about the facts and figures. We will however need to check what are the selected contents taught at their level so we know what kind of questions to come up with. Further research on this will need to be done.


From here, I have decided to disseminate tasks to each member of the group for greater efficiency in completing within the time constraint.

Glenn and Zheng Han have been tasked to research on the Secondary 2 World War 2 syllabus. After which, Glenn will come up with a sample of the guiding handout in MS Word while Zheng Han will come up with a suggested sample of the assessment on Hot Pot. Contents for both will need to be synchronised hence they will need to work together on this.

Fauzi and Lynn have been tasked to come up with a way this lesson could be addressed to the students. They have proposed the possibility of turning this into a Webquest. A Webquest however will require students to participate in online learning. This learning is not based on online materials but an actual fieldtrip instead. So they will work around the style and come up with something similar to Webquest to set down instructions and requirements for students to follow in order to make the lesson more fun and engaging.

I will complete the scaffolding of the lesson idea summary based on our decisions and discussions and convert it into a proper document with regular paragraphs.


Hope everyone is clear with their tasks! If there is anything that you are not sure of please do raise your concerns. If there is any way you think our ideas could be further improved do voice your opinions. Lastly, please add in your individual reflection of our progress from the meetings we've had thus far.


THANK YOU AND WORK HARD!