Peer Tutoring

5 days of teaching! Have been teaching Primary 5 students at Woodlands Primary School. These students are those that were poor in Maths and English, and has scored between 0-15 for their Maths SA1.

Right from the very very start, my purpose of peer tutoring was to have something to write in my testimonial. But obviously I am not such a practical person... I joined because I knew it will be a new experience for me, because I have never peer tutored before. (Not smart enough also) So I saw this CIP at my primary school on the emb and I decided to sign up! (Primary school what...)

So Rifeng, Changboon, Lihui and me happily submitted our names to the organiser. :) Initially I had totally no idea what we were going to do there. There were no briefing before the whole event except for emails. We got some ideas on the topics we were going to teach... But most importantly, me don't even know how to teach. -_-

So on the first day, we went to the school. I was quite surprised that the new campus site is so beautiful and artistic, because there were art pieces everywhere. My old campus site got torn down already :'(.

I remembered Lihui told me someone asked her "are you Malay or Indian?" (sth like that). I laughed at her and she say my students will ask me "teacher teacher, why your face so many holes?"

...

Anyway I told her I will tell them this is what happen if you all don't study hard. =(

The first time we met our tutees was super awkward. They changed from 2 tutor in a classroom to 1 tutor in one, with 3 tutees. The first time me and my tutees were in the classroom... you can feel the coldness and hear the silence man.

I told them "You all no need so scared of me, because I also very scared of you all."

I needed to use really simple language to explain the concepts, and cut cakes to teach fractions. Just tried my own ways to make sure they understand. They even thought I was a real teacher -_-. Sometimes i just resort to saying "here you write something something, and here you write something something", which I presume was not helpful at all. :p

Btw, you may think at Primary 5 they should be quite old. But they really look just like little kids to me. lol.

On the first day they were really obedient. They stayed in their seat throughout the lesson until the last 10 minutes when we started chit-chatting about Maplestory, blogs etc.

Unlike Changboon's tutees who were super noisy and naughty. And having such an easy-to-bully tutor, it got even worse. Because their classroom was beside mine, sometimes my whiteboard will shake because they are banging the wall.

And they called me 'pimple' so I was pretty pissed with them so decided not to talk to them. Btw, there was once one of his tutee came into the meeting room (where tutors gather) and called me 'pimple'. Then the remaining tutors (all girls and whom we din really talk with) heard wrongly as "bimbo". So they were like:

"Huh? What Bimbo?! Who bimbo? Where!? Saying who?"

"Pimple!"

"Bimbo?! Saying who! So bad!"

LOL they were damn paranoid. I think this is called 不打自招.

Anyway, Changboon's tutee were actually very nice students. All of them made thank-you cards for him on the last day.

My tutees were much obedient at least for the start of the programme and start of the lesson everyday. Lihui says my tutees all look like they have 'halo on their head'.


so guai

And now... let me introduce my tutees! My tutees who turned up everyday! (means they like my lesson and most probably ME)

They are so cute. So cute... that I spent 2 hours making PokeDex for each of them!

My TUTEES:







As I got closer with my tutees, they started to show their real self... The boys like to stand up and leave their seat. Hannan don't like to sit down and do his work. Kevin can finish the questions very fast and he likes to walk around too. Reenita is slower, and she is not as playful, so it was easy tutoring her. =D

Children are easily bribed. I bought them sweets and chocolates everyday and try to let everyone of them have chance to win them. They like this bag-game for which they choose one paper strip and stand up and synthesise a sentence. I called it angbao game because the bag was an angbao and for some reason they think its really funny.

Then there was once I gave them 1 math question:

3672+5+6-5+30-6-30=?

LOL very fun because all of them started doing the working for this super long question. And because they are prone to carelessness, they couldn't get the correct answer. In the end, Aidil (from lihui's class) who is Hannan's friend solved it, using workings though. So he got a chocolate and Hannan was super proud. lol


Hannan

Hannan pretty suck at drawing models. :X The problem is he does not know how to use the model to help him. He can draw two bar with the number in it and leave it as it is, hence totally unuseful to his steps. I think he was still unclear with division and multiplication but I din really spend time explaining, because I don't know how to.


"i tried my best... really. But i still don't understand, WHY teacher?"

Kevin was the cleverest. He was very neat also. But he always does the questions so fast and "teacher, teacher!" me when I am explaining to the other tutees. -_- Lol but he is very cute. Rifeng says he looks like those kid that appear on tv and shoot for advertisement.


"我真聪明. Heehee"

Reenita was quite shy, but she likes to smile. She is very nice actually, at least much nicer than lihui's indian girl. Lol.


Reenita. Erm... covering Kevin.

Teaching primary school kids was really weird. I suddenly find myself looking at the basics of maths and english. Especially for english, I was explaining how to form sentence with 'unless...', 'Although...', '...prefer...', 'neither...nor...'. And I have to break down the sentence and tell them here is write the person's name, here is the 'thing which he likes more', here is the 'opposite of what you expect to happen', here must change from this tense to that tense... Wahlaowhey. "Unless" like that use is like that use la, how to explain?! "Although" like that use is like that use la, how to explain?!

On the last day, there was a mini-quiz. For Maths, Kevin got second highest in the whole group, 13/15. Reenita got 9 because of careless mistakes, and Hannan got 7 because he didn't know how to do the fraction and ratio question when I just taught him. Why!? =( Their English was pretty ok too, but since English is very hard to teach, you all cannot blame me.

We also bought KFC for them on the last day, and took many photos at the end of the day.


my tutees. tried damn hard asking them to sit together to take photo.


lihui with her tutees


rifeng with his tutees


rifeng with one of changboon's tutees (look at his face lol)


lihui with changboon's girls




changboon with one of his girls


my tutees and me! (with perfect complexion :P)

These 5 days were really fun. It was very meaningful and 4 of us really enjoyed ourselves with all the cute kids. It was nice to have them chasing us and asking us to play with them. It was nice to see them everyday in the morning so enthusiastic about that day's lesson. It was nice to be called "teacher". It was nice to see them understanding the concepts that we tried so hard explaining. It was fun playing hangman and marbles with them when I had nothing left to teach.

I learnt so much from them as well, and I saw innocence, truthfulness and happiness once again from these kids. They are brilliant kids. And I really like my tutees, in a non-pedophilic way.

They may not achieve academically, but I can see them growing up to be wonderful people.

The time spent with them was definitely worthwhile, and I am gonna keep this memory. =)