Reflection on the CST course

Please answer the following question based on your experience in the QLK 520 CST Blended Module:

• To what extent do you think you will be able to apply what you have learned in this course to your future teaching career?
• Please answer in terms of the communicative skills you have learned as well as the "blended aspects" – the online and F2F elements of the course.
• Support your answer with examples if possible.

 

This course really touches on the communicative skills required of teachers in the classroom. As a PE teacher, our environment is very different from a classroom environment. The command of attention  ofthe students outside does not require as much skills compared to in the classroom, whereby learning leans towards a verbal-visual aspect compared to kinesthetic. However, the skills we have learned covers not just classroom or teaching matters, but even admin or relation communication with parents, colleagues and even our bosses. Some important topics we covered were:

• emails or letters to parents or colleagues. i.e. how we convey our purpose and content to differing audiences.
• proper pronounciation
• how to ask good questions to stimulate student's thinking as well as to get responses we want. (This i felt was really important!)
• how to respond and feedback to students

I believe that like it or not, it is important for student teachers to undergo such lessons and actually learn how to communicate with their students. Although some may argue that the current generation gears towards technology and lesser interaction and communication would be involved in teaching, it is still an important skill to master. Perhaps future modules may even involve communication using ICT! A combination of ICT and Comm Skills.

This module gave us the option of doing an online or face2face lesson which was a first for me. I picked all face2face lessons as i felt that learning communication skills requires more interaction, and i could tell the interaction between the tutor and the class also grew as well.