Day 1:

In my road to Al-Ezzah primary school, I had a mixed feeling of anxiety to be late and tiredness from last night work during moving to a new flat. However, I put effort into being mindfulness, pay heed to the current moment because I was firmly aiming to have an unforgettable experience, and fortunately, I made it exactly at 7 am. When I took my first step into the school, I forget all the previous thoughts.

I met my monitor school teacher who teaches science only with 6 sections of grade four when I figure out the number of sections and students which is 150, I was a little bit in a shock then when I found that there is another student teacher who will be with me in the same classroom the shock became worse. I directly started worrying about how we will schedule our teaching sessions and how students will accept two trainee teachers and I passed my concerns to the MST who reassured me: “everything will be okay.”

Many changes are still occurring in the schools because of the continuous decisions from the ministry of education (MOE), for instance, students are dividing into different sections based on there learning level. All high (mastered) level students are in one class, middle level in another class, and emerging students are also in separated sections. What drew my attention is the process schools followed in grouping students, the MOE conducted a reading test at the beginning of the term then they divided students into levels based on their reading scores. When I heard about this procedure my initial thought was “this is strange how can they depend only on reading?”. As known, students’ capabilities vary from area to area, to illustrate, if a student has a good level in reading that doesn’t guarantee s/he has the same level in math or science. Therefore, my MST explained that differences between students who belong to the same level could be observed which support my thought about the validity of the process of grouping students into groups.

The most interesting thing that caught my attention today is the usage of technology in my MST’s classroom. For instance, she relies on a website called learn boost which uses for taking attendance, showing academic progress, and commenting on students’ work and grades. Today, my MST hands out letters for students to take home for their guardians where they can find the required information to access their children profiles. In addition, another useful website that my MST uses during teaching science called discovery science which includes a lot of materials about variety concepts and students were engaged because of the materials presented as a cartoon. Another interesting tool that my MST used called a document camera that is connected to the interactive whiteboard where the teacher presents documents.

In general, when I reflected about my first day, I found it a great one because I quickly established good relationships with staff and engage myself with them which something I had struggled with in previous teaching practices. Furthermore, I considered this day as an excellent start because I was fully involved with my MST's rules and responsibilities, for example, I designed a science vocabulary display with the other student teacher and I joined my MST during bus duty