The content
of my teaching journal will identify and explain on how I implemented some of the
indications of NCAF during my teaching experience at a junior secondary school
(Animarao JSS) year 7. The NCAF is a curriculum document prepared and
established by the Government of Kiribati to help teachers in Kiribati for
sustaining quality education. It is essential for teachers in Kiribati to
follow every requirement indicated in the NCAF in order for children to receive
quality education and become successful citizens in the future. Therefore, in this teaching journal, I will show how I implement the NCAF in order for me to establish quality education for my students.
Firstly, I used student-centered learning as part of implementing the NCAF. During my teaching experience, I created a 5E lesson plan for student-centered learning which was to allow students to construct and build their own knowledge. It is clearly stated from the NCAF that student-centered learning is one of the best ways and approaches to help students become independent learners, it gives children the chance to participate more and learn through communicating and helping each other. Most of the activities that I gave the children were where the group works and where they can communicate and share ideas among themselves. I also use inquiry teaching where I asked a lot of questions for the students to give their prior knowledge in answering those questions, that is part of student-centered learning because children create their knowledge to learn from their answers rather than I explain everything for them to learn. Moreover, through part of my lessons, I allow students to participate by standing up and doing a presentation, it was part of student-centered learning because when students stand up it means they are confident to speak and communicate in front of other people. At that time of my lesson delivery I witnessed a very fun and engaging learning environment as children construct, explore, and discover what they want to learn. I also learned my responsibility which is to facilitate and help the students in their learning.
Secondly, I used the policy of language teaching as part of implementing the NCAF. To make myself familiar and ready to speak in my teaching experience I look over the NCAF and found out that I must use 30% te-kiribati language and 70% English language. I explained and taught everything using the English language, even my written resources were written in English. From the beginning to the end of my lesson I used English to define new words, asking questions using English words, I even told the students to speak English in class. Furthermore, I created an activity to boost English speaking in the class, the activity was a presentation, and they must speak in English when presenting their activity. It was a fun English-speaking activity used by the students.
Lastly, during my class, I use ways that students can relate their learning to their real-life experiences. Our topic during that time was ICT so as part of their exploration of the topic I let them look at the pictures of Laptops and other technologies that they were familiar with. It was very easy for them to teach the ICT to them because they were familiar with these technologies and responded quickly to what those are and how those things work and what people use those things for. Refer to my lesson plan to see my evidence on this.
