One Month Activities

My internship school is Suksasart Demonstration school, Khon Kaen University, Thailand. This blog summarizes the process of how I did my teaching practice.

General Information and Academic Administration

I’ll introduce my internship school.

My internship school is Suksasart Demonstration School, Khon Kaen University. The school is integrated junior and senior high school. Almost students understand Thai and English, but some teachers speak only Thai. Therefore, all classes are taught in Thai.

However, some students were born in different countries, and I think many of them are able to speak more than two languages.

The teaching system is similar to that in Japan. That is, one teacher stands on the podium and gives a lecture. However, textbooks are rarely used in this school.

Class schdule

Textbook

Pedagogical Contents

I observed a fourth grade social studies class. The teacher was a 4th grade intern student in the Faculty of Education at the University of Khon Kaen. He does not use textbooks. He taught his students by projecting PowerPoints onto a TV. He prepared many kinds of materials, including photos and videos. While I was doing my teaching internship, I saw several student performance conferences by teachers some times. Teachers read the results of each student's test at the grading conference to make sure the grades were correct. Therefore, the method of student evaluation is determined by the student's test results.

Lesson Plan

Lesson Plan.pdf

The curriculum I taught was civics in social studies. I first had a hard time understanding the content, because all the textbooks and materials given to me beforehand were in Thai. Moreover, I did not study civics in high school. In fact, my favorite subjects were world history and geography. Therefore, I spent a lot of time translating Thai and understanding the content.

I made the lesson structure with a focus on activities because I found that there was a lot of time for activities by students when I observed classes.

Teaching Practice

Procedures of teaching ;

STEP１(5min)

・Self-Introduction.

・The instructor talk about ‘What’s Japan like’.

STEP 2 (3min)

・ Students learn what the United Nations means to the world, so the instructor will show the students the emblem of the United Nations to think about and watch a short one-minute video.

STEP3(15min)

・The instructor check to see what international organizations the students know. ・The instructor briefly describe Seven International Organizations(United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Association of Southeast Asian Nation, European Union and The North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

STEP4 (24min)

・The activities are divided into six groups(Human rights, environment, safety, war/soldier, cultures, economies) because the United Nations is peacekeeping and world development. ・Each group of students will research within their group and work together to collaboratively solve a defined topic.

・Students do a presentation about a topic and gain knowledge.

STEP5(3min)

・The instructor summarizes what was gained through the students' presentations.

I used the alarm function to manage the time. I thought it was difficult to organize the class because the students didn't listen to me when the activity got going. I was able to get time to teach my own class twice, so my goal was to reflect on my first class and improve on my second class. There were three points of improvement. The first is to connect my laptop to the TV
without problems. The second was to improve the activities. I needed to come up with ideas that would allow students to learn while having fun. Third, I needed to make sure that the teacher had time for reflection after
the students had completed the activity. I think I was able to improve on these in my second class. I was also able to teach my students about the political situation in Japan.

Summary and Suggestions

I was very interested in the school field abroad, because I am happy to be able to participate in this program.

The first week started with meeting the teachers and observing their classes at the school. The second week started with daily observation of social studies classes and preparation for the lessons. In the third week, I worked hard to improve on the first lesson by making a lesson out of it. I also attended the performance meeting. I was able to understand how to make lessons and how students learn in Thailand after my practical training was over.