As the class returned from recess, one student had a stack of paper that he proceeded to distribute. It was a nomination form for an award. “Nominate Mdm Toh ah!” commanded the boy with each form he gave out.
Amused, Mdm Toh Ji Rong brushed it off; she didn’t think the students would actually follow through on the nomination. But they did. Sometime later, she received news that she was a recipient of the award. What’s her secret sauce? “It’s a lot about the joy of learning, making language-learning fun and engaging for them,” she shares.
Inspiration: ‘Experiencing an idea is better than talking about it’
Balancing fun and learning is a skill Mdm Toh has honed over her 17 years in teaching.
A firm believer in social constructivism, where knowledge is constructed through interaction with others, Mdm Toh prefers to let her students experience an idea rather than simply hearing about it from her. For a writing assignment on disability, for example, she used props to simulate physical impairments, like getting bespectacled students to write without their glasses. Or she would use the four corners of a classroom, from which students present different perspectives of an argument.
She had doubts about her approach at the start. “Did I compromise on the quality of the thinking?” and “Could they have learnt a bit more if I had tried other approaches?” were questions she would ask herself constantly to make sure that cognitive and behavioural objectives were not compromised. “Ultimately, we are preparing them for life beyond the years they spend in school,” she explains.
Mdm Toh’s own school journey shaped some of her philosophy towards teaching. When learning Mathematics, she had wondered about its application in real life. Her teacher back then explained that it was not about drills or grades, but about the thinking and problem-solving skills behind them. It showed her what the higher purpose of learning could be.
She cites how when teaching English, students also learn communication skills and how to look deeper into the topic at hand. A discussion on food connects to talk about culture and heritage, while writing about everyday life in the garden city of Singapore could invoke wider conversations about establishing a harmonious relationship with wildlife.
Transformation: Making differentiated learning more effective
For students who are not strong in verbal communication, Mdm Toh encourages participation through drawing or writing – whichever mode helps them think better. She also gives students the time they need to find their voice. “When we ask them to elaborate (on a topic), they are more willing to do so. Because by then, they would have some thoughts already,” she explains.
This is one of the ways Mdm Toh applies the technique of Differentiated Instruction (DI), where lessons cater to varying learning needs in a class. Among her notable contributions to Beatty Secondary School as Level Coordinator has been to implement a level-wide DI framework to help teachers tailor their lessons without getting overwhelmed.
Typically, she conducts DI by splitting a class into groups. Students are grouped either based on their needs and lessons are customised to each group, or based on their complementary strengths so they learn from each other.
Either way, a culture of collaborative learning grows, where instead of competing against one another, students can see that they learn better when they learn together. That’s the beauty of DI, she says, “We must help every single student reach their potential, to help them develop a greater capacity to learn.”
Reflection: Reading the (class)room and thinking on her feet
How does Mdm Toh know when her lessons are going down well? She keeps an eagle eye on student responsiveness – and is ever ready to switch up her approach and try other teaching techniques when energy levels drop. “We can have all these fantastic lesson plans, but if the students are not interested and I lose their attention, then what’s the use? So, we meet somewhere in between.”
She advises young teachers to, likewise, aim for that delicate balance between delivering what’s on paper and delivering what their students need in order to learn better. And if a day doesn’t turn out as well as expected, to remember the many more days when they do.
“We must help every single student reach their potential, to help them develop a greater capacity to learn.”
Mdm Toh Ji Rong
