do you need a part time job?

pix from http://www.olsn.ca/

a school in Parang, Marikina City is looking for a Grade 1 teacher.

- preferably EdTEG major (graduating students are also welcome)

- schedule: MWF only, 12:30 - 5 pm

please pm me if you're interested.

5th Grade Indie Film

While trying to ponder on open-ended activities I might facilitate with my class this coming school year, I remember the homemade film produced by my students as their project in their fifth grade Science class last year.

The idea of producing a film was courtesy of Teacher Benji, their laboratory instructor. Thus, Teacher Heidi guided them in finalizing the script and during the production proper.


So what are you waiting for, bring out your popcorn bags and enjoy the show!

Cinco Volto by 5-Tindalo



Starring:
Jed Rosario as Uno Volto
Diego Reyes as Dos Volto
Ysabel Vitangcol as Tres Volto
Peter Daza as Quatro Volto
Julienne Depatillo as Sinco Volto
Ella Pangilinan as Negra Aero
Lance Espejo as Dispoho Nuclear
Clarisse Baniqued as Globo Caliente

Director:

David Laureta

Sriptwriters:

Alina Aficial, Danny Benitez, and Mara Caparros

Production Assistants:

Josef Remollo, Sofia Echavez, and Alyssa Quiaoit

Cameraman:

James Manayon

Special thanks to Teacher Mena and Teacher Irene.

I was really amazed by the creativity of these kids in producing this short film. Their ingenuity to generate such opus, their perseverance to finish it, and their assertion that even with this simple piece of work, they had proven to the world that 11-year-old children can initiate change.

Cook wins AI7!

with 12 million votes ahead of baby archie, cook was named the seventh american idol!

wohohoooo!

(he really should thank simon this time... despite his not-so-good performance last night, americans still believed that he deserves the title)

cheers for DC!

More Air!

Two months ago, I blog about the song "No Air" by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown.

But before I conclude that I'm finally over with my LSS of that song, I heard an acoustic piano version courtesy of Pseudostratified dreamS.

No Air (Piano Acoustic) - Alejandro Manzano

OMG. I really love this song, but hearing it over a piano melts my heart further and brings it to its triple point.



Sigh.

Alejandro Manzano is the lead vocals of Boyce Avenue, a Florida-based band popular for its strong acoustic roots and constant drive toward a melody-and harmony-driven rock sound. Three brothers consists the group: Alejandro, Fabian, and Daniel Manzano, and Stephen Hatker.

Blogthings

while browsing over my mail earlier this evening, a student buzzed me in ym.

J: delayed happy b-day
stupefied protagonist: ur soooooooo late
J: i know
stupefied protagonist: /:)
J: hahaha
J: hows your life
stupefied protagonist: sigh
stupefied protagonist: miserable
J: emo?
stupefied protagonist: dunno
J: well...


why am i exposing, again, to my students my emotional dysfunctionalities...?

[fast forward]

while blog hopping, i come across a list of blogthings one can answer in just a few minutes. so i tried some.

i tried to figure out if i'm really what they call 'emo.'

You Are 48% Emo

You're not emo, but you're plenty thoughtful, unique, and even a little angsty.

Are You Emo?

ha! finally, i can tell the whole blogosphere that i'm actually not. (thou, near to it... tsk.tsk.tsk.)


now i'm reminded of the latest blog challenge of the blog awards challenge. they're challenging bloggers to reason out why do some cyberpeople tend to tell a lie. to rephrase the question, it should sound like: "how virtual cyber personalities are?"

hmmm... interesting topic. let me ponder about that...

anyway, talking about being a liar, here's my test result:

You Are a Bad Liar

Sorry, but no one is really believing any of your lies. You're going to have to chill out and practice a lot before you can really deceive effectively.

Are You a Good Liar?

see! i'm a bad liar. or maybe my mom or dad didn't pass me good 'liar' genes. i wonder who among my siblings received those kind of genes...


finally, i got something about being a rational jerk.

id? ego? or the superego?

You Are the Ego

You take a balanced approach to your life. You definitely aren't afraid to act out on your desires - even crazy ones. But you usually think first. Morals drive you as much as hedonism does. You've been able to live a life of pleasure... without living a life of excess.

Are You Id, Ego, or Superego?

i definitely agree with those descriptions. but hey!

morals = hedonism

hmmm... sounds rational enough.

Piaget Says

Aside from commencing my month-long birthday celebration, May also means an entire month of workshops in preparation for the succeeding school year. To start with, we were mounded by six Word documents, totting up to a 56-pages reading requirement. Whew. This is so undergrad. It reminded me of my college days where ‘compassionate’ professors would test my eye’s endurance and my neuron’s capacity to abstract.

So what did I do with the 56-pages readings? Actually, not that much. I downloaded them, saved them, created a new folder for them in my desktop, and the rest is history.

Stupendously, I understood Piaget. Six years after I first met him inside the four corners of the classroom, this is the first time that I actually internalized his philosophy.

(Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis → Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis → Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis → Thesis + …)

The scaffolding will never end. This is the developmentalist’s view of learning. An unbounded skirmish of accommodation and assimilation, settled thru equilibration.

Conitive Development Inside the Science Classroom

by The urban gurU

Piaget’s curiosity of the ostensibly illogical utterances of children revolutionized the traditional thought that children are empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. Einstein even dubbed the pedagogical breakthrough “so simple that only a genius could have though it.”

Dissecting Piaget’s hypothesis on cognitive development gives us a lot of implications in the teaching of science in the grade school level. This is because of the reason that ideas, concepts and principles of science should be developed around the personal experiences of the students. Hence, being an explicit body of knowledge, it is imperative for a teacher to maintain sufficient motivation for the students to be able to digest and absorb new information.

The stages of cognitive development go hand in hand with what they call science process skills. Science process skills or thinking skills are distinct mental operations we use as we think (Hiura, 1991). These are the competencies we need in order to accomplish a specific task.

Science process skills vary in density. Skills at the basic level form the foundation of the more composite skills. The same mechanism applies to a child who is traversing the pre-operational stage to the concrete operational until finally reaching the formal operation. Examples of basic science process skills are observing, classifying, and ordering.

Instruction in science should always start with the enhancement of these skills. That is the reason why a teacher should always start the school year with the review of the different laboratory techniques. Mastery of tasks in conservation of number, length, liquid content, substance, area, weight, and displacement of volumes would affirm to him/her that the students are ready to embark upon the succeeding science process skills.

Accordingly, the denser or what are called higher order thinking skills (HOTS) would only take effect if the students were able to master the basic skills. HOTS include problem solving, critical thinking, decision-making, and creative thinking. These are skills that would most likely to occur only during the formal operation stage of a child. At this stage, students are ready to formulate hypothesis, be logical in thinking, be aware of social issues, explore their own values, beliefs and philosophies, and be able to comprehend abstract reasoning. In other words, they should be able to demonstrate at this stage what we call the scientific method.

Piaget also pointed out that classifying a child’s answer as “true” or “false” misses the point and shows a lack of respect for the child. It should be taken for consideration that children are capable of making a lot of theories of their own. These theories may be fallacious in the perception of an adult, but highly logical in the point of view of the child.

As Piaget construed it, “Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them something too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves.”

Crazy things about your instructoR

My summer class is finally over. The month of May is here for the summer seminars. At my workplace, the entire month of May is spent for the staff development programs as stipulated by the school’s administration. While everyone is engrossed finishing their lesson plans for the succeeding school year, I’ll be spending this entire month savoring the last days of being 23 and the first few days of being 2 dozens young. Ha!


Last Friday, May 2, was the last day of my summer class. I gave a three-week refresher course for incoming grade six students in preparation for their high school entrance exams. We had our final Simulated Exam that day and I turn over to them their module for the said summer class. It is a compilation of all of the exams I gave them in the entire 12 sessions of the class. Plus, a bonus ‘autobiography’ of their instructor that intends to inspire them to pursue their future endeavors or maybe NOT.

Crazy things about your instructoR

Mr. R, otherwise known as T’cher R to his students, is a graduate of the University of the Philippines Diliman with a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education, Major in Science and Health. Aside from anticipating Ash’s adventures at GMA 7, 10 o’clock in the morning, every weekday, he is also the Immediate Past President of the Philippine Society of Youth Science Clubs (PSYSC) and currently a member of its Board of Trustees.

T’cher R had taken already a lot of entrance exams, including his licensure examination to become a full pledge teacher. He took the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET) – Elementary Level in August 2006 and unexpectedly placed *th among its 17,377 successful passers out of 59,457 examinees. He received his medal for being the *th placer of the LET while suffering from sunburn caused by his snorkeling at Crocodile Island in Boracay.

The latest admission exam he took was the Master’s Admission Test in Education (MATE) of the College of Education of UP Diliman. He successfully passed the said exam but intentionally defer his enrollment to the College as a student of Master of Arts in Education, Major in General Science. Until now, he haven’t decided yet whether to pursue his post-graduate studies or rather just blog in front of his laptop named ‘Ace.’

During the month of August of the year when the entire world is restless about the ‘millennium bug,’ he took University of the Philippines College Admission Test or UPCAT at Legazpi City, Albay. Since he did not take any other college entrance exam aside from the one given by Bicol University, he surprisingly passed the UPCAT but very much flabbergasted after learning that he only got a grade of 79 in Reading Comprehension, and worst, 49 in Language Proficiency.

In the year you were born, he took the Philippine Science High School (PSHS) National Competitive Examination. To his Dad’s amazement, he topped the five passers of the First Screening out of the more than 200 grade six students from the province of Palawan who took the exam. Fatefully, he did not make it to the Diliman Campus after flunking the Second Screening.

Good thing he did not make it to Pisay. He could not have been awarded Valedictorian of the 767 graduates of Marcial O. Rañola Memorial School, a public high school situated at the foot of his favorite stratovolcano—Mayon Volcano, in the year 2001.

T’cher R had experienced also administering a standardized test. In October 2006, he was able to administer the UPCAT at the National Institute of Physics in UP Diliman. He enjoyed watching senior high school students from all over Metro Manila agonized while taking the UPCAT.

After teaching one year at the UPIS, T’cher R found TLT or maybe TLT found him… But whatever it may be, he is currently teaching there his most dreaded subject—Science.