Since I have an oppertunity to have a lesson for the future primary school teacher at Jinja Teacher's College. I went there last Saturday and had a lecture for the differences of education between Japan and Uganda.
I had two lectures. Each lecture lasted for 50 minutes. After I explained what is the difference of lessons for math between Japan and Uganda, I had a model lesson. The first period I taught about ratio related to pie chart and the second period I taught about finding area (rectangle). It was challenging since I didn't have much oppertunity to talk in front of college students, and math taught by English. But somehow I managed it.
The script as follows came from those lectures for the first 15 minutes each. I hope students at teachers college learned something from my lecture!
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Good
morning, ladies and gentleman! My name is Kenya. I am from Japan.
Do you know any cities in Japan? I am from Tokyo, Japan.
Today I
am going to talk about three stories.
First,
I am going to introduce myself. Second, I am going to talk about the difference
between Japan and Uganda, especially the math education. Third, I will have a
model lesson which is based on my experience in Japan as a primary school
teacher. If you have any questions please ask me at any time of the lecture by
raising your hand.
So, let
me introduce myself. Do you remember my name? My name is Kenya and I am
Japanese. I will turn to 30 this year and I am single. I have worked as a
primary school teacher in Japan for the past three years. I taught mainly math.
I have a family of four my father, mother and my brother and me. I have learned
politics at my university and then I travelled throughout the Europe by bicycle
for ten months. During that travelling, I thought it would be interesting for
me to work with kids. But in order to be a teacher in Japan I needed a licence.
After I went back to Japan, I went to teacher’s college like you and I spent
three years (normally it takes two years) and I got a licence for teaching at primary
school. At that time, I worked at primary school to help the class teacher as a
part time job. Then, the headmaster of that school offered me to work as a
teacher at different primary school and then I took that offer. Luckily, I had
a job and started working as a math teacher at primary school. At first year, I
taught math from P1 to P3 and for the next two years I taught math from P3 up to
P6. Then, after finishing the school year in 2016. I left Japan and came here!
Any
questions so far?
OK, then
I am going to talk about the second story, the difference of math education
between Japan and Uganda for primary school. I will talk about three points.
First,
the biggest difference between Japan and Uganda for math education is the value
of math. We think math is important to make a think logically. Here in Uganda
the answer, or the result is the most important for math, or to get a high
score of the test, which means accuracy and efficiency is the top priority. Of
course, we think that it is important to get a high score of the test, but we, especially
the teachers impressed from the students not because of that they got a high
score but because of the way of thinking, or how to solve the questions. We
think how and why the key words for math, not what are.
Second,
based on this idea, we consider the value of expressions. I noticed expressions
are not so important in here when I marked. For example, in Japan when pupils
solve the sentence questions in math exam they got 5 points for the expressions
and another 5 points for the answer. So, there is a difference between 2 times
3 and 3 times 2. If the answer is 2 times 3, you must write 2 times 3 for the
expression. Otherwise you lose your points.
Thirdly,
I will talk about the lessons. In Japan, we do question-solving method. Have
you heard about this phrase? In this method there are six steps mainly. We do
it in one lesson lasted for forty five minutes. The first step is question.
Ideally, it comes from the pupils, but mainly we give them. The second step is
to think about the clue or hint to solve the question based on what they have
already learned. Normally the question which is given shall solve how to solve the
former lesson. Third, solve the question by themselves. Forth, share the idea
what they have found or how they reached the answer. Fifth, we conclude how to
solve this type of questions. Sixth, they do some exercises. Sometimes we skip
sixth because we give them homework every day.
Well
that briefly what I have done for the past three years as a primary school
teacher in Japan and what I have felt since I came here. Any questions so far?
If not, let’s try a model lesson.
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Kenya @ Jinja
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