Alt Prac in Hong Kong! #1

To be honest, going into the alternative practicum, I still didn’t really understand how IB physics works. So once I got into the school, I was bombarded with some new terms that I didn’t quite understand and my associate thought I knew. On my first day, my associate told me that I will be observing and possibly teaching year 12 Physics. I was confused at why he only put me into all the year 12 Physics only.  In addition, before going to IB, the students undergo another curriculum known as the IGCSC. To my understanding this is the British curriculum. Term such as practical could mean both a lab experiment and a demonstration by the teacher. In addition, students must do IAs where the teachers are not supposed to provide any aid during their write up, and very little assistance during the process.

It was tough on the first couple of days trying to get the terms packed and understand how the whole IB system works. After talking with some of the teachers at Yew Chung, I realized that year 12 is when the IB curriculum starts and before that the students are studying under the IGCSC curriculum. At the end of that, they will take an entry test to see whether they will be accepted into the IB curriculum. Some things going through my head at this point was confusion. At times I felt very lost as to how the whole program runs. In addition, the school runs a very confusing time table since it is a non-semester schedule. They run a 6 day week and each day the classes would be different. In addition, teachers sometimes get 2 classes a day, but at times they would be scheduled 5 to even 6 classes.

Well after a while I started getting used to the program and its underlining. As the week progressed, I learned more and more from my various associates. In addition, I spent a lot of time reading the IB document for Physics which was also very helpful. I learned about the marking schemes of the practical. The levelling system in my opinion is setup to see who did well and those who didn’t since each section was only out of 6 and sub sections was only out of 2. This is definitely very different from Canadian curriculum. This is definitely not a IB training program, but I believe that after this alternative practicum, I will come out understanding a lot more of how IB works.