Materials for Language Teaching ~ Part 2

By: SITI SARAH BINTI MANSOR.

PART 2 [Topic: My Secondary School Life]

*This is a personal reflection on teaching materials for project based English Language Communication about “My Secondary School Life” in Tamil based school. Care to be note that the targets are Year 6 students after UPSR exams. Majority of them will be going into government school where Bahasa Melayu and English language as a base of communication.

3 important aspects we will look upon are:

·        Process of design

·        Teaching and evaluation of teaching materials.

There will be only 2 design of teaching focused here J

Let’s continue the journey, shall we…

1)      Teaching Material: Grammar and Vocabulary Lesson (Materials needed: grammar task sheets and pencils)

      First of all, before starting with the next main activity of “Construction of Mega Scrapbook”, teachers facilitate student’s language skills by teaching simple grammar such as present, past and future tense. Reasons for doing this are to see general understanding of students regarding the aspect of grammar above and to know students background of knowledge in using sentences with proper grammar usage. Students were asked how to construct sentences in present, past and future tense by groups to make teaching more easily and give opportunities to all of the students. Majority of the students are able to follow with the lesson though through observation some students appear to be bored and unable to fully concentrate. Thus, frequently I need to ask students to concentrate during the lesson. Perhaps the students feel the learning is quite a repetition because they have learned it in their normal class and maybe not so much of hands on activity going on during this period compare to Part 1.

      Soon afterwards, we move into vocabulary lesson. It is for pre-teach vocabulary that will be associated and use for mega scrapbook because they need to do writing in each part of the scrapbook. There are only 10 vocabularies as not to make the lesson overload. Examples of the words are “remember, enjoy and think back”. It is to ensure students know the meaning and applied them later.  This activity give student’s opportunity to speak as teacher throws out questions about the meaning and sentence construction of each vocab. So far, the learning takes pace very well and students enjoyed doing this activity and we did not forget making them to correlate this lesson with our theme last lesson which is “My Secondary School Life”. For practical assessment we present students with task sheet about grammar and the new vocabularies that they learned. Here, more depth assessment and evaluation of students level of understanding being assessed when teachers observe how students answer their questions. For some students it is very difficult for them to answer the questions because unable to differentiate the meaning of enjoyed and looking forward. The teacher scaffold students by giving variety of examples to make it simpler for them to understand and differentiate each vocabulary (Eggen and Kauchak, 2013). Other than that everything went well and we had classroom discussion for assessing answers. Perhaps for recommendation to improve this activity more is that giving opportunities for students to work individually or in groups so that students can ask without shy with their friends anything that they do not understand. In addition, the answer line should be longer since it is quite small for students hand writing.

This is how the task sheet looks like:

Worksheet 1 - Circle the correct answer.

1.      We (go/went/going) to Penang last year.

2.      I will (miss/missed/missing) my friends when I go to secondary school next year.

3.      Last week, Siti (teaching/taught/teach) us how to play BINGO.

4.      Anjali (wanted/wants/wanting) to be a teacher.

5.      We will (visiting/visited/visit) a university next week.

6.      I (took/take/taking) the bus to school every day.

7.      I (studied/studying/study) very hard for my UPSR.

8.      I will (make/made/making) many new friends in secondary school.

9.      I will (worked/working/work) hard in secondary school.

10.  I will (enjoying/enjoyed/enjoy) my secondary school life.

Worksheet 2 -  Fill in the blanks with the correct words.

expect                                  lonely                                   remember                                           ideal                                      subjects                    looking forward                                               enjoyed difficult  leaving                             ambition

I feel a little sad that I am _______my primary school. I really _______ my life here. I will always ________ my friends and teachers. I will not forget them. However, I am actually ______________ to going to a new school. I ______ it to be very fun and meaningful. Although my brother told me that the ________ in secondary school will be more _________ than primary school, I am not scared. I will study hard so that I can go to my _____ university and achieve my ________ . I also love making friends so that I am sure I will not be ______ in my new school.

2)      Construction of Mega Scrapbook (Materials needed: 6 pieces of big cardboard, color papers, pictures, previous activities materials and stationeries)

      This is the last stage of this project and what students are required to do is to compile what they have learned from the first lesson activities and what they learned just now. There are three groups and each is given portion of titles they need to do in this mega scrapbook. There are three titles to be covered which are Memory Lane, Fears and My Future. In Memory lane, students are given pictures that we teachers took in our first lesson for them to remember their primary school and for them to write what they are doing based on the pictures. Secondly, Fears section involves students writing their fears shifting into secondary school using the materials in Fears in the Hat activity in the first lesson. Meanwhile, the My Future relates to My Dreams and Ideal activity last lesson where here students need to write, draw creatively what their dreams occupations before. Since I am only supervise the My Future group, I can only generate what is happening generally with the other two groups. Generally all groups began with planning stage where the teacher acts as the leader in the group since the work is unable to progress according to the time because prolonged discussion between students who are unable to decide and make action to start the work(Eggen and Kauchak, 2013). Then each student must contribute efforts in the parts of scrapbook whether designing, writing, cutting color papers and anything that is related. This activity prolonged for more than two hours compared from our original plan of 1 hour slot time for this session. From my observation among students in my group in particular, there is one boy who are doing almost nothing unless you instruct him to do simple work such as cutting the papers. At first, I make a hypothesis that the boy is not interested in taking part in the activity but after more observation, I can see that my first hypothesis is not right at all. The boy wants to participate well during the discussion and activity but due to language and instruction barriers he couldn’t do so. It seems that the students do not understand English language as well as his friends even though this is majority above average English language level of proficiency classroom. Then, I came into understanding that more scaffolding in terms of translation was needed in his case (Eggen and Kauchak, 2013). Along the time, his work began to show some consistency of taking part in the group work.

        In comparison, the rest of the group members are more than enthusiastic in pouring their creativity into this scrapbook project. Some of the groups are very noisy that we should have a person that control the voice of the classroom since it is so disturbing to do our own group works when you cannot hear anything due to the noisiness. I think the way we design the content of the scrapbook allows freedoms in students to explore their creative side of learning because it prove how students design the patterns  and outline of My Future. We basically tell the students to write and draw something for the scrapbook but they did more than what we suggested and it is a really good effort that they put and it is a good signal of positive reinforcement (Eggen and Kauchak, 2013). The only scar of this activity is there is not enough time to practice speaking of what they design properly and that will really affects how they are going to presents their projects in our campus later. Other than that, there not much defaults going on. Basically that what is what happen during the teaching for Part 2.

Reference: Eggen, P. & Kauchak, D. (2013).Educational Psychology : Windows on classroom. 9^th edition. USA: Pearson.

Materials for Language Teaching ~Reflection Part 1~

Good morning to all of my honorable guests,

It is me once more :)
The Writer :) : SITI SARAH BINTI MANSOR.
Below are my reflection of teaching experience ~ hehe~

Instruction:

Write 2 reflections on the process of design, teaching and evaluation of your teaching materials for the English Language Communication Project (not a lesson plan).

*This is a personal reflection on teaching materials for project based English Language Communication about “My Secondary School Life” in Tamil based school. Care to be note that the targets are Year 6 students after UPSR exams. Majority of them will be going into government school where Bahasa Melayu and English language as a base of communication. The student in our group majority has above an average English Language Proficiency. The targeted language skills in this project are writing, reading, listening and communication. Here, there will be only 2 main activities covered as in Part 1 reflection that really focused on the learning objective and the theme of: My Secondary School Life compared to others.

 3 important aspects we will look again upon are:

·        The process of teaching materials design,

·        Teaching and evaluation of teaching materials.

Thus, let’s begin digging out the experience shall we…

1)      Teaching Material: Fear in the Hat (Materials needed: A hat, strips of A4 papers, pen/pencil)

       The first part of teaching and learning activities involved teachers in bringing awareness to students about the new environment that they are going to experience for secondary school. Here, we represent the idea through the game called “Fear in the Hat”. It is a game where students will write their worries in shifting from primary to secondary school in a one strip of paper and all the papers will be jumble up in the hat. (*By the way, the materials design for this activity is easy to achieve and it is very simple to make. Besides, it is not overwhelming for the students as in this stage we only wanted to clarify their fears as with ways to overcome it together. Moreover, it is a good way to observe silently students listening skills (understanding of instructions) and writing skills as well-[killing two birds with one stone]). Since at the beginning one of our group members knows how to play the game, it makes the planned to conduct it much easier without any modification made since it is good enough from our point of views.

How the activity goes:

       The teacher will randomly pick one of the papers in the hat and have discussion session with the students what and why they think and feel that way. Furthermore, we as a teacher scaffold students by giving encouragement and advice on how to tackle the issues together. This gave broad idea to students that this problem can be taken care of and they are not alone in their learning journey. In addition, it acts as foundation for students to prepare for their upcoming secondary school life. It is essential for teacher to always question students to know more about what they think but do remember in giving students opportunity to questions and answers us back because this is after all “Questions and Answers Session” for them. After each issues being discusses, teachers need to make students reflect back whether the problem is actually a problem or just a trick of mind and not to forget of injecting some positive reinforcement of motivational talk. At the end, all the papers will be kept by the teachers for the Part 2 lesson. This activity relate to mostly Vygotsky’s theory of interaction with more knowledgeable other (Schütz, 2004). Teachers act as facilitator and provide their school experiences for the students to learn something from it.

Example of the sequence of the game:

·        The teacher picks up the paper in the hat and it says “Communication Problem”.

·        The teacher asks students what they mean by “Communication Problem”. For instance, is it the urge need of English language usage in secondary school in comparison to their primary school? *As a reminder, do remind our self that the majority of the students are prone in using Tamil language as medium of communication in their primary school and their usage of English language is neither high, average or low. So, shifting in language is a huge concern for those who did not practice English language for communication in early years of their primary school life.

·        Then, the teacher will asks who else feels and think the same way. These encourage the students a bit because they know they are not alone in having this type of concern.

·        What we can do next is the teachers will share their experience of the same issues towards the students so they can learn and take note from it.

·        We can provide advice and find rationale and sensible ways to overcome those obstacles. It is important that we state the reality towards the students so that they will be really prepared because providing unnecessary fantasies such as “You can do it and tackle it because it is like peas” will make students think and treat important matter lightly.

       Although we prepared the activity well from the beginning, it shows that it give little impact that we looked for. I mean the purpose for this activity is for students to share lots of viewpoints of fears going to secondary school but there is issue during the filtering of fears from the hat. Almost all of the students wrote the same kind of fears which is afraid of leaving their best friends and teachers. Due to that, we can only discussed about that one topic only and since we did not really anticipate that, the time allocated for the session became really short compare to time schedule in our group lesson plan. From my point of view, it is a good game but as a planner we need to take more precaution with factors that we never thought off that might affect the activity. For instance: All the students write the same problem (We thought that this will never happen BUT it DOES!!!). More than that, it can cause misleading information to students too if we can only discussed only one fears with them since we told them that we will try to discussed as many as possible too. Not much interaction happens between the teachers and the students and it became a dilemma because we cannot achieve maximum communication language skill that we targeted at. That’s why the lecturers always told us that backup plan is necessary. Note to one self. This reminds me to other module “Portray of a Teacher” because as a teacher we should be fully prepared for all of the consequences when it comes into teaching, seems that is very true for this case. Haha J….let see…For teaching material improvement maybe we should provide different categories of fears so students have more options in giving us their opinions instead of just focusing on shifting to secondary school alone but in some ways it kind of also defeat the purpose of the study. Hmm…so a lot of consideration and factors need to think off in improve the design of this activity…I will say depends on the context of what you are trying to teach first…

The following activity is….

2)      Teaching Material: Dreams and Ideals (Materials needed: A4 papers, pen/pencils)

        After knowing our students fears, we would like to know more about their dreams such of occupation, subjects they think they need to acquire to realize their dreams, their ideals secondary school and their future life. That is why we planned of implementing the ideas we create from previous visit from St Paul school but we did not include the part which include the strength and weaknesses because of the time variable. We paid attention to the part where we think can bring students to voluntarily speak, write, read and listen while having fun at the same time. I think we have covered section of strengths and weaknesses in the “Fear in the Hat” activity instead.

How the activity goes:

      The A4 paper will be folded into half and another half till we can see four separate section each. Each section contains the titles mention above. It is very interesting during the process of explaining the instructions on how to do each part because the students can understand the instruction very well and cooperate for each section as it makes teachers duty easier. It is heartwarming seeing all the students openly discussed and elaborated about their dreams with us teacher, even the quietest students give a good respond though we need to help them to talk more.

      They display different intelligences as regard to Howard Gardner Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1985). For example, one of my students has a well bodily kinesthetic ability as he can draw well to convert his message to become a photographer in a good picture of camera man model taking picture with the camera. I was so astonished seeing another students portray excellent writing linguistic intelligence write by the words she choose to write. However, there is something that noticed by me and all the teachers is that majority of the students are very ambitious regarding their dreams…err..our students are very materialistic type of person….all of them love diamonds, gold and all top rate cars…thought I am the same…but this somehow bring concern  about how students now a day’s perspective  about life. I personally think that it is good to be materialistic but BUT NOT too much until you have forgotten the morale value that life has to offer. Teachers need to make students realize about this aspect of life too. Never the less, it is a good activity because we are able to identify students level of creativity and English language four main skills as above.

      Majority of the students have above average English language skills in terms of reading, writing, listening and even communication which really bring surprised to me. Well, this is because the last time when I teach in Tamil school project, the student’s English language skills especially are below average as they face difficulty in all of the aspects stated above. Hmm…it could also be that before the class that I taught was mixed ability class but now is the same ability class. It is a beneficial experience to be able to learn from the perspective teaching in mixed ability and same ability class. If you need activity that take approximately one hour, this could be your answer but that depends on the topic you are going to teach too. What makes this interesting is that variety of adaptation can be made just by changing the topics but use the same framework of this “Dreams and Ideals” activityJ. This also enhances student’s communication skills as they present their ideas on each part of the activity and the teachers scaffold them by elaborate their ideas or paraphrase it to make it easier for all students to comprehend.  What I would like to do in the future that perhaps thinking about the materials reusability after conducting the activity and the durability of the materials since we only use paper here, maybe the paper can be replace with online teaching if the school and students have all the necessary equipment and skills to carry it out.

Below shows how “Dreams and Ideals” looks like visually:

Occupation	Subjects need to learn to realize occupation
Ideal Secondary School	My Ideal Future

That’s all for Part 1 reflection, Part 2 is coming next… J         

Reference:

Schütz, R. (2004). Vygotsky & language acquisition. English Made in Brazil.

Gardner, H. (1985). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Basic books.

TESOL Methodology ~Ways of Learning~

Learning Journal based on Multiple Intelligence (MI)

Have you ever wondered why some people can be so successful as an artist, engineer, gardener, poetry, scientist and even counselor? Is it because they work hard for it? Or is it because they are gifted? Why can some people be a good actor or actress while you can’t? Have you really thought of why that happens?

“Everything happens for a reason”. There are reasons why other people can be very successful in their life and one of the reasons is that they know what their strength and begin to develop it as a tool in their life. Everyone including you possesses intelligence inside us. These intelligence differ from one person to another. That’s why some people can be a really good actor or actress while you can’t because their strength is more in that specific area. These intelligence is named as Multiple Intelligence by psychology Howard Gardner which is being spread and use widely till this day by teachers, scientist and the people in the world (Gardner, 2011). Now you know. Multiple intelligence further categories by eight different section which the below diagram portray.

Refer to the example above; some people can become a good actor or actress as we can observe from drama shows or movies because they are more domains in bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. Bodily kinesthetic refer to ability to manipulate one’s body skillfully. People who have strength in bodily kinesthetic are majority are football player, gymnastic, and athletes which requires a lot of body movement. Students who posses this can maximize their learning by doing experiments and hands on activity rather than sit down taking note. Important note here is that all of us have all 8 multiple intelligence It is just that in some domain we have it more and less in others. These intelligence can be sharpening by practice.

Linguistic intelligence refer to word smart where the person have the capability in language sensitivity and able to relate to its meaning and use it in variety context. People relate here are poetry, writer and novelist. Students prone to linguistic intelligence are those who love to write essay or debate.

Next, Logical-Mathematical intelligence is where scientist, mathematician were born into these group. Their ability is analytically thinking accompanied with logically reason and is good with numbers. Students who can remember and use formulas are usually taken liking into subject such as mathematic, chemistry and physics.

Singers are categories under musical intelligence domain as it is a domain where people with music smart where they appreciate and notice differences in musical tones, pitch and melody. Students who can use musical instruments well enjoy some music in their learning.

Move on to Spatial intelligence where the domain of accurately perceive the visual world lies. Example can be drawn here is the late Steve Job, the creator of Apple. He started by imagining the I-phone in 3D before make it into reality. Students who learn concept by visual it first lies in this domain.

Interpersonal Intelligence tells us about a person who knows and understands why other people behave in certain ways like our counseling teacher and politician. Students with this intelligence have good social relationship among friends, teacher and community. Group work is always good advantage as they can manipulate it by interaction with their group members.

Intrapersonal intelligence tell us about ability to understand our self the most. Why we behaves this way and knowing one need and moods. Meanwhile, Naturalist Intelligence is ability to work comfortably in naturalistic environment such as geologist and gardener. Teacher should take more notes into MI and take it to their advantage to help maximize the students learning by incorporate teaching and learning activities with different kind of intelligence as above, this brings fresh view towards learning as well.

Reference:

Gardner, H. (2011). Changing Minds: How the Application of the Multiple Intelligences (MI) Framework Could Positively Contribute to the Theory and Practice of International Negotiation. In Psychological and Political Strategies for Peace Negotiation (pp. 1-14). Springer New York.