5th Week

What's So Important About Teaching Aids?

Do not ever look down on the usage of teaching aids in the classroom. Teaching aids are the MAGIC WAND to beautify the teaching and learning environment in the classroom. Without this magic wand, the class will be boring and lifeless. If the teacher uses the magic wand appropriately, it can lead the children to the wonderful magical world of learning. It bring fun and curiosity to the children. With a swing of the wand, colourful picture cards, songs, videos, word cards, fantastic story book, cute little stick puppets, box puppets and mask can be shown to the pupils. I can assure that none of the pupils will dislike these. Even I as the adult learners love them too.

These teaching aids are able to help the teachers to deliver information and knowledge to the pupils and pupils are able to learn better through these teaching aids. This is because teaching aids are the concrete items to be used to explain on the abstract ideas. For example, when telling a story, it is difficult for the pupils to imagine the situation of the story or the characteristic of the characters and it will be very boring if the pupils are just listening to what their teacher is talking. Through the implementation of teaching aids such as puppets and picture cards, pupils can listen to the story and at the same time look at the movement of the puppets. The use of puppets can also lower the affective filters of the pupils thus pupils will not feel tense during the lesson. Besides, teaching aids are useful for the visual learners as they see they remember. Therefore, as the teachers, we should prepare a variety of teaching aids for our lessons.

Due to the importance of teaching aids, this week Pn Foziah assigned us to work in pair in order to design technology-based teaching aids for 3 topics in Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3. I found that this task is interesting as we need to put ourselves in the pupils' shoes in order to know what the pupils need in their learning process. The topics which were assigned to us were:

Year 1, Topic 2 - Making Friends

Year 2, Topic 2 - My School

Year 3, Topic 2 - My Neighbourhood

Year 1, Topic 2 - Making Friends

In this topic, my partner and I have decided to use video, pictures, story, stick puppets and song. All of these teaching aids suit various types of learners as they can see, listen and move. As they are Year 1 pupils, they are still fresh and most of them still prefer playing rather than studying. Therefore, the teaching aids used must be simple, interesting and colourful to prevent boring. Teacher plays an important role to demonstrate the teaching aids an

d fully utilise them.

Year 2, Topic 2 - My School

In this topic, we had chosen pictures, Smartboard and power point slides. By using these teaching aids, we can let the pupils know their places in the school. Besides, teacher can ask the pupils to compare the places they can find in the school with the pictures shown. Teacher can also ask them to name the places which they can find in their school

besides the pictures shown.

Year 3, Topic 2 - My Neighbourhood

We use pictures, videos, power point slides, Tux Paint and poem in teaching the lesson. By using the tux pain, teacher can ask the pupils to draw the neighbourhood of the pupils. Through this, pupils can be trained to think creatively. After they have drawn the neighbourhood, they have to provide reasons on their selections. This activity is able to guide the pupils to think outside the box and to think creatively. Besides, the use of colourful teaching aids can arouse pupils' interest to focus on the lesson too.

4th Week

Don't You Think That Children Are Interesting?

This week is another week for group presentation and my group was the first group to present. Our topic is "Children's Ability To Grasp Meaning"

After the presentation, I realised that teacher plays an important role in the class. The children will get clues and ideas from their teacher. In other words, teachers are the role model for the children. During language class, if the teacher applies appropriate teaching strategies and use wonderful teaching aids during teaching and learning process, pupils will definitely understand better. Pn Foziah stressed on this aspect as she said that a teacher is the key element in the class as they are the only one who can provide clues to the children in order to understand the meaning of the words and the shape the children as well.

Next, it was the presentation from Ash's group. Their topic is on "Children's Capacity for Indirect Learning."

As teachers, we need to always bear in mind that there is only PLAY in the world of children. Try ask your kids what they want to learn, they will definitely say I WANT TO PLAY. If a teacher carry out the lesson by only asking the pupils to sit and listen, I can assure that they can't learn anything. Instead, if the teacher integrate games, songs, stories in the lesson, definitely the pupils will be interested to participate in the classroom activity. They will learn indirectly. For example, words guessing game. The pupils can have fun in the game and at the same time learning the new vocabulary. Life is all about play and fun, so why not we let the children to have fun during their childhood. As the saying goes all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Besides, from Woo's group presentation on "Children's Creative Use of Language Resources", I realised that the usage of songs, games and stories as creative resources is important. Although they have limited knowledge on the language, they still will have fun and be creative. Some of the children may say, don't unring if he wanted to tell a telephone caller to wait and Switch off the dark when he wanted the light to be put on. They create their own

words creatively.

The last group was Nizam's group, they presented on The Role Of Imagination. Children's mind are full with many unrealistic things and sometimes adults will say that it is nonsense. Well, do not do this to your children, this will indirectly demotivate them to think creatively. The types of activities which they had suggested were role play, essay writing, hot seating and story telling. There are fantasy in children's world, why don't we let them make full use of it?

After the presentation, we were assigned with tutorial task. In this task, we have to learn how to download mp3 songs and videos via moyea youtube downloader and show the steps in power point slides. Moyea youtube downloader - another new vocab to my dictionary.

That's all.... Bye...

3rd Week

Working with Young Language Learners

What is the very first thing that comes into your mind when you are asked to work with young language learners?

i) Troublesome? Irritating? Annoying?

ii) Fun? Interesting? Cool?

Well, we, as the adults won't understand the world of children. However, we must bear in mind that working with children is fun. Young children do not come to the language classroom empty-handed. They bring with them curiosity, instincts and other characteristics which will help them to learn new knowledge.

This week, we were assigned to work in group of 6 and each of the group was given 1 subtopic to read and present. "Children's ability to grasp meaning" was the topic given to us. This topic is about how the children understand what the adults say although they do not know the meaning of each words in the sentence.

How do children understand us?

Intonation, gesture, facial expressions, actions and circumstances can help the children to understand the unknown words, phrases and sentence. For example, you said, "It's dangerous! Don't!" by saying it in a deep tone. Young children may not understand the word 'dangerous' but through your facial expression and gesture, he knows that he should not go near to that place. They might not know why but they know they should listen to you because there might be something there.

In learning a new language, children will apply the same method to interpret new words and new sentence structures. As language teachers, we should be the actors which are able to demonstrate good gesture, intonation and facial expression during teaching and learning session. For example, children can learn language through story telling. While telling story, teacher can show picture cards to the pupils when he/she is expressing something. This can help the children to understand better of the story they are listening to.