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.