It's all about materials..

This week's class is basically about materials. Materials is the physical substances used as inputs for production or manufacturing. So, when we relate this to the teaching field, the physical substances will be the teachings aids brought in by the teacher, the input will be the content of the lesson which is reinforces by the teaching aids and lastly the production will be pupils acquiring the four language skills whereby they are able to use and practise the skills accordingly and meaningfully. So this has gave me an outlook in which materials are vital in language learning in which they play the role to assist language learning. Anything could be the materials as long as there are language used in the material. However, the materials should be be taken baldly and being used as teaching aids because of certain reason. First is the suitability, whether the material is suitable for the topic and it have the content that needed for language learning. Second, is the exploitibility factor in which the material can be exploited further for the use of learning activities in class. Third will be the readability whereby it touches the language difficulty in which suits the pupils' level of proficiency. Lastly, familiarity factor in which it does not look akward to the pupils. Not to mention, the material used should gain pupils' interest and lend their eyes till the end of the lesson. In fact, the material selected too should trigger pupils' mind and helps them develop their thinking skill. Before making decision of which material to be used in class, the teacher should first collect few sample of materials and then evaluate them. Factors that should be taken into considerations are mentioned above when evaluating. During this process, the teacher might consider adapting or adopting the material or probably develop a new material based on the actual one. This involves teacher's creativity as well as judgement. I realized that selecting and developing materials to be used in class in not as easy as it is. This is because the material should be functional and useful in language learning. This indirecly influece the teacher's planning of a lesson. So, for all the teacher-to-be, we should always be prepared and always be aware of the challenges ahead and one of them is this which is selecting, developing and using materials. This is because i realized that materials used as teaching aids serve as a bridge to connect pupils with the content. Thus, it shows how heavy the duty played the material in order to make language learning successful for the pupils..

New delivery...

Honestly, i am confused and blurred about the 3rd assignment. As far as I am concerned, in Malaysian context, a single period is only 30 minutes while double period is 1 hour which is 60 minutes. But, why does we were ask to develop40 minutes and 80 minutes lesson activity? It does not make sense. Sometimes the teacher could not even carry out all the activities planned in an hour. This is due to some factors such as the time taken up to set up the teaching aids, pupils settling down, previous subject teacher takes extra time and many more. Planning a lesson in a vital element for a teacher. Hence, during that progress, the teacher should take into consideration of many factors as mentioned above other that pupils' ability, previous knowledge and so on. In fact, the teacher should even prepare extra plans as options in case of difficulties or changes that occur suddenly. Not only that, teacher should be prepared in terms of the teaching aids, how to manage the class, what solution to apply if a sudden problem occur and so on which will not affect pupils' learning negatively. Basically, the teacher should be mentally, emotionally and physically prepared for the lesson. This is so that the teacher will be able to carry out her or his responsibility in imparting knowledge meaningfully to pupils.

Assesing and Manipulating Resources...

This assignment is quiet hectic I would say. I have been working with my partner since last week but still we have not complete it fully.. Oh GOD!! it is going to be due soon..no more time to waste...need to warm up and speed up..time flies very fast..no way i'm going to lose to it. IT is really difficult deciding on what activities to be created using Michael Jackson's The Earth Song. We were lost at first so we did on our second video first. The second video is much more easier to think of what activity can be done from that video. This showed me the reality of how difficult is it in manipulting a resource because as usual need to consider many factors such as suitability of the video, canbe exploited or not and so on. After cracking pur heads on the second video, we then moved on to The Earth Song video. We had to really squeezed our brains to search for the appropriate activity to be carried out through the exploitation of this video. Huh..luckily, our brain do work.. we were able to come up with activities. Consideration on the appropriateness of the activities and usefullness have never been missed out when making decisions on the activities.
Till the end of the day, both of us were tired already...

At last...

At last, my partner and i have decide the second video to be used for the second assignment. It was difficult at first because we need to watch the video first and scan through the video what is appropriate to be used of teaching, what is not appropriate, whether the video has educational purposes, what is the theme of the video, it is interesting and will it gain children's attention and so on. and so on. It is important to consider the video by relating it to many factors as this video is meant to be used for educational purposes and this means that the children will learn something from there. I agree that this activity does make me aware of the challenges that will face in future when I'm in school teaching. Thus, it gives me a hint that i must be prepared all the time starting from now on.

Completion of task..

There is a sign of little relief in me after completed the four language skills task. I'm glad that my group members cooperated well and each of us did help each other in sharing opinion and guiding. Talking about groups, group work is an essential criteria in order to complete successfully a task set for a group. Group members should be able to guide each other by sharing or exchanging ideas. Then, the work can be improved if there are any weaknesses as combination of ideas from different people provide a stronger quality of the idea rather than individual idea. Elements of creativity might come in when many brains work together. Although it is done individually, we managed to work as a group and completed it on time.
With regards to the task, it is essential for a teacher to be able to choose a material or resource that is appropriate with the lesson depending what is the focus of the lesson, whether the language skills, vocabulary or grammar. Careful consideration should be carried out when choosing the resources or even developing one as it should be appropriate for the learners' level of proficiency or one level higher as suggested by Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis. This is because the input should be comprehensible as well as understandable to the learners in order for learning to take place in a meaningful way.

4 language skills task..

Regarding this task, I'm responsible to complete the task focusing on reading skill. As we all know, all these four skills are important to be developed in children in order to achieve the objectives of the KBSR syllabus. In fact, English language is now a very important mean of communication whereby most countries communicate in English whether in education, business, conversation and so on. So, it is undeniable that Malaysians need to cope up with the the usage of English language. This means that the development of language skills should start since young. Children especially are still fresh and their mind accept most of the things they learn through exploring and manipulating although there might be some slow-learners. But it is good to train them since they are young and still fresh. Their mind is like a "blank state", so what ever they learn might not be understandable to them unless they explore and manipulate it. As for English language, by all means they need to have contact with the language if they want to successfully grasp the language. Teachers and not to mention parents also play important role to create the opportunities to children to learn and communicate in English. However, it should be done in a proper way. As for reading skill, the teachers should instill in them proper reading strategies through contact with various forms of reading text. They should know how to read, scan or scheme, classify or make association when they encounter a text and also different types of text. In fact, when they read a lot, their store of vocabulary increases and this will eventually help them in writing skill. As in school, reading comprehension questions are reinforcement of children's understanding towards a text. This will tell the teacher whether the child reads and understand the passage or just merely reading with no understanding towards the passage.

i hope with this activity, it will give me a clearer idea on how to develop resources that are appropriate to be used for reading activities.

What a day!

E-book task has been handed in. I felt relieved. Although completing the task is not as hectic as the one where we have to do video editing on "So you think you can dance", but there many factors to be considered in preparing the e-book. For instance, first, what we need to consider is what story do we want to do, how is the story going to be (the plot), what pictures to be used for that particular slide, text including the size and type of font, background colour and so on. These are all in the planning stage where the storyboard comes in. Careful planning is good in order to organize our work hence complete it in a satisfactory way. Moreover, time management is important as well because this involve organization of our work and also ourselves. I always believe that "time waits for no one." That is why I like to do my work bit by bit but all the time so that i will not lose my time and also my work will be completed before the due date. The effort we put in also plays important role in the completion of a task. No matter how, we must always give our very best in doing a task and do not give up easily. Coming back to this e-book task, i've learnt something out of this task. One that is very significant is how to prepare an electronic story book to be used as teaching aid in the teaching and learning process. It is a very good knowledge and also skill for me to learn as i have never known of this and i'm glad that i am able to create one now. I hope apart from gaining the knowledge of how to prepare an e-book, i will be able to creat more interesting e-book for future usage in the classroom. From this task also, there are many things to be considered when preparing the e-book. Empathy is being instilled whereby i have to put myself in the shoes of a teacher and think like them -target audience, interesting topic, font type and size, colourful pictures, interesting music and so on. These all had made me become more mature in thinking with relation to the teaching field as well as the reality of teaching profession.

Keep It Up Guys!!!

I felt better after Puan Foziah explained and clarified all about the assignments that we need to complete for this course. At the beginning, things were quite messed up when there were additional task that we need to do for example the e-book. Some of my friends were asking me whether the e-book is an assignment or not. Then, came a few more asking me what to do, how to do and so on. All this question been bugging me and I myself want to know what is exactly should be done. So, with courage, I went and approached Puan and asked her. Glad that by approaching her, most of the things, that have been creating enquiries to these people, have been cleared an clarified to them as well as I. Now that I've know what to do, i need to buck up..Time is important and time waits for no one..so why should i wait anymore..I should get started with my draft for assignment 2. Need to collect things bit by bit. I never want to do things last minute because I will get panic as my job is not done when it's almost due. This is one of my characteristics that i'm very clear of myself and I'm glad that i know that.

I've been in a boarding school and i've been trained to follow time tightly. This has taught me to manage my time very well in doing my things so that's why,whatever i do i must do it in an organized way if not i will be lost. Thus, i always need to start collecting materials or plan for the assignment set so that i will not be left behind or get lost..

Work.. Work... WORKLOAD!!!!

Eventually, my pair, Fatin and I have done our task.At first, we planned to do a video related to love. Since that many of our friends are doing that, so we decided to change. It's good that both of us agreed easily in discussion. We brainstormed on ideas. This is good for students like us because we need to always develop our thinking skill through brainstorming and discussing as we learn or gain better understanding in whatever topic being discussed. We did about what friendships means to us...somehow, doing this task did give us a thought that being a friend is so wonderful.It also provides us with information about what we would like to do to make them happy.Somehow, this task made me ponder back when I was in secondary school with my friends..

I really miss that moment!

New Task Done!!!

At last..done my task...

i've learnt something new. now i know how to combine two songs..by cutting certain part of it...

Nero WaveEditor is one friendly audio softwares i would say but you need to explore it to gain better understanding.

Audio Editting?? hmmmm...

Hmmm.....
What i've known of is to cut some part of and convert audio..But i never try any editing on the audio yet..should give myself a chance...It would be nice if i can edit the songs of my own choice. But still i need to acquire the skill first. Song is so close to my life. I listen to song everyday. I would say that music is almost part of my life. Sometimes it is the cure to my boredom. What is more interesting is that songs can be used to teach. This is because most of the songs have underlining meaning. They convey message that sometimes evoke feelings in you. How interesting yea! So, music is fun. I hope i can do something good for this task.