ANOTHER STEP TO BE A RESOURCEABLE TEACHER

THIS WEEK , we have learnt about working with young learners. They are six major points that related with this topic which are

 Children’s ability to grasp meaning
 Children’s creative use of limited language resources
 Children’s capacity for indirect learning
 Children’s instinct for play and fun
 The role of imagination
 The instinct for interaction and talk

EACH GROUP will be presented for each group. For my group, we have chosen CHILDREN’S ABILITY TO GRASP MEANING.

CHILDREN’S ABILITY TO GRASP MEANING

BASED on our discussion and lecture’s note that Pn Foziah has given us, we can say that, children grasp meaning or understand the vocabulary from repetition of words, routine, familiar and concrete words. According to Piaget, children cannot or difficult to understand abstract meaning because they are still in the concrete stage which they need support or real thing in order to grasp the meaning. As a teacher to be, I think that it is essential for me to know and understand this condition because I will be an English teacher. If I want to introduce new vocabulary to my students, I should consider these factors in order to make sure them to grasp the meaning at the maximum level. Hence, exposure to English Language through more than one medium appears more effective than relying on a single medium (Byrne, D. 1988). We agree with this statement as it gives opportunity to the students to grasp the meaning in different ways and make them enjoy the teaching and learning process.

WHAT can we do as a teacher? So, we can provide concrete materials for instance using puppets, gesture, different intonation, demonstration and applying the Total Physical Response approach in our lesson. This is because students best learn if the activities involving their senses; hear, touch, smell, taste, sight. This action could make them understand the lesson better as

“I listen, I forget,
I see, I remember,
I do, I understand”

This expression was claimed by the Nuffield Mathematics Project and it objective was to guide primary school pupils to learn through concrete experiences. We agreed with this approach because the knowledge that they might get from this experience may remain long as they can practise what they have learnt.

We also have to bear in mind that we should avoid giving abstract word because they cannot understand and accept the meaning. In terms of choosing the resources for them, we should exploit the resources wisely in order to produce meaningful teaching aid as it made our presentation meaningful and interesting. The purpose of using a lot of teaching aids was pupils really love something that was colourful and they like to observe concrete things in order to understand the lesson better. According to Moon J. (2005), she claimed that pupils will feel more interested in using the resources as they get opportunity to practise their English.

A PICTURE WORTH THOUSAND WORDS

What can you see from this picture? I assume that all of you will have different interpretation. I think this picture can be used in my classroom. I can ask their opinion as it arouses pupils’ attention in order to interpret the picture. Yet, I can use this picture in my teaching and learning process because it has variety of shapes. There is something to be pondered which is as a teacher, we should creative and find something interesting that can be used in our class. This is because interesting, attractive, colourful picture can help pupils to understand the lesson better. So, what is your interpretation? For me myself, I think it is a map. How about you?

week three

Week two ~ Second assignment

This week is the week where we get our second assignment. Our internet skill will be tested in this assignment. The elements that our lecturer wants to see are Downloading, Encoding, Storing, Burning, and Searching skill. This is a group assignment. Each group consists of five members. After we choose our group members, Puan Foziah changes our groups because she not satisfies with our choice. She has set her criteria in order to form a group which is we have to be in mix gender and race. At first, all of us are not agree with her since we are used to choose our own group members before this in IPIK. But then, after she explains her reasons why she doing this as she wants us to work with everyone. This is a kind of preparation for us to be in group with people we are not used to work before.

 

For this assignment, we have to use Curriculum Specification for English Year 5. Besides that, each group will get different topic. For my group, we get topic “Family First”. She reminds us to use this CS. At first, I keep on thinking, why we have to follow CS. This is because, I thought it is depends on us to search pictures that we want to choose. After that, I realize that how important CS is.

CS has been set up by the Ministry of Education as a guideline @ framework for teachers to assist them in their teaching and learning process. It guides teachers to prepare for her lesson. A teacher without CS is like a blind man without his cane. Yes, maybe she can teach without CS but students will not get what they suppose to get for that particular year. In CS, it has learning outcomes and certain things that students need to acquire suit with their stage of development. If teachers teach them with topic for that not supposes to be taught, it might disturb their cognitive development.

 

Puan Foziah also gives examples for each skill. For example, we can use keepvid, Bit torrent and so on to download the videos that we intend to keep. I asked my friends if we have another alternative. She said we can directly save the video if we use orbit downloader. For encoding, she suggests to encode in Total video converter. My friends tell me that we can use Super converter. These are the storing and burning software we can use to store our file that has been suggested by my lecturer.

Storing – photobucket, 4shared file    burning- NERO STARTSMART

I have found other software to keep our file. Storing – www.slide.com

 

            I have to admit that I am not familiar with all these software. Luckily, I have this course for this semester. I hope I can learn many things from this course since my lecturer is very supportive and she has much knowledge about it. Besides, my course mates also are here to help me in order to learn.

WEEK ONE: INTRODUCTION TO PBEY3102

This is my first week in this course, PBEY 3102-Using and developing resources for young learners. I kept on thinking what this course is all about. I cannot wait to enter the class. I assumed it was more on how we as a teacher to be develop and exploit everything around us in order to apply it in the classroom.

However, what I thought was wrong as actually it is about we use technology as the source that can be implemented for our students. I found that it was fun because I did not realize that anything related with technology can be used in the classroom.

My jaw dropped because looking at my lecturer, Pn Foziah, she knows everything about technology. It made me envy as a new generation and a human being that born in a technology era, did not know much knowledge about technology compared to her. She seemed excited when talked about anything related with technology. She made me realized that a simple song, video clip or photo can be resources for our lesson. I did not that all those things that can be found around us were adequate to us.

While my lecturer presented in front of the class, I kept wondering how I am going to learn all these new things because I am not use to them before. I am quite nervous and worried if I cannot survive in this course. It seemed all my friends familiar with technology as I do not know anything. Now I realized that how it is important for a teacher to learn new things and be creative and innovative in order to produce a good quality of resource. This is important because my students can get the benefits as this is my job as a teacher to educate them. However, I have a strong feel that my friends and my lecturer can give guideline on how to acquire this new knowledge.

I hope that by entering this course, I can widen my knowledge on how to develop high quality of resources. In addition, I want to equip myself and I need to work hard so that I can acquire the knowledge very well.

breaking the ice session

assalamualaikum and hi to all..welcome to my blog. actually this is my first time creating a blog officially=). I've one before but it's only in my friendster. First of all, let me introduce myself.m siti suhaili sarif aka elly@majid@suhaili etcu can call me anything that u like except siti nurhaliza =pbeing a tesl student gives me many oppurtunity to learn many things from everyone around me.thanks to lecturers n cohort 3 students =)i think thats all from me.hope u can share smthing wif me n dun shy ya..


one thing,though reading here please do not discount
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here i've the saham osomake it good =)
enjoy reading and shoutouting
may Allah bless