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?