English Language Communication Project in SJKT Ladang Semenyih : Day 1 (10/10/2014)

This semester, our lecturers have come up with another English Language Communication Project in SJKT Ladang Semenyih and students from  the School of Education,  were divided into three groups. Our task is to design and conduct activities based on the theme set by the lecturers which is on "Secondary School". 

I'm a third year student and  was put in Group 2, together with 3 other third years, one second year, and five first year students. First, we get to know each other and decided on what kind of activities that we would like to design for the Tamil School Students and the materials to use for each of these activities.  I was appointed as the Co-leader of the group where I took all of my group members numbers and set a Whats-app group chat. We did this because it is easy to set meetings and email them on the activities. 

The Process of Design 

When I planned my lesson, I used the backwards design approach such as I was thinking that the final product should be a mini presentation on "My Ideal School". Then, I was having second thoughts that 25 students doing the same presentation on "My Ideal School" will be quite boring. So, I would like to divide these  students into three mixed ability groups and these three groups will be given three different sub-topics for them to do their mini presentation. 

• Group 1: My Primary School Memories 
• Group 2: Qualities of Secondary School Students 
• Group 3: My Ideal School 

While keeping this idea in mind, I knew there were certain concepts that my group members and I needed to get across the students. First, we planned to have two ice-breaking activities which is to get to know our students characters and familiarize them with their facilitators and to ensure that both us teachers and students are introduced to each other for the following weeks of teaching to be smooth sailing. During this time, we activate students prior knowledge about primary and secondary school by asking a lot of open ended questions

These two activities lasts about 30 minutes. 

We started the lesson by first  Introducing the Theme "Secondary School". I allocated two teachers to carry out this part of the activity. They are required to have a sharing time with the students where these teachers will share their personal experience during their primary and secondary years and incorporate their experience to illustrate a positive image of Secondary School Life to inspire the students. The materials used was School Magazines, which allows students to look through the pictures, societies, students academic achievement and sports in a Secondary School environment.  The reason we design this is to encourage, motivate, and inspire students to strive in their Secondary Schools and the materials such as the school magazines enables students to explore such as by helping the learner to make discoveries in the language used in the school magazine. 

During this lesson, students feel at ease because they acquire background knowledge, and the organisation is presented well. Instructional materials such as teacher instructs students to look through the school magazines  as a basis of input for the learners receive and their language practices is through asking open ended questions about the information in the school magazine(Richard, 2001). Tomlinson agrees to Richard's opinion on instructional materials

This activity lasts about 30 minutes 

Next,  Teacher So Yeon and I designed two activities. One is about My Future Plans: Ambitions, UPSR Expectations, Talents, and Ways to Improve, while the other is Similarities and Differences between Primary and Secondary School. The reason we do two of the activities is to identify their ambitions, what they hoped to achieve in their UPSR exam, Talents, to recognize their weaknesses and to introduce students to the changes that will occur as they progress to their Secondary Education. On the first activity, Teacher So Yeon and I  prompt the  students  by providing the meaning, explanations and examples for each of these four sections. We also got our students interests by asking a lot of open ended questions and actively engaged them to participate in the discussion. We did this so they have a clear idea on what they are supposed to do in this activity. 

We managed to use Instruction Check Questions (ICQs) to check students understanding. The other teachers help by giving out coloured memo pads to students to write their answer, and they are required to paste it on the board. To my surprise, the students felt excited when they see materials such as the coloured memo pads, as there will happily choosing their favourite colours to write their answers. After each activity, I carried out a feedback session, where I gave each students  a constructive feedback on their answers. Their answers were pretty good, but I can see that they need to improve on their spellings and also able to differentiate  the spelling in both Malay and English. Same  method and  instructions were used in the 2nd Activity. 

Our materials for both Activity 1 and Activity 2 has achieve impact where it enables learners' curiosity, interest, and attention are attracted such as the My Future Plans activity has shown an attractive presentation, where the coloured memopads and coloured papers fill the space of the whiteboard(Tomlinson, 1998). The materials for these two activities took account of learners different learning styles such as it provides visual(e.g. learners prefer to see teacher writing the language down such as examples), auditory(e.g. hear the language from the teacher), and encourages students to be kinesthetic(e.g. learners did something physical such as following the activity instructions and stimulate students interests in pasting their colourful memo pads on the white board. These students are dependent by learning from the teachers. Moreover, I used my materials to provide opportunities for outcome feedback on students answers by encouraging students to spell the correct word and ask them why they wrote that particular answer (ibid).  

1st Activity- 45 minutes 

2nd Activity- 15 minutes 

In the Third activity, my group members and I have included an informal assessment that would require students to apply the knowledge that they have learned so far in this lesson. So we decided to split them into groups of three and got them to apply the knowledge they have learn and also each group has two teachers to teach on the topics assigned to them. 

The teachers in each group must first pre-teach some vocabulary and give instructions on what they need to prepare for their final mini-presentations. Students are given mahjong papers, magic pens. and colourful markers to draw and label their masterpiece. 

• Group 1: My Primary School Memories 
• Group 2: Qualities of Secondary School Students 
• Group 3: My Ideal Secondary School 

3rd Activity- 30 minutes 

The materials in all three activities such as memo pads and mahjong paper help learners to feel at ease are more relaxed because me and the other teachers taught them the concepts and provide examples on each of this activity. For example, the definition of "Ideal" and examples by showing a example of an "Ideal School" drawing. 

We end the lesson with a recap and wrap up. 

Overall the materials for Week 1 was positive because of its usefulness attractiveness that makes students feel motivated to accomplish certain task and also it adapts  well to the instructions for each of these activities. The term "Materials Development" talks about the principles  and procedures of the design. implementation, and evaluation of language teaching materials(Tomlinson, 2001). 

Processes of Designing and Using the Materials that Connect My Previous Experiences 

Throughout the years, this is not the first time for me teaching in SJK Ladang Semenyih, as I have been teaching and carrying out activities in this same school in my previous semester. I felt that process of designing activities and choosing the appropriate materials to carry out the activities with is manageable for me to plan because I was taught a lot by my seniors on how to have proper and simple instructions, and used Instruction Check Questions instead of asking students "Do you understand?", which students were eventually say yes with hesitation, Concept Check Questions(CCQs) is used to pre-teach certain types of vocabularies to students before attempting any reading articles regarding the theme and my seniors make sure that our instructions are easy to follow and have a loud and clear voice projection. I used materials such as colourful memo pads in the previous semester and also for this semester. I feel that this material is useful because of the attractiveness of the material(colourful memopads), students can write it using more than one memo pads and it is encourages students to paste it on the whiteboard(motivate them and improve their confidence level). 

These previous experiences are helpful to me because we had an amazing senior who literally taught us the steps of designing activities and ways of conducting them. She showed examples of instructions and language analysis samples, ICQs and CCQ. It really made me feel confident about using the knowledge and  the previous experience I've gained from my seniors and also peers to design fun and meaningful activities for students to enjoy throughout the lesson. 

You Tube Link on 'Concept Check Questions(CCQs) 

http://youtu.be/VKo0pz2qVys

Confusing and Conflict

Throughout the process of designing, there are some confusion in sections and also find them unclear. First, it was the theme on 'Secondary School", where I felt the theme is too broad and it is quite difficult for me and my group members to focus on a particular scope. Despite these difficulties, we chose to  focused 'Secondary School' in general. In addition, there was also a few conflicts between my group members during the stage of designing and using the materials such as one member in my group did not attend some meetings , thus  it made very difficult for us to split the task. Another thing is we faced more conflicts  when it comes during the teaching day itself, where some of my group members didn't keep to the time and rushed their ice-breaking activities. They are finishing the activities really fast, and left us with more time to spare. Thankfully, one of my members decided another activity such as the "Tangled activity" for students to relax after the first part of the lesson. Second,  some of my members didn't have the time to be with the students, which can be seen a lot in the introduction part. One of my members who is leading this activity taught using difficult concepts to explain about Secondary School and also did not allow students to explore and ask questions about  the School Magazines. Lastly, is when one of my group member was teaching, and the other members gave the coloured memo pads to students without listening to the instruction given. I'm afraid it has disturb the students concentration, but we managed to get their attention quickly :).  

Consideration  

Paid attention 

Overall, as a group, we managed to carry out all the activities, the materials were enough for both teachers and students to use to carry out the task, and all of my members managed to use the materials to engage the students in the activities. 

Did not pay attention 

Our group did not pay attention to the time for each activities. We will rushing the activities as students did not have the time to explore the materials , use them to ask questions and to enjoy themselves. Another thing, is I should have had a proper rehearsal with my group members, if I knew this things were about to happen. 

                                                                                                                         

Improve my materials in the future 

I think there is one material that I would like to improve which are the School Magazines. Instead of teachers reading and explaining about their experiences , I would like to have a mind map  on Secondary School to show students the types of buildings, the height of students, types of  extra-curricular clubs and societies  offered in Secondary Schools or even a made up story book on "My First Day at a Secondary School", that way students can prepare and see themselves ready to move on to Secondary School.  

Reference: 

Tomlinson, B. (Ed.). (2011). Materials developments in language teaching ( 2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.