Weekly Reflection: Week 2

Listening and Speaking Lesson On 22nd July 2013, I have conducted a lesson for teaching the listening and speaking skills with Year 2 Bestari. It is a mixed class consists of 36 pupils. The topic for this week is Unit 10-Sharing and Caring under World of Stories. This is the first lesson that was conducted with them. There were strengths and weakness for my lesson and undoubtedly, lots of room for improvement. I shall start with the strengths of my lesson. Firstly, the ultimate strengths for my lesson were, of course, the colourful teaching aids. These teaching aids have helped me to give a better explanation on the topic that I should cover during the lesson. These teaching aids were one of the many ways to attract the pupils toward the lesson and enjoy the lesson. Piaget states that children at the age of 7 to 12 years old need concrete content in order to learn and solve some problem (as cited in Santrock, 2010). I assigned that the learning was taken place because they pupils were eager to know the ending of the story. They kept asking me to continue my story. Props such as characters headband and pictures were used to symbolise the situation of the story. Morgan (2013) stated that well chosen props create engaging lessons that help to tap into pupils own reservoirs of creativity. Furthermore, it is a beneficial situation to me as the pupils were very eager to listen to the story Dolly, The Hungry Doe. They listened to the story attentively. After that, I conducted an activity where they need to arrange the pictures according the correct sequence based on the story listened. Everyone was participating actively. It is important for all pupils to have equal opportunities in doing something so that the learning can take place without any pupils felt that they were left out. It is not an easy task to conduct a listening and speaking lesson because many aspects need to take into account so that it will be conducted successfully. One of the aspects is the classroom condition. The class noise is too loud as the class it is facing the construction site. The noise from other class made it difficult for me as I need to project my voice so that everyone can hear the story. After finishing the lesson I felt that my throat was hurt.

Nor Julaiha Shamsuddin (910109-03-5104)

Weekly Reflection: Week 2

Another weakness that I found for my lesson was the instruction given during the arranging activity was not clear and caused the pupils confusion. Consequently I need to explain it in details for few times. I need to be more precise and clear in my instructions. According to Chitravelu (2005), listening to instructions with too many difficult words and sentences that are long and complex can be a very frustrating experience. Hence it is very important to make the instruction understandable by the pupils so that there will be no confusion for the pupils to understand it. I should aware of the pupils level of proficiency in English so that the language that I will be using suited to their level. I need to use simple language for the next class because there are some pupils in my class who are not able to understand any single English words. I need to use the body language and gesture to help me explain the task to the pupils as I do not want to use switching code during my lesson. There was an activity which I could not carry out during the lesson. The closure stage where the pupils need to think about the CCTS questions about the moral of the story cannot be conducted because of time constraints. The reason why I want to post the questions is to make them think critically about something and know how to handle the situation. For instance, how to react when someone is always asks something from other meanwhile he is too lazy to do it. The class was dismissed by me conclude everything. Technically, everything went really well as planned. In conclusion, this listening and speaking lesson teaches me many aspects need to be given attention so that lesson will be conducted smoothly and according to what I have planned. By conducting the simulated teaching, I was able to reflect on my strengths and weaknesses while conducting my session thus give me views about how to improve my self for the better future. It was a memorable experience for me.

Nor Julaiha Shamsuddin (910109-03-5104)

Weekly Reflection: Week 2

REFERENCES Chitravelu, N., Sithamparam, S. & Choon, T.S. (2005). ELT Methodology: Principles and Practice. Shah Alam: Oxford Fajar Sdn. Bhd. Morgan, S. (2013, March 20). Props for Drama Lessons. Retrieved from eHow.com: http://www.ehow.com/info_8755949_props-drama-lessons.html Santrock, J. W. (2010). Child Development. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

Nor Julaiha Shamsuddin (910109-03-5104)