Critical reflection

1.0 Introduction
Teaching material is an important component when it comes to teaching. However, there
are two types of teaching materials which are readily available teaching material and teaching
produced teaching material. In this critical reflection, we are looking at the latter one as we future
English teachers or trainee teachers have a higher tendency to create or produce our own teaching
materials due to the consideration of the several factors. The teaching materials used for task 1
were a self-made big book, picture cards and worksheet to teach year 3 on the topic Unit 15 Four
Friends. The focussed skill was reading skill.
2.0 Factors in selection, adaptation and evaluation of your teaching and learning materials
Before selection of materials, there would be certain factors being considered by any
teacher to ensure the materials is used effectively in class. The factors of selection and adaptation
of teaching and learning materials might vary from a teacher to another teacher but there would be
some common factors to be considered which would apply to all teaching materials generally.
The first factor is the learners themselves. The target learners are of average proficiency
level and of level 1 category pupils. Therefore, big book appears to be the correct choice when it
comes to learner's needs as they need to be exposed to the English language skills especially
reading and vocabulary knowledge and addressing the each pupil's learning style. According to
Daniel (2001), big book could improve pupils' vocabulary because they learn new words while
reading (For e.g. cottage, chased, gingerbread man and etc.) There are great emphasize on
reading and new vocabularies related to this story and they are taught indirectly where pupils relate
the new learnt vocabularies to pictures shown in the big book. This would provide an enriching
process of reading where pupils could read, relate and understand while learning new vocabularies
from the story easily through a teaching material prepared to suit and benefit them. The usage of
big book also enables the pupils who learn visually to gain a big advantage in the lesson. Carbo,
Dunn & Dunn (as cited in Farwell, 2007) strongly claim that there are an average of 40% of pupils
of level 1 are of visual learner category and they should be stimulated with visual based teaching
materials based on their in depth research on relating teaching reading according to the pupils'
learning styles.
The pupils' interest and their experience also being looked through carefully before
choosing the appropriate teaching materials. The picture cards and worksheet comply to this
aspect clearly. The pupils generally love pictures compared to words and that means pictures
should be utilized to motivate pupils to read as too many words and less pictures might and most

probably discourage them to read. Therefore, it is shown clearly the rationale of using pictures
repeatedly in all three materials (big book, pictures, worksheet). It caters to their interest of
exploring the story through the assistance from the pictures and widens the horizon of their
imagination as it helps to visualize the story better. The pupils' experience of continuous exposure
to the pictures throughout all the stages in the lesson will actually help them in getting the story plot
right which is the learning objective of the lesson. This actually leads to the second factor of
selection of the materials where it caters to the goals and objectives of the curriculum. It is the
teacher's task to relate the goals and objectives of the curriculum when it comes to selection and
adaption of materials (Nunan, as cited in Howard & Major, n.d.). Therefore, we believe that since
the materials could aid us in achieving the learning objectives and learning standards so it is clear
that we do abide to the curriculum by enhancing reading skills through the teaching materials
chosen.
The third factor would be the quality of the material produced as besides selection and
adaptation, we are also looking at the aspect of evaluation of the materials. Evaluation tool
used was the checklist. Though it is important to look at the pre-production of the materials to
ensure there are no mistakes made during the production, it is also vital to view the postproduction of the teaching material to ensure the material is of a standard of quality to be used in
class. It would be shameful for the teacher if the materials produced do have plenty of errors and
do not meet the standard quality of a material. Therefore, it would be very helpful to have a
checklist where the teacher could set a particular standard or quality to be met before actually
using the material. Each material do have different aspect to be evaluated and the aspects are
carefully selected to suit each material correctly. The checklist enables us to fix or reproduce the
materials if there were any major or significant mistake(s) detected through the checklist. Hence,
the checklist has played the part of reflecting upon the characteristics of the material before
actually putting the material in use which actually establish the quality of the material produced.
Thus, it is lucid that there are three factors being considered for selection, adaptation and
selection of the materials of the teaching and learning materials. The factors are the learners, the
curriculum and the quality of the material.

3.0 Strengths and weaknesses in the production and use of your teaching and learning
materials, justification of your choice of the materials and improvements that can be made
to your materials
In this part, we would only be focussing on the big book as it covers all the aspects
mentioned in 3.0 comprehensively.

3.1 Big book

The first strength of the big book is the size of the big book and words are large enough for
the usage of a whole-class activity. Since, the big book is going to be used for the storytelling and
choral reading therefore it is vital for the visible and and the words legible to the all the pupils to be
read as it has a great influence of their choral reading skill later in classroom later. We do not want
to jeopardize the pupils' learning by making mistake on the teaching materials. The big book is also
light as it is just made of manilla cards therefore it is easier to be carried around and portable.
The major weakness of the self-made big book is it is not durable and could not be recycled
for continuous usage for other classess. This is mainly because the material used to make the big
book is of low quality (manilla card) due to lower cost. Therefore, the big book is only
recommended for one time usage only and need to be repaired from time to time for continuous
usage. The second weakness is the big book is not user-friendly. It is very hard to operate the big
book alone as the material used are of paper based materials and it actually required to pupils to
hold on to the big book each side so that the big book could be seen by everyone. This is actually
bad as the pupils holding do not have access of reading the big book though they take turn to hold
the big book.
The suggestion for improvement would include the material used to make the big book
should be of hard concrete material such as mounting board compared to manilla card. Though it
is expensive compared to manilla card but it the long run it is more cost effective as we need not
have to reproduce the book again and again and could recycle the usage of the big book. A
concrete and stable big book is also easier to operate and user friendly as it does not move easily
like manilla card as it is thick and heavy.
The choice the self-made big book is made due to the cost effectiveness compared to
readily available big book. The language used in the self-made could be adapted to suit the
language proficiency of the targetted pupils (average-proficiency level) and it would customized for
that group and could be used the year after that group again. The big book also actually encourage
two way interactions between the pupils and the teacher where there is room for reading together
and responding to the text together where it would allow a richer experience of reading rather than
mere reading of normal storybook (Mohana, 1993).
(1405 words)

References
Daniel, H. (2001). Benefits of big book. Retrieved from http://benefitof.net/benefits-of-big-books/
Farwell, T. (2012). Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic Leaners. Retrieved from
http://school.familyeducation.com/intelligence/teaching-methods/38519.html
Howard, J. & Major, J. (n.d.). Guideliness for Designing Effective Language Teaching Materials.
Retrieved from http://www.paaljapan.org/resources/proceedings/PAAL9/pdf/Howard.pdf
Mohana Nambiar. (1993). Early Reading Instruction Big Books in the ESL Classroom.
Retrieved from http://www.melta.org.my/ET/1993/main3.html