Salam...
This week is vey ‘intimidating’ for us since we have to sit for the test. Since I have been rarely taking any test since we study in University of Malaya, this paper and pencil test was quite difficult for me. I have not been writing for quite some time, and I cannot imagine how I can sit in the lab answering all the four questions in just two hours time! Alhamdulillah...now the test has passed and this is the time for me to do some reflection regarding the test. All the four questions were quite tough for me, especially the last two questions. The first question requires us to select one of the prominent characteristics of young children and discuss how this quality helps them in the language classroom. It is very crucial for us as ‘teacher to be’ to take note of the characteristics of young learners because they are the one that we going to deal with in the classroom later. This will provide opportunities for teachers to exploit these characteristics for effective teaching and learning activities. Imagine a teacher conducting a lesson in the classroom without knowing anything about his/her students. The teacher will not be able to receive the appropriate feedback from the students since he/she cannot even understand the people that they are dealing with. As we know, children are very unique in their characteristics. Each of them possessed different language background, different personality, different intellectual development, and even different temperament. All of these different qualities have its own effects towards young learners’ ways of acceptance in the classroom. By taking note of all these factors, the teacher may vary his /her method of teaching, which will be a very good step in making the learning process even more effective for students.
The second question is more towards the comparison between traditional and technological teaching aids, which I find very useful for us as teacher to think about. This is because a teacher is not complete without teaching aids, and not all teaching aids are suitable to be used in the classroom. In my opinion, both technological and conventional teaching aids have their own positive and negative sides. Technological teaching aids, for instance PowerPoint may be very good in term of display and layout compare to ordinary slides or display sheet. However, when there is no electric current, we cannot even use the PowerPoint as our teaching materials in the classroom. This is when all the conventional teaching aids are more useful to be used in the lesson. However, I do admit that the use of technological teaching aids are more efficient in today’s’ world of education. Besides saving a lot of time, the effectiveness of the lesson can be increased, for instance by using Smartboard which can increase the level of interactivity of the lesson. Therefore, it is important for teachers to use materials that can support learning and create a productive environment for students.
The third question is more challenging in the sense that we are asked to write a summary of a story suitable to be used in the primary classroom, and then prepare a storyboard for the story’s use in the animation video. As we know, children love stories. Using stories as teaching aids in the classroom may create a fun, enjoyable learning environment. Besides that, there are many activities which can be developed by the teacher when using stories, for instance role play and dramatisation. This integration of authentic materials in the classroom will create a safe learning environment, as this is a good way to use real life application in the teaching. The storyboard actually train me to be more creative, as I have to plot the story according to its sequence, drawing some pictures of the characters and scene, besides inserting dialogue in it.
The last question requires us to evaluate the activity given and state the mental and emotional engagement that will be used by students in the activity. This kind of evaluation trains me to be more critical and creative in my thinking, because I need to know what are the mental and emotional engagement that involved throughout the activity. Evaluation is a very important point in teaching as it enables teacher to choose which activity is more appropriate for students. Without evaluating skill, the teacher may wrongly choose an activity, and this will affect the performance of the students.
All in all, this test really urge me to put my thinking cap as a teacher trainee and I hope that we are able to apply all the knowledge that we obtain throughout the lesson in our future teaching.
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