ELE 3104

3.1 REFLECTION
Alhamdulillah, first and forever, I would love to thank Allah for everything. On 15th September 2011, we have been asked to apply our ELE 3104 assessment in teaching. Therefore, we have to present our lesson plan that we have prepared earlier for the English Language Teaching Methodology For Young Learners task.
From my observation, many of my friends have chosen standard 3 syllabuses for their micro teaching processes. I thought, maybe it was going to be easy for them to prepare a lesson plan and at the same time to do the micro teaching as the topics are easier and do not involve complex learning such as grammar in writing. For me, I have determined to choose year 4 topic that was Let’s Write and focusing on Grammar skill which was Irregular verbs. I would like to challenge my self with the difficulties that I would have faced that I saw not many of us have put this as their targets or aims. Grammar as we know it is a major problem in learning English for Second Language for Malays. So here, I really liked to have the real situation of teaching English at school. So it would be easy for me to find the problem which is to be assumed as weaknesses.
There were three skills that I was focusing on and it went with three levels respectively. For the first level, it was Read aloud words, pronouncing correctly. For the second, Listen to and repeat correct words and the third were Match words to other words and write simple sentences with the words given. As stated on my lesson plan, we can refer the Learning outcomes and student prior knowledge, teaching aids, generic skills and moral values that have devoted in the lesson.
I admit, it was my first time doing this lesson plan and I have faced many problems and it kept encountering me again and again. My major problem was choosing the best activity for certain stage. It was not hard to produce the idea, but it was hard when I had to rethink whether the activity chosen is suitable for student’s level, syllabus, time and space and many factors that could be related in the coming lesson. So the activities that really were available that time was limited.
Nevertheless, the teaching was running smoothly and the problems were solved by lecturer’s favors. I had to satisfy with my effort even I have not done my best and I hope I can do better next time. The teaching process has really helped me in developing my skills in teaching. I have recognized my strengths, weaknesses and a few improvements to be implemented in the future.
Strengths
The strengths of my teaching basically held on my chosen activities. As you can refer on my lesson plan sheet, I have provided interesting event for teaching and learning activities which were game on set induction, listen and repeat and singing at presentation, verb matching at practice, crossword puzzle at production and wheel of verbs at closure. If I was the student, I would have never been bored in the class. Kids generally portrayed with playing games, having fun and easy to lose attention. Therefore, the activities were prepared to tackle those problems from occurring during my class. My pupils would not play other games if my games are more interesting than theirs. So, the strength that I would like to high light here is the activities that I have planned were good enough to attract pupils’ attention to stay focus in learning.
“Student might not only choose what to study, but what and why that topic might be interesting one to study”
(Rogers 1999)
“Any fun activity which gives young learners the opportunity to practice the foreign language in a relaxed and enjoyable way”
( Martin 1995)

The fact that I have decided to use all those activities was reasonable. I thought analytically in choosing activities for every stage in steps. It is because, the activity chosen plays important role in making my pupils understand and to ensure the learning outcomes could be achieved at the end of the lesson so that the lesson would not waste time. Here is another challenge emerged as I have stated earlier. The activity must be knowledgeable, and suitable for syllabus. Therefore, here I had to use my creativity and twist my brain to adapt the lesson into games and attractive activities. What I was looking for was meaningful learning. If my interactive activities stand alone without any benefit, I should not teach English in school. But here, I have managed to make my pupils understood about the focused skill which was irregular verbs. At the presentation stage, I have well planned the activity with teaching aids usage. The reason was, the pupils will more memorize the words by reading cards than they do without it. It retain on their mental image longer then usual because of the combination of a few senses. The way I taught also involved repetition which I asked my pupils to repeat after my pronunciation upon certain verbs in present tense and past tense forms. They were parroting me perfectly. Wozniak once said:
“Effective learning must be based on repetition”
( Dr. Piotr Wozniak 1998)
Here my goals were listening and pronouncing the words given correctly. Despite the timing was a little bit off, but they pronounced them well.
The next strength of mine is the usage of interactive teaching aids and materials. I have used slideshows, words cards, envelopes of word cards for verb matching, cross words puzzle worksheet and wheel of verbs for my activities. The materials I used were suitable with the activities executed. All the materials and aids were built in good looking way and fascinating. I knew children well. They love bright colours as we can find it on television cartoons and animations. Therefore, I have made my teaching aids way too bright in colour so they would love them beside, it would be easy for them to read words on it as it is contrast. Now my teaching aids really helped them. Regarding to several resources, colours play important role in studying, memorizing words. So, they were lucky to have the aids.
“Children remembered colour cues better than verbal cues”
( Vuontella 1999)
I also have acted nice in front of my mock pupils. Acting as a nice teacher, I praised them, gave them thumb up and present to encourage them in learning. As a result, the pupils seemed happy and motivated. It is called positive reinforcement. Real children would appreciate their teacher’s gift even it is not big enough to be announced. It means, if a teacher gives their student a present, surely it motivates them to be good in front of the teacher and next to be good in learning.
“The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount. “
(B. F. Skinner)
So, giving praise and present are one of best method to motivate and control our pupils and classroom.

Weaknesses
There were lots of weaknesses that I immediately realized after I have done micro teaching. Even though the activities that have been prepared were interesting for kids, I have forgotten one important main point. If I was the pupil, I was a boy. Therefore, there are certain activities planned were sort of boy game such as wheel of verbs and game of memorizing. Mean while there were certain activities that seemed only girls involved. What am I saying is, the class involvement has not fully happened. It can be said that the boys enjoyed playing with the boys and vice versa. With that, the essence of moral values that I would like to apply to them not really worked. Singing would be one of the best activities I can include in my lesson. According to a scholar:
“It is an activity that may be enjoyable irrespective of age, gender, culture, ethnically or religion.”
( Hughes 2007)
The next weakness is on me. While the teaching executed, I totally forgot about the time management. It happened maybe because I was nervous by the time I entered the micro teaching class. This is because I have never taught English before and it was my really first time applying the method taught. I have spent a lot of time for induction set and I have taken a lot of times to think and recall the steps in the lesson prepared. Therefore, the gaps between the steps looked dull and I was quite anxious at those times.

Improvement
For the first problem, the boys and the girls would not cooperate nicely in doing activities which means the class involvement was weak. It was like the boys have their own activities and so that with the girls. They were not cooperating to each others as I had planned. As the problem solver, I have to think advance. The activities should not have been racial and gender bias. I should have prepared activities that would attract boys and girls to cooperate each others, play and discuss each others. The team work between girls and boys would produce excellent results. The information shared would bring benefit to each other. So, my point here is, I should have thought more careful in choosing the best activity to avoid gender bios. Or maybe I could have combined those activities that executed so the boys and girls could play and learn together.
For the second problem, It emerged because of my anxiety and reckless. I was so nervous that I have taken lots of times to calm down and recall the steps in my teaching process. I suppose this happened because I have prepared the materials just a day before the event occurred. Therefore, I was not well prepared even thought I have done the preparation before the teaching. Technically, I was not familiar with my aids and materials and I did not practice as if I was an excellent teacher. Therefore, the answer to my problem is of course to prepare the materials earlier so that I can muster the aids that I built. I should have been better prepared then my usual preparation. That is what a trainee does.