The learning standards used for the week.

It took me ages to write this entry. I guess I was contemplating on it because I felt unsatisfied teaching this unit. This is the stage where the gap between the poor and the strong will widen. My 1 Perdana class is lagging behind. I anticipate it, however their verbal intelligent deluded me into believing that they are okay when they are not. It all started when I gave them extra writing and reading work.......

On the first day of the week, 1 Perdana had to go on some revision for the past week lesson. I did this to refresh their memory on things. It went well. Some showed signs of boredom but I still went on for the sake of the poor learners. 1 Sarjana sing a song from the text. They love it when I asked everybody in the class to take turn singing and substituting with their own names. Then, the intro and reintroduction of the phonics /s/, /a/, /t/, /p/.

I planned for 1 Sarjana to play hop scotch to reinforced their listening and speaking but there was not enough time. I did that with 1 Perdana on the second day and  about half were still confused on the phonics and grapheme. I always press this thought on my mind: I am teaching phonics, always. As far as TnL of the listening and speaking skills, this is my focus.

The flash cards are out again! So we revised the phonics /s/, /a/, /t/, /p/ and this time around, we associated the sound with the letters. I reminded them of the small letters and capital letters. As suggested in the text, I went on to introduce the words pat, sat, tap, sap. In the first place I taught them by blending the sound together. It didn't work!!! I'm just not expert enough to do this!

So I took a step back by sounding the letters one by one and at the end the whole sound of the words. Example: /s/, /a/, /t/ = sat. This way the pupils will able to relate what they have been learning and  they will be motivated to make the sound. Blending just make them feel weird. Or I did that? huh....

Check out some the pictures taken during the week

The longest lesson! For 1 Sarjana I spent 2 hours doing this, 4 periods for 2 days. As expected, 1 Perdana took 3 days or 6 periods for that matter. I'm not complaining, It was worth it. The writing class was rather a mixture of everything. After all writing skills is the highest skill regarded in learning a language. So you need all the resources available to make it work.

I started the writing lesson by doing identification activities of the letters. Next, they practice writing the letters both in the activity books and their exercise books. The second day exercises required them to listen carefully to the sound being made and write the first letter of the sound in the space provided. Example: apple, so the pupils need to write a.  

Associating words with sound and letters gave the pupils a little challenge to their cognitive function. It may seem easy for adults but it is i+1 to my young learners. This went for a quite a while and we finished the lesson by copying the words learned in the reading lesson. They need to get used to the lines when they write. I plan to get back on the words and check on their writing tomorrow.


I feel accountable to my pupils success. I need to brush up on my teaching strategies to get them hooked and to tackle my poor learners. I've indentified some of them. They just need extra coaching and lazy antidote. Hmm....where can I get that, for myself? :D

Phew! I confess, it is hard teaching when you are clueless yourself. But I like this feeling, when you are constantly on your feet and never seem to be comfortable. It pushes you to be the best. I'm willing to learn, explore and maybe try something new myself. I'm going to try to blog every weekend on my journey in KSSR year one. It might come handy upon reflection.

The first week: All about sounds! It involves every sound you can imagine, environmental and verbal. For a start, I am not going to divert much from the textbook. The contents will be the same, but the way the lesson is structured will be of my own.

Highlighted: The Learning Standards chosen

Listening and speaking.

The sounds involved are cow's, bee's, monkey's, dog's, snake's, hummingbird's and woodpecker's. I showed them the pictures and make the sound. They repeated it several times with actions. For enrichment activity, the pupils were asked to circle the picture when they hear a particular sound being made. In addition, I also included sounds around the school. We placed our ears to the wall and eavesdropped! They love it!!



Reading


This was where the headache came in last week. Year one, week one, Reading???? I flipped through the learning standards, luckily it involves identifying roman letters and shapes. So....I decided to write several writing (Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Jawi, Bahasa Melayu and English) on the board and let them chose which one is English (lets not undermine their pre-requisite knowledge shall we?). As expected, they can. So the lesson went on to introduce the direction of writing, we did 'tai chi' to show left and right. I made up the moves, obviously. Then I went on to show the size of the letters, which were small and capital letters. During this stage, all I want them to understand was that there were two sizes involved, small and capital. We did some action on that too. To demonstrate further, I showed them letter cards to compare the sizes of the letters and also directed them to some authentic material in the classroom. The clue in identifying small and capital letter in a group is the size. I know there are loads of tricks to this but for enrichment activity, I asked them to colour blue for small letters (they can see it small, its obvious) and red for capital letter. The worksheet below was cut in 3x3 and distributed to all. I just do it this way to save some papers.




Writing

It's 'tai chi' time again, and it seemed to me that they enjoyed it. Anyway, we did some lines on the board. zig zag, straight, loop (clockwise and anti-clockwise). It's a lot, I know but I need to go a little fast on this. To start off the writing class, I did posture check, pencil holding ability and their working area, boy! it has been a while since I last taught year one and I find it rather tiring to pin point every small aspect. The lesson went smoothly, and we did some tracing in the book. We carried the activity to the next day, and many were able to complete. I find their motor skills are okay, flexible enough. Let's just hope when the actual writing occur, they will be as ready as this.

Language Arts


We danced and sang to the tunes of the wheels on the bus, the lyrics changed of course. It incorporated the sound that we heard on the first day. Some actions and singing were done. The initials to the sounds were introduced and as the objectives, I only required 3 creative sounds out of 4 being taught, so the objectives were achieved! Yeay! My only regret is I think many in the weaker class didn't appreciate the activity. I must improvise more to get them engaged. As usual, enrichment activity, matching the initials to the animals. I helped them by mimicking the sound as they went through the exercises.




That's all. I'm tired of typing. Maybe next time I would just vlog.

The song for the first week! The lyrics will be changed of course, to suit the content of the TnL. We will be singing this on Friday. The language arts class! This is why I love KSSR (I hate the assessment though, it's a love and hate relationship), lots of fun things being re-introduce into the classroom.

First topic: Sounds around us. It involves the teaching and learning of the sounds around the pupils environment. Pupils will listen and mimic the teacher in the first stage and then go on to identify other sounds they can hear in their surrounding.

Penmanship will start off by tutoring the pupils on how to get ready for writing. The posture, the essentials for writing and how to hold the pencil correctly. By observing their drawing last week, many will not have a problem on this. They only need the discipline as in formal education, readiness to learn is very important.

As for reading, I will introduce graphemes and its relation to sounds. It should not be a problem because I've planned to include some actions so they can correlate the graphemes and sounds in the most fun way.

I want to be the teacher that they will remember in their whole life. In a good way of course!

Loads to do....I'm not sure what to blog. Got myself a 8.9 Samsung Galaxy Tab. Busy preparing for the new academic year. I'm sharing some of the materials. More to come! Till then, welcome students! I'm in a new school this year....Sekolah Kebangsaan Behor Empiang. Can't stay long!  See you later...

S.K. Behor Empiang