LA 14 : Paper Wheel

Lesson : Language Arts
Year : 3
Topic : Pet's World

This activity is initially inspired from a Facebook post that I've searched which belongs to Zatil Aqmar : HERE. I only modified it a bit to make sure it can be done easily for my students.

So, in last week's class, I have prepared this activity for my Year 3 students. Initially, I was thinking to conduct this as writing activity, but I faced few challenges (LINUS stuff) and I'm out of time to do multiple things at one time. Thus, I conducted this activity as Language Arts for my students to have fun in their learning. 

At the beginning of the lesson, I showed them a book about frog's life cycle which I downloaded from HERE. Truly, this is a very good material to teach about frog's life cycle besides drawing them on the whiteboard especially when you can't really draw like me.

Then, I distributed the templates (three templates) : front circle, empty circle with five divisions, frog's stages which are showed as below.

 empty circle with five divisions (from Google)

 front circle which I edited from the previous five divisions template

frog's stages (ALL pictures are taken from HERE)

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HOW TO DO IT?

1. Print the templates on a 70gsm or 80gsm white paper.
2. Cut according to shapes. The front cover should be cut as in the picture sample below. Make a 'hole' on it properly.
3. Cut the frog's stages and paste it on the empty circle with five divisions templates.
4. REMEMBER TO WRITE DOWN THE NAMES OF EACH STAGE.
5. For sample, laminate the paper and clip them using brass fastener.
6. *I used snap fastener (butang katup) because its hard to find brass fastener here. But this will work on normal white paper (non-laminated ones).
7. Done! See the picture below :

P/S : Its a big challenge to conduct and prepare for this activity when you have a big number of students (mine : 37 students), but yeah, as long as they are having fun in doing it, I'm okay with it. Good luck and thanks for reading! :)

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Grammar 6 : Verbs and DIY Whiteboard

Lesson : Grammar
Year : 3
Topic : Pet's World

I've been too busy with netball these few months and I forgot on updating about my lessons here. Well, its not that always that I adapted my own lesson, and sometimes I got the ideas from the internet too. Okay, my pupils are weak at grammar. Teaching them to understand it and use it always a tiring one. There are days that I wondered and thinking on how to teach them grammar in a way that they know how to use it well.

Plus, my pupils are unable to create proper simple sentences. I believed that they are afraid to make mistakes and they do not know the words in English. Then, I realised that I should try to trigger them in making sentences through a competition among themselves. So, here's what I did for the lesson.

First lesson :
1. Using Charade game as the introduction as verbs are verbs. So, it is easy to act on it.

2. Prepare word cards with meanings at the back of it. I used 135gsm drawing block papers and manually write the words because I was too lazy to type and print and cut. Then, distribute the word cards to the pupils individually. Make sure all of them have one verb.

3. Allow them to think to create ONE simple sentence from the verb that they got. They may ask questions about other words that they do not know. Few of them love to use dictionary, which is good.

4. I checked their works and I was slightly disappointed because they can't properly make a simple sentence.

Due to that, I decided to prepare a better lesson for them, to trigger them to make sentences in the next lesson.

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Second lesson :

I prepared a 'DIY Whiteboard' which made up of laminated papers for them to use and write on it. I also prepared markers individually for them. But, this time, I grouped them into pairs and they shared the whiteboards and markers (because I did not make enough, my bad).

There are about 10 pairs (I have 37 pupils in this class), I just gave them a verb. The pairs are given about 2 minutes to discuss and write a simple sentence on their DIY Whiteboard. Then, they need to write it on the real whiteboard in front of the class. Then, we discussed it and pupils copied the sentences on their exercise books.

Guess what?? They did pretty well as compared to the individual ones. I concluded that they need something more than just exercise books, something that they can used in a fun way.  

So far, I believed that they know they can. Its just the matter of want to do, or not. Always believe in your pupils. If the pupils still weak in this, just ask them to meet you in the staff room during recess, teach them one-to-one. They'll get it. 

Thanks for reading! :)

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