Engagement

Hi, everyone. I would like to share my experience in school on how I made form 1 students to engage in classroom discussion. The topic discussed was "Recycling".

I instructed my students to collect things that people normally throw away such as bottles, boxes, plastic products and toys.

During the lesson, these things were heaped in the middle of the room and the students sat in a circle around them. First, I showed the class how I had used a mineral water bottle into a beautiful vase. I described the procedures to make and decorate my model. My presentation was to serve as a supportive base for my students to describe their own models later. In other words, teacher demonstrated how learners could make something and then talk and write about the creations.

In describing their products orally, it was evident that students self-corrected with their grammar and vocabulary usage that they always use in daily communication. Thus, I can say that existing or prior knowledge is activating in learning process. And I would make corrections for any misuse of the English Language in grammar or even their sequence connectors used. In this way, learners able to learn new words or phrases besides their demonstration skills. Students worked on communicating their thoughts on their model and focused on the decisions they made in order to make the model look authentic. Thus, I can be sure that their new knowledge is demonstrated from their thought about what they were to say to the class. I hope in future if there is any rubbish or debris that could be recycled, my students will take them and began to model-making them as instructed in my class. If that happened, I can say that my learners are applying their new knowledge in real world problem solving. Isn't it?

In presenting their ideas in written form, students again used language in the context of a recent experience. The lessons had provided learners with the opportunity to make authentic use of oral and written language. Many teachers are making mistake when they discussing about essay writing. Oftenly, they will give a few sample of essay followed by class discussion and then ask students to proceed with their own writing. This type of engagement could make our children bored and blurred on what they are going to do. Let them engage with the real world situation and automatically they could generate as many idea on what they are going to do. As Dr RM told us, don't ever enrage students with the boring class but pay more attention and have 100% eye-contact with them.

Last but not least, all the best to my beloved classmate in engaging students. As long as, we as a future teacher to-be can choose the most appropriate teaching materials to suit the cultural, cognitive and proficiency level of our students. Hopely, that WE wouldn't have any problem in 'Engagement'.


Rasheeda Kamal