New babies!

Just to inform other members, i got a message from Maslinda this morning. Good news, she and Nurul Hayati are now mommies! Congratulations to both of them! Enjoy those splendid and joyful moments with your new borns! (and don't forget to upload your babies' photo here very soon!)



gambar perhiasan: my baby ~ Muhammad Irfan Hakim - a day after birth :)

Panasonic Kid Witness News (KWN)

Heard of the Panasonic KWN before? It's a hands-on video education programme sponsored and supported by Panasonic where students learn to write, shoot, edit and produce their own 5 minutes video clip. I'm sure Chris is familiar with this programme as SMK Sri Aman has won the Videography Special Award in 2008! Congrats! To those who haven't heard of it please go to this website - http://kwnmalaysia.com/ All you need to do is tell your students to make the storyboards first and submit the entries to Panasonic and they will decide from the storyboards whether the students are selected to go for the video recording workshop. You have to send in the storyboards online, so, send in early because from experience last minute submission made entries jammed up and the Panasonic didn't get the storyboards.

Well, here are some photos of what my students had done this year, but, unfortunately, they didn't win anything.

Expect the Unexpected

This is a video of a sketch acted by Form 3 students on a chapter in 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' novel. These students are from the 5th class in the form. There are 32 students in the class with 10 girls and the rest are boys. So you can imagine how it is like where the boys rule!

The audio is terrible, couldn't figure out why...sorry!

This is the first chapter of the novel. The scene where a little girl, Edie, was trampled on by the evil Mr Hyde.

I told the students to just act as if Mr Hyde stepped on the girl. I didn't realize that 'Mr Hyde' had actually kicked and stepped on 'Little Edie' until I replayed the video and heard the other students muttered "Dia buat betul-betul!" (means he had really stepped on his friend). I scolded the boy and ordered him to apologize, but the 'victim' only replied "Ala...main-main je, Teacher" (means they are just joking around). Boys are boys! They really test my patience!

Christina's clip 2

hang out time ..

Orang pertama saya jumpa, Kak Deebah .. best kan kak .. bila dah tau nak guna blog ni kan? (^^,)


serius betul Aidza .. ke tension sebab lupa password? Aktiviti ni kat McD, lepas makan kena buat kerja hehe (Haa Liza .. jeling apa tu?)



hari berikutnyna .. kat Pizza Hut la pulak .. :) tapi frust jugak sebab tak dapat guna wifi kat situ .. urusan pun tak selesai semua ..


Saya nak ucapkan berbanyak2 terima kasih pada rakan2 yang sudi meluangkan masa cuti mereka untuk makan bersama-sama sambil try out new things in blog. Jika ada kelapangan bolehlah jumpa dengan yang lain pula ..

Thanks Kak Deebah, Adiza, Liza, Kak Siti and Norina for your time (^^,)
Jangan lupa siapkan entry dan masuk blog selalu ek!

Christina's little clip

Photos of activities over the year

Many things have happened over the last 11 months. I have done a lot and gone places. Here are just some photos that I have. Most have already been posted in facebook but here are some, just to remind me of the people I have met over the months.

Dr Lee Su Kim, writer and lecturer in UKM. She is really a Nyonya.

Dr Alan Maley, whose books I have read and used during my uni days.

Cast and crew and everyone involved in the school's "I have a dream" production. Something I am very proud to be associated with.

The Sri Aman crowd with Wai Yee (ex-sri aman and cast of musical "2 from Galilee")

The staff and PTA during the Royal Gala Dinner with the Permaisui Agong. No pic of her majesty, I'm afraid.

Selamat Bercuti dan Salam Aidil Adha

Saya mengambil kesempatan ini untuk mengucapkan Selamat Bercuti buat semua, walaupun ada yang terpaksa menjaga peperiksaan SPM serta terlibat dengan penandaan kertas peperiksaan, saya kira itu merupakan sebahagian daripada 'kehidupan' seorang guru - yang sentiasa mengorbankan waktu peribadi demi sebuah tugas yang mulia.


Buat rakan-rakan Muslim, saya panjangkan Salam Aidil Adha, semoga perayaan kali ini membawa seribu makna serta mengajar kita erti pengorbanan yang sebenarnya :)

Have fun with your families, and bring back all sweet memories!

Regards (^^)

Creating comic strips......

Hey everybody.....i want to share this website with all of u......www.makebeliefcomix.com .......perhaps all of u can try this with your students...................

Tributes my Form 3 students created in blogs - Christina

Here are the urls of my students' tributes. Just sharing. I haven't graded them yet. But I am impressed with some of the blogs.

http://tunkuabdulrahman-jnsz.blogspot.com/

http://3bakti09.blogspot.com/

http://little-fans-of-chedet.blogspot.com/

http://ghandihateswar.blogspot.com/

http://oprahwinfrey54.blogspot.com/

http://yooitsobamanator.blogspot.com/

Let me know if you have problem accessing them.

TASK 1 -
One of the lessons went well was a lesson I had with form 3 students. The topic was about
people and it was a lesson (to enhance writing) on describing people appearances .Using power point, (actually i wanted to use flash...but it's so time consuming!)I started off with showing them their very own snapshots that i had taken earlier during my classes. I got them to describe about their own appearances. They responded well to the pictures shown as it were their very own. They had a good time laughing and at the same time describing at those candid shots i took. The describing went on and on for quite some time as they were describing from head to toe. Without realising, they have successfully described using adjectives. I wrote all the adjectives mentioned on the board. The final few photos were superimposed. I did some editing with adobe photoshop to make them look slightly older, darker, with long hair etc. They were simply in 'stitches'! Next, i got them to create a sentence using those adjective and I also got them to expand those sentences. Here's an example

Jane is beautiful.Jane is a beautiful lady.Jane is a beatiful lady with long hair.Jane is a beautiful lady with long black hair.Jane is a beautiful lady with long black hair and green hazel eyes.

What made the lesson successful was because the pictures used were theirs and their friends.
I learned that students learned much better when they are exposed to technology. Using
computer, lcd, teaching softwares are a must in classrooms today but its totally different
when you manage to inject a teeny weeny creativity of your own to all those gadgets to come
up with something original and refreshing. I wouldn't say that it had much difference compared to other lessons as i have always tried to incorporate IT elements when i teach. What made the lesson successful was the response that i had gotten from the students. They
successfully came up with interesting decription of people using sentence expansion
technique. Not only that, as sentence expansion maintains the same structure of sentence,
they kinda memorized it at the same time too. I certainly have shared this sentence
expansion activity with my collegues and it worked wonders!! May be you could try it too and tell me about it.

TASK 2
It was a challenging lesson as i was teaching a group of good students ( a little demanding one
-as they always look for something exciting) and because i have to spend some time
editing photo shots, it's still kinda new to me.
The ideas for this lesson came from a friend of mine who is a teacher in another residential
school.I thought it was worth a try and indeed it worked wonders for my students as now they
have become more creative and expressive whenever they write their essays. There is
something I learnt from this particular lesson and that was to always inject our lessons
with something they are closely related with..n nowadays they are entwined with technology!

Task 1 :
a) One of the lessons that went well was a lesson i had with the form 2 students in 2007. The topic was The Phantom Of The Opera ( Plot ). I started the lesson with a 5- 8 minutes quiz about the novel to check on the students' undertstanding of the novel. Next, i put them into groups and asked them to choose a leader and a secretary. In this lessson, students were required to produce a poster to promote the novel. Guidelines and samples were given to the students to keep them into the right track. At the end of the lesson, students were required to put up their posters on the wall so that everyone would be able to look at each other's product. Marks were given and the group with the highest marks was given a present as a token of appreciation for their good efforts. I got the idea for this lesson from a discussion that i did with a friend of mine.
b) This lesson was different from other lessons as the lesson was an integration of English and Art subjects.
c) The integrations between Art and English subjects made the lesson fun and enjoyable. Students were able to use their creativity to produce attractive posters. Students who were good in art could come up with interesting drawings and those who were good in language would be able to describe the novel interestingly.
d) I learned that having a leader for each group is very important as the leader could help the teacher in class control. The leader could also help the teacher in making sure that all group members participated in the group discussions. Besides that, i also learned that guidelines and samples must be given to the students so that students have a clear idea on what they were suppose to come out with.
e) To improve the lesson, i supposed i could ask the students to evaluate their own works. I could ask the students in the class or students from the other classes to vote on the best poster. This could encourage good competitions among the students. I did share this lesson with a colleague of mine. She did the same lesson with her students and it was as succesfull as mine was.

Task 2 :
a) One of the lessons that i felt was challenging was a lesson i had with the form 2 students last year. The topic was People and Social Issues. ( Day In Day Out ). In this lesson, students were required to produce an itinerary of a place that they would like to visit. I got the idea for this particular lesson from the form 2 textbook. I did some alterations to the lesson to make it more interesting.
b) This lesson was different from other lessons as students were required to use the Publisher programme to produce an itinerary. As students were not familiar with Publisher programme, I had to teach the students on how to use the programme before the students proceed with the task.
c) The lesson was challenging as i had to make sure that the students were confident enough to use the programme before giving them the task.
d) I learned that I had to be knowledgeable and confident in using Publisher in order to use the programme to teach. This is because during the lesson, students tend to ask many questions regarding the programme. Besides, there would be many technical difficulties that I had to solve.
e) To improve the lesson, I would need to give a sample of the product that the students need to come up with. As for the weaker students, helping words or step by step guidance would be helpful for them.
f) I had indeed share the experience with other teachers in a workshop that i had to conduct in the school.

Task 1 and 2 by Siti Faridah

A lesson that went well:
One of the lessons that I would do whenever I teach a Form 2 class is one on giving instructions, to be exact, writing instructions for a recipe. Most of my students would really enjoyed this lesson, except for when they felt misplaced in the group. In this lesson ( 80 minutes lesson/ double period), students were to write the instructions for making a drink (for weak students) or a dish (for good and average students). Students were also required to use sequence connectors in the instructions, so they were exposed to some sequence connectors first. Then, they discuss on one simple recipe to write on and start writing the instructions into maximum of 6 steps. Students were also required to make illustrations(on mahjong paper) for their instructions, which means there will be 6 illustrations for the 6 steps. I haven't tried this using the IT yet, don't know how to. The students would normally have to complete the illustrations at home after the lesson and present on the next lesson in class. The students' presentation can be used for their oral assessment. I got this lesson from one of my TESL coursemates when we were doing practical teaching back in 1989. But she was doing it differently which I couldn't recall anymore as I have been doing a lot of changes to it. I believe the lesson was successful because the students enjoyed it and the end-product was really creative. Oh...I even gave prizes to the best and creative illustrations or presentations. The students did take a long time to decide on the recipe and made a lot noise, so sometimes I brought my students outside to the canteen or the school hall. I had shared this experience with other teachers, some like it and said they would try it in their class but there were also some who just could not bear the noise. By the way, I would go around the class to make sure they were using EL when discussing. But, of course, there were some 'mother tongue' interactions heard especially when I turned my back from them. I would like to try this using the IT next time but I've no idea on how to make the students draw the illustrations using the computer.

Task 2 - A challenging lesson:
One lesson that I found challenging is when I asked students (in a group of 3) to interview a teacher of their own choice in the staffroom to gather information about him/her so that students could write an essay about the person. Originally, I got the idea from a Bahasa Melayu teacher teaching a Form 1 class on writing a short paragraph on a teacher without revealing the name and at the end of the lesson students from other groups had to guess who the teacher was. I had made some alterations to the lesson by making them draw an illustration of the teacher. But last year, I made another alteration to the lesson by making them interview a teacher first. I brainstormed some simple questions that the students could use before they started interviewing the teachers. The lesson became challenging when some teachers refused to be interviewed (eventhough I've told them earlier) and some students were a bit late in starting their task. This is probably due to their inconfidence in spoken English. From this lesson I've learned that for those who are not fluent in the EL, they need to have a warming up session first before they are being 'put into' a real conversation. Thus, in the future, for the teachers to be interviewed I will list down all the questions that will be asked by the students, and for the students I will make a short session on interviewing each other in class first before I start letting them loose in the staffroom. I think I've told some other EL teachers about what I did and there were some responses but I've forgotten what they had said. I should have written them down...so, that will be my 2009 resolution!! I should hang a notebook and a pen around my neck at all time!! What do you think? Well, friends, please...do comment.