THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE (ALAT PEMBELAJARAN UNTUK SISWA) for English

THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

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Materials for you and your pupils to make

PUPPETS

These can be paper bag puppets, glove puppets, hand puppets or finger puppets. In addition to the actual  puppets a simple ‘stage’ is very useful if you want to perform dialogues and sketches.

CLASS MASCOT

We’ve used Teddy as our class mascot, but you might like to have a rag doll or special puppets or something of local significance.

PAPER DOLLS

These are very useful for teaching clothes, but have quite a short life and have to be regularly replaced.

ENGLISH CORNER

We said quite a lot of about this in Chapter 2, and of course, the basic have to be there already– the board , the selves, etc., but encourage pupils to collect anything which is in any way connected with the English-speaking world. Displays should not be permanent.

CARDBOARD BOXES

Collect shoe boxes and all other sorts of boxes for filing – ones with lids are more useful. The boxes can be covered with paper, decorated abd labelled. Make a couple of new ones for each class – partly because the boxes get a bit worn after awhile, and partly because classes like to think they have their own boxes. Boxes can also be used as as building bricks to make shops, houses, castles, forests, etc.

PICTURE CARD

These can be drawing or cut-outs from magazine, or perhaps photos. It is easiest to sort these according to size – realy big ones for class work, and smaller ones for individual/pair/group work. Once you’ve sorted them for size, put them into themes or subjects areas, like ‘people’, ‘place’, ‘food’, etc.

CARD GAMES

Almost all card games can be made into language card games and while you want to concentrate on games where some sort of language interaction is taking place, you can also play card games simply for relaxation. Games like ‘Memory’ can be played without saying a word, but if you use cards like this, then the least recognition is taking place:

Here is an example of Happy Family cards made by a couple of girls in their third year of learning English:

BOARD GAMES

Older children (and teachers) can make up all sorts of board games. Not only are board game useful for relaxation and/or language work,  but the making of them present a real challenge. Most children have played board games of some sort at home, and you can get wonderful language work out of making up the rules. You can make board games for almost any subject. For example, you can make up obstacle board games on topics like ‘travelling through the jungle’ or ‘a fantastic birthday’.

WORD SENTENCE

Word cards are useful for displays and for work on the flannelgraph. Sentence cards should only used for the begginers and only with semtence which are used a lot. If you want to get full use out of your colllection, you should work out a system of classification.

Here are a couple of suggestion of display systems for word card and sentences which you can nake yourself:

BOOKS/READING CARDS

We talked about these in the chapter on reading, and we look at the organisation of your on pages 112 and 113.

TRANSPARENCIES

If you have an overhead procjetor, then some of your pictures and other material can be copied into transparencies. Transparencies should be kept in special plastic covers or framed and then put into a file. They keep well, take up very little space and are very useful for working with the whole class.

CALENDER

Your calender should show the date, the day, the wheather and birthday/special day.

CLOCK

Very simple clock with moveable hands are in valuable in the language clssroom, not only for telling the time as in the exercise on page 37, but also for setting the scenes and changing time from the here and now.

Materials to buy

Readers

If we were to choose only one of the teacher’s aids listed in this chapter, easy readers and children’s books in English would be our choise, and we feel it is better to have lots of different ones rather than class sets. Readerss are s real investment for the language learner and so we want to look in a bit more detai at how to put your books in order.

·         Coding

Although it is tempting to code books according to difficulty, we would not advise it, since we think that children should select books they want to read, and not the ones that the teacher says they are ready to read. So try to find some other way of organising your books, such as by subject matter – animals’, ’fairy stories’, ‘facts’. This means, of course, that the teacher has to read through all the books first, select and classify. This is the type of activity which can be done usefully with other teachers or with the school librarian.

·         Dispaying the books

Put the books on low open shelves if at all possible orin clearly marked boxes in your English corner. You might want to put new books or books which lots of people seem to be reading on the low tables. Or you might put the books in book pockets. The point is that however you arrange your books, you should try to make sure that the children are physically able to reach them.

·         Borrowing cards

Have a system so that you know who has each book and how long he or she has had it. You might have a large card inside each book, and when the pupil borrows it he or she writes his or her name and the date on the card and puts the card in the space left by the book. This not only lets you see who has the book, but also tells you how popular the book is. The cardcan be very simple, and the pupils can take turns at being the librarin and seeing that others fill in the cards.

Maps

You should have a map of the world or a globe in the classroom. A map of your local area is also useful, especially if it shows rivers and mountain etc. Clearly.

Wallcharts

There are a number of wallcaharts on the market which are made for the language classroom. Be on the lookout for charts for other subjects too, especilly if you are going to do theme work or take part in projects working across the curiculum.

Toys

Cars, animals, furniture, etc. There are endless uses for toys in the languange classroom. They also help to connect the child’s world outsde the classroom to what is happening inside the classroom.

Building blocks

Lego is wonderful, but expensive. Other types of building blocks – wooden or plastic – are just as versatile, and can become anything from cakes to hourses.

Cassete recorders

You should have at least one cassette recorder which can recorder in everyroom. There are reasonably cheap cassette  recorders on the market which have bulit-in microphones. These are quite good enough for recording your self and the children in the classroom.

Cassetes

Just as you can never have enough reading material you can never have enough recorded material. Remember also to have blank cassettes to record in the classroom.

Overhead projector

Even though it will probably be up to someone else to decide whether or not to buy this kind of equipment, if tou are asked if you need / want one, say ‘yes’. Presenting materials on the overhead projector allows you face the children all the time and provides the children with a common focus of attention. You can come back to the same materil whenever you want to, and you can use the same material with different classes.

We have pnly mentioned two pices of equipment here – the cassette recorder andoverhead projector. There are others which may be available to you – slide projectors, videos, computers. If this in the case, find out exactly how they work and what materil is available to use with each particular machine. Then you can decide how useful they will be is your lessons.

Materials for you to collect

This section is just to remaind you that children find all sorts os uses for materials which might otherwise be thrown away. These are things which can be used in making collaages, making puppets, decorating pictures / boxes, going shoping, telling stories, counting, acting, miming, etc. – the list is endless. Our suggestions are only to get yoy thining. If we put down everthing you could collect to use in the classoom this boo. Wolud go on for another ten pages instead of ending on this one !

You can collect :

Togurt catoons, assorted ribbons, oldcards, postcards, cotton reels, all sorts of paper – tissuepaper, old wrapping paper, wallpaper – stamps, coins, buttons, string, jars, empty packets of all sorts, bits of material.

Questions and activies

1. Can you addany suggestions to our list of materials which yo and you pupis can makes ti  use in the English lessons ?

What other things do you would be usefu for classroom work ?

2. What else would ypu add to our list of things to collect ?