KSSR Listening & Speaking : Match-up Numbering

   I used to rather dislike teaching Listening & Speaking. For one, my first experience of teaching KSSR involved 2 Delima and boy what a time I had! From what I understand, in a L&S class you focus on teaching your children how to actually use the language in spoken form. This was not the easiest thing to achieve with 2D as they were more interested in copying (if they were interested in the lesson at all) and creating hoavoc in the class rather than actually sit down to listen and speak in English. Don't get me wrong, I learned a lot of things from teaching them but it was NOT easy.

   This year I was given the responsibility to teach one of the Year 3 classes, 3 Zamrud. At first it was not that easy either- they were much brighter and rather more disciplined (I say rather because there are quite a handful of monkeys there too! Naughty things!) and I was still unsure of how I was supposed to conduct a good listening and speaking lesson. For one, would they be interested in doing activities which does not involve any writing at all in one class? Of course you can include some written activities in an L&S class but they should not be the main focus.

   How was I to teach them to speak the language and understand it? These are kampung children, mind you. Even the children whose parents are teachers watch Spongebob in Malay. (Rolls eyes in desperation). Seriously, watch Upin and Ipin in Malay as much as you like but cartoons with English audio should be viewed as so! Haiya how on earth are you going to improve your English ah! The only thing they keep saying is "Oh My English!" every time I speak more than a few sentences in English.

   Then, as Emily of Newmoon would say, I got The Flash. A flash of inspiration. A simple but practical idea. My children love love love games and they are rather used to starting a class with a simple game. Every morning when I walk into class that's all they think about. "What game are we playing today? So came the The Flash.

   The idea of this game (if you can call it a game) is to get children to partner up randomly and talk to each other using the dialogue or sentence structure given. Follow the steps below:

The Match-up Numbering Game


1. Teach the children a set of sentence structures according to you topic. For example:

Unit 10: A Ride in the Safari Park

Question: What animal is this?
Answer: This is a _______________.

Question: Where can you find it?
Answer: You can find it _______________.


2. Give each child one number.
   Let's say there are 28 children in your class. Start a child off to say '1' and the others should follow suit.

3. Write the numbers on the board.
   If there are 28 children, write 1,2,3,4 and so on up to 28.

4. Explain the rules.
   The teacher will call out two numbers. The first number will ask the questions and the second number will provide the answers.

5. Have a try-out round. Call out two numbers so that the children can see how the game is played. The first number to be called will ask the questions and the second number will provide the answers.

6. Always cross out the numbers you have called out. Make sure you call out random numbers so that it will be more interesting. My children found this part fun because they could not expect the person they would be partnered up with.

And that's it! Super easy and when I think about it, not that brilliant. But it helps to keep my children in focus and they love it. At first it was awkward for some of them and I got so frustrated because one or two just would not open their mouths. But now they're used to it and we have a lot of fun in our L&S lesson. I need to get more Flashes so that we don't get bored of this game. Haha.

To my Muslim friends and readers, I hope you are spending your Ramadhan productively, in syaa Allah. Take care!

Under The Sea Sing-a-long & The Silent Game 2

   When Blogger went down and took two of my posts with it, I gave up on writing and let my blog get a little dusty.

   Well here I am, forcing my brain to think and my fingers to type. I always take a long time in producing even the shortest post, so the fact that the 'lost' posts took some time to be completed is rather depressing. Yet I know that I cannot be hampered by such a small challenge. If I'm ever going to succeed in making my pupils write in the future, I must be able to do it willingly myself.

   So here goes. This time I'd like to share a video that I used with my Year 3 pupils. I liked this video because of its colourfulness, the rather comical voice that sings the song and the fact that it's related to the theme that I was teaching Year 3 at the time- the Sea World.

   Sea World is the third unit in the Year 3 textbook. I was itching to get to Unit 4, which was 'Pets and Animals', but Sea World was very interesting. It pretty much challenged my brain to think of interesting ideas to teach, but I still feel that I did not push myself to the limit. I stuck with old-fashioned ideas- but it was this unit that helped me to get nominated for... well, something.

   I used this video as a Set Induction for the day's lesson. I thought I'd turn it into a game, so I did. I did not want a complicated game, as a Set Induction is only meant to be between 3 to 5 minutes long.

   Remember my Silent Game with Year 1? I changed the rules a little to suit Year 3. If you've read some of my old entries (this, this and maybe this), you may have some idea about Year. They can be such angels, and at times they're little monsters.

   Anyway, back to the game. In a previous lesson, I had taught Year 3 the names of a number of sea creatures. So, just to make sure they would do some thinking and show some reaction to the video, I asked them to put up their hands whenever a sea creature that they liked appeared on the screen. The  only rule was they were absolutely forbidden to make any noise whatsoever.

   Here's the video:

   Now it may sound simple enough- just putting up your hands and making sure your mouth is shut, but for children who LOVE to speak, it's quite a challenge. Alif, for instance, has a lot of trouble keeping his mouth shut. Each time an animal that he liked appeared on the screen, he would jump up and say in his high pitched voice, "Aah!! Aah!" (which I suppose means he liked the creature. Putting up a hand was not enough).

   It was a simple game but they enjoyed it. Their English was not that good to be able to sing along to the song while they watched it for the first time, but they liked it. I discovered that most of the boys loved the stingray, and the girls, being girls, liked the gentle dolphin. I suppose the stingray, with its long deadly looking tail appealed to the boys. I have to admit it is one cool creature.

   As always, if anyone ever tries this, I welcome feedbacks and comments. If you have a blog or story about your pupils, drop a comment- I'm always interested.

   Warning: There are some grammatical errors in the song lyrics in the video. I wasn't focusing on grammar so I was too lazy to do anything about it.

   It's a bit late, but Happy Teacher's Day! I just got an sms from Kak Yana, who's the class teacher for Year 1 at SKP. She said they remembered me and wanted to give me a present! Awww... what sweeties. I'll dedicate a special post (and probably more!) on Year 1 soon, Insya-Allah.