MATERIALS EVALUATION

Based on the Managing Resources assignment, we were required to prepare teaching

and learning materials and utilise them by conducting a pair teaching at our respective school.
Teaching and learning materials are basically the resources a teacher uses to deliver
instruction. The materials are meant to aid teaching, not do the whole teaching job.
Romiszowski, (1968), stated that a teaching aid must, as the name suggests, assist the
teaching of a topic and does not do the whole job. These materials play a large role in making
knowledge accessible to a learner and can encourage a student to engage with knowledge in
different ways. For our teaching materials, there are several reasons why we use them.
Firstly, we had used diorama for our set induction. Basically, a diorama is assembled
inside a box. According to Nunan, (1999), realia is defined as objects and teaching props from
the world outside the classroom that are used for teaching and learning. The inside of the box is
painted to create a backdrop, which varies depending on the desired effect of the diorama. For
our diorama, we had prepared inside a house backdrop to link with the story of Little Red Riding
Hood. The main rationale of using diorama is to bring lesson plans to life in a way which is easy
for students to accomplish. The pupils responded positively when they saw the diorama. They
were so interested to learn about the story. The pupils stated that they feel like they are standing
in the middle of the scene. The diorama also encourages the pupils to research things and bring
information back to share with the rest of the class.
During the presentation stage, we had used picture book as our teaching aid. A picture
book is a book in which the illustrations are as important as (or even more important than) the
words in telling the story, (Kennedy, 2012). A childs first impression of a book is usually shaped
by the pictures. The rationale of using picture book than just using a the textbook is because
illustrations can do even more than draw a child into a book as they can hook children into a
lifelong love of reading. For the young learners, pictures are an introduction into the world of
books. Long before they can read, children respond to images in an effort to place themselves
and the others in their lives into the world around them. The pupils responded by getting excited
when they are looking at the pictures and eagerly wanted to listen to the story. It happened
because pictures enable children to explore the world within their own imagination and make
connections to characters and events they see depicted in books.

Besides, our next teaching material is realia. We had used realia in practise stage. Our
realia was the big ticket of Little Red Riding Hood show. In term of education, realia is the
objects from real life used in classroom instruction. The use of realia is commonplace in the
ESL/EFL classroom and is widely considered to have great value in fostering an active
teaching-learning environment. By presenting information through diverse media, realia helps to
make English language input as comprehensible as possible and to build (Heaton, 1979).
According to Berwald, (1987) realia are not only a series of artifacts that describe the customs
and traditions of a culture, but they are also a set of teaching aids that facilitate the simulation of
experience in the target culture. Based on my pupils responses, I could say that interaction with
authentic materials aids in contextually grounding instruction by bringing students into contact
with language as it is used in the target culture in order to meet actual communication needs.
Furthermore, stick puppet is also one of the teaching materials that we had used during
the production stage. Stick puppet is an artificial figure representing a human being or an
animal, manipulated by the hand, rods and wires as on a miniature stage. The rationale of using
stick puppet is to enable the pupils to work in groups. Pupils who are working in a group to
prepare and present a puppet play are learning to work cooperatively with others, where there is
give and take and sharing of ideas. This offers the students the advantage of establishing group
cohesion (Bennett, 2002). The pupils responded by actively engaged in the mini stage
performance using their own stick puppet. A puppet play that is written and performed by
children incorporates spontaneity into group reading (Bennett, 2002). I can conclude that the
pupils can personalise the vocabulary into their own language when using the stick puppet.
When designing teaching materials, teachers have to consider several factors in order to
make the materials useful. However, at the end of the day the first and most important factor to
be considered is the learners. If the point of teacher-created materials is relevance, interest,
motivation and meeting specific individual needs, then clearly teachers must ensure they know
their learners well. Whatever the curriculum, it is the teachers responsibility to ensure that the
goals and objectives of the overarching curriculum are kept close at hand when designing
materials (Nunan, 1988).

REFERENCES
Berwald, (1987), Improving Students' Vocabulary Mastery by Using Realia as retrieved from
http://download.portalgaruda.org/article.php?article=126903&val=3895

Bennet, (2002), Benefits of Puppet Use as retrieved from

http://www.puppetools.com/Reidmillerresearch.pdf

Elizabeth Kennedy, (2012), Picture Book : The Definition as retrieved from

http://childrensbooks.about.com/od/childrensbooksglossary/g/picture_book.htm

Heaton, (1979), Virtual Realia (TESL/TEFL) Journal as retrieved from

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Smith-Realia.html

Jocelyn Howard, (2011), Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching
as retrieved from http://www.paaljapan.org/resources/proceedings/PAAL9/pdf/Howard

M Wyatt, (2011), Becoming a Do-it-yourself Designer of English Language as retrieved from

http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1533/3138

Nunan, (1988), ELT Materials: The Key to Fostering Effective Teaching as retrieved from
http://www.revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/11449/36802

Nunan, (1999), The Use Of Teaching Aids and The Implications For Teaching as retrieved
from www.umag.cl/biblioteca/tesis/paredes_oyarzo_2008.pdf intro

RIF Parent Guide Brochure, (2012), Getting the Most Out of Picture as retrieved from
www.rif.org/us/literacy-resources/articles/getting-the-most-out-of-picture-books.htm

Romiszowski, (1968), Realia and Vocabulary Learning among Young Learners as retrieved

from http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/1844/1/MQ82660.pdf

SA Berardo, (2006), The Use of Authentic Materials in the Teaching of Reading as retrieved
from www.readingmatrix.com/articles/berardo/article.pdf