REFLECTION

For the subject Teaching of Listening and Speaking in Primary ESL Classroom, the first
assignment was to prepare a lesson plan and test it out during SBE based on the two skills
which then I decided to focus my lesson on the listening skill. After some discussion with my
groupmates, Fatimah Nabilah and Muhammad Syafiq, we came to an agreement to do a year-4
lesson. I am grateful to be in a group with them because they gave cooperation well especially
in terms of making time for discussion. Hence, although the first task was individual, we decided
to meet and review each other’s work before submitting on the respected due date to ensure
that we had done our best and will have no problem on the second assignment which was to
conduct a simulated teaching in groups based on one particular lesson plan from anyone in the
group that we thought best. Thus, we decided to use my lesson plan as mine was interesting
and fun.

We conducted our simulated teaching on 28th September 2016 as the fourth group to
present with the supervision of Miss Lee Sow Ying and Miss Hendon. Personally, I view this
assignment as a very good one especially for future teachers like us because we are being
prepared to deliver the lesson altogether with giving the chances to apply what we have learned
in theories to practical. This can be supported by Cachia, R et al (2010), it is crucial to prepare
new teachers to become reflective practitioners who are able to discern how a teaching method
or activity can stifle or trigger creativity in their students. Thankfully everything went well during
the simulated teaching as we had clearly divided our own parts which set induction and
presentation was conducted by me, Syafiq handled the practice part while Fatimah was
responsible for the production and closure stage.

One of the strengths in our lesson is it was fun and interesting as the topic taught was
Animals and the pupils were excited to learn about the animals and I had included a catchy
song to grasp their attention. This is in line with a statement mentioned by Barron and Darling
Hammond (2008) that by including student background and prior knowledge, they tend to have
a more active participation in the classroom. Apart from that, our classroom management was
superb as I had emphasized on three simple ground rules to be followed in order to make the
pupils focus but had fun at the same time.

Despite that, there is also a weakness that I realized and should be given a room of
improvement which was on the activity. Even if the lesson was fun and conducted smoothly, our
topic ‘Animals in the Jungle’ was not tally with the story ‘Animal Shelter’. I had asked Miss Lee
to reconfirm about it at the first place and she said okay but during the day, it was suddenly
opposed by both of the lecturers hence we had no choice than to expect the consequences. We
realized that we should not actually proceed if we felt something is wrong and to be safe, we
need a Plan B.

In conclusion, as teachers, to create an activity, it is important to fulfill the needs of the

students as well as to allow them having fun with the language to change their perspective and
mindset towards English language and increase their interests in learning it in the classroom. All
in all, this simulated teaching had given me a lot to reflect upon and great experiences that I
could take it as my lifelong practices in teaching real students in the future.
REFERENCES

Barron, B., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2008). Teaching for meaningful learning. In L. Darling

Hammond, B. Barron, P. D. Pearson, A. H. Schoenfeld, E. K. Stage, T. D. Zimmerman,

G. N. Cervetti, & J. Tilson (Eds.), Powerful learning: What we know about teaching for

understanding. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Cachia, R., Anusca, F., Ala-Mutka, K. and Punie, Y. (2010) Creative Learning and Innovative

Teaching. Final report on the study onvity and innovation in education in EU members

states, Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission, Luxembourg (JCR 62370)

(http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/JRC62370.pdf)