Feeling blues out of blue

The hectic weeks stoke back without failing to leave me in an exhausting feeling. With some projects needed to be executed, it was like a big stone stomped into my head that I felt numb and incapable. Started with the monthly committee meeting for hostel management in the first week, followed then by a motivation talk for hostel students, a short course on school based assessment for English subject and a motivation camp for national examination candidates for the second week. That were not all, I had to take charge of being as a head of sport house, coordinator for opening and closing ceremony and the best part was to be a TRAINER for the annual athletic event and “sukantara” which were organized and held in the following week.  Despite all of the events, I was reminded not to stray away too much from fulfilling my other job which is to take care of 169 “babies”.

The given responsibility was truly a challenge. I know there might be someone out there try to say that all I can do is whining and complaining. Trust me, you have no idea what’s going on. Nevertheless, no matter how tiring it was I tried to display some sanguine spirit in everything I do (p/s: side notes. I do this just so others to feel a bit annoyed and challenged of what I am capable of..haha). At certain point I can feel the pressure put on the shoulder was too heavy that I almost gave up everything I’ve been working on so far. Driven by the emotion and blues feeling, I had once isolated myself from my colleagues. I was not trying to escape from engaging in human relation but I really needed time for myself rather than spending half of working day talking about politics (another side notes: my colleagues can talk about politics for all day long and it annoys me sometimes..NO, all the time. I guess politic is not my cup of coffee).

No words can describe how tired I was that I can forget my friend’s name. It seemed that I had this memory lost kind of thing going on inside my head. Poor him when he actually needed to explain from “A to Z” about him just to trigger my memory. The best part was, from all of the explanation I could only recognized him right after he giggled. How dumb I was at that time. Last Friday, I got a text from a good friend of mine offering a package to Bandung with the lowest price. Only then, it hit on my thinking box. Why shouldn’t I take a break and fly off to somewhere? It has been a while I miss the thrill of departing and landing by a “giant bird”. Suddenly, all the good memoirs started to fill in the memory box of how exciting and wonderful my life was back in New Zealand. I miss everything. When is the next time I will be indulging myself with those wonderful experiences again? Only time can tell and MONEY can set everything up (waiting for the pay day cautiously..haha). Till then. Pray for me that I can survive for another 36 years in the profession. Fuuhhhh~

Morning Walk With Adele

It's been a while that I didn't have a morning walk around the school. This morning I managed to do it again. It felt so calm and tranquil as if I was off into another realm. This time I was accompanied by Adele's best hits. She is the one who has brought somewhat an influence in my life at the moment as if the absence of listening to her in a day will make you suffer for the rest of the week (OK..I know I'm exaggerating..haha).


This is the album that brings hundreds million pounds into her pockets. DANGGGG!

 Say no more, this current song is a real charmer. It goes on and on in my mind that it stuck and won't never come out. A true inspiration indeed. Please enjoy.

Teaching future tense: Poster making

Since the stigma of learning grammar leads to boredom, I tried to dodge from the irrelevant accusations. Hence, I tried to teach grammar in context which I thought related to the students' life. Today's topic is "I'll Stand By You". I tried putting together the grammar, topic and activity in one nice plate. These were what I did:

Set Induction:

• Before I started off the class by showing the students a video footage called "I'll Stand By You- Carrie Underwood", I reminded students to pay attention, watch and listen to the video footage attentively. 

• Once finished, I started to elicit students' response by letting them to share their feeling and thoughts after seeing that video
• To evoke the feeling and sentiment towards the topic, try to highlight some significant facts about the video or talk about the meaning behind the lyrics and the song itself. 

Introduction/practice stage:

• Project or show the lyrics on the screen. Redirect students' attention to the highlighted portion of the lyrics.

eg: I'll stand you, I'll stand by you

     I won't let anybody hurts you

• Ask the students about the meaning of I'll stand by you by relating to the video used before. Elicits some answer from them before you start to explain the use of the future tense and its functions. 
• Attached is the note to explain the form and function of future tense to my students. Of course, try to use examples that relate to the topic used (We don't want the mood and sentiment for the topic fade away just like that).
• After that,  teacher poses a question and asks students to discuss in pairs: "What will you do to help those children who are in needs?". Call a few representatives to the front to share their thoughts. In this round, students get the opportunity to practise the language learnt and teachers monitors students' practices by giving feedback). 

Owh crapppppppppppp!!  i could not upload the notes. Something wrong. I'll post later in the next entry. 

Production:

• Divide the students in group of 4 or 5 and give out the materials such as sketching canvas, colour pencil, marker pen, newspaper, scissors and glue.
• Project the instruction on the white screen and briefly explain what students should do.

e.g: "Create a poster with a message of raising help from the world community to help the children in Africa. Please include the use of future tense in your message."

• Let the students' creativity grow and do encourage them to draw something that can enhance the portrayal of the message in their poster.

Anyway, this lesson ended up successful. I was indeed so blessed with the students' spirit and motivation to learn. Although some of them made mistakes here and there, I treated the mistakes as a part of learning.

Before I forget, I'll try to post the notes on future tense in the next entry as well as the products from this lesson. It was so adorable looking at those posters which made by your students. I am inspired. hahaha.

CIAOoooooooooooOOOoooooOOOooooOOOooo!

Teaching Adjectives by Using OPSHACOM

As promised in previous post, this is it. Anyway, last week I had a chance to teach my students of using multiple adjectives in a single sentence. The reason being was that my students haven't mastered to put numerous adjectives into a correct word order. The fact that they have come out with lot of adjectives is good, nevertheless, the way they sequenced them in a sentence really bothered me. Sometimes, they mixed up the word order such as putting an adjective before a noun and followed by another adjective.
Hence, I wasted no much time and tried OPSHACOM formula. It was actually an idea given by my former lecturer who was very enthusiastic about teaching grammar. The idea was indeed very useful and had made learning English easier and fun.

Anyway these are some materials that I want to share with you. I know it might not be up to the standard of some people but it is just for fun sharing.

Set induction:

• I brought in some Realia which I grabbed from my room such as perfume, bow tie, sunglasses, picture frame. Using realia is very good for prompting students' knowledge on adjectives before introducing the language point for the day.
• DONT be stingy to let the students to observe by touching, feeling, smelling or trying the materials that you brought in (but of course, put a limit to it). Believe me, it makes the lesson more fun as students are eager to describe the things that they hold (in my case, it was.)
• Don't forget to write some of the adjectives on the board (you can refer to this when you introduce the language point later on)

Introduction:

For the introduction, I have projected this notes on the screen where students can read with ease.

Make sure that you provide as many examples as you can because sometimes low proficiency couldn't get the word order by just looking at one or two examples. If possible, elicit examples from the students.

In case you want to use another approach, you can consider to use this video as one of your teaching aids during the introduction stage. It is fun and interactive. (Side note: it might be irritating at some points..hahahaha)

LEARN ENGLISH WITH PROFESSOR GRAMMAR

I hope that this brief sharing might bring some benefits to those in needs. I am not really sure whether or not these materials  are suitable with your teaching context. It is not a sin to try this and you've got nothing to loose. So, give a shot.hehehe. 

Heads up first, details later.

This is just a quickie. I found that teaching is no longer boring. WHY? Simple. Try to make the lesson more fun by engaging the students' interest with the topic or materials that we (teachers) use. I know it's easier said than done. However, we never know if we do not give any shot, aite? More details to come. I promise. I have a class to attend. Ciao.

Running Errands

Being a teacher  really is tiring. Although others might say a freshman like me should be energetic and active, I would like to rebut. I am SERIOUSLY torn between the duty of being a teacher who is fundamentally asked to teach or a running-errands-staff.  Which is which? Despite fulfilling the responsibility to school and being nice to others, my work ethic is slowly changing and my principle of teaching is slowly adapted to my current working situation. There is no more time for me to sit and prepare cool stuffs or even materials for my kids. Poor them. Not to mention, I don't even have the energy to flip through a page of the novels that I just purchased, which I am dying to read them. Running errands like taking care of students from morning till they sleep at night really is exhausting but I believe that every good deeds will be paid with good rewards from HIM. I hope I will not loose the momentum when I was first posted here and I do pray Allah can ease all the dealings that my students will encounter in here and thereafter. Good Luck "kidddoss"

A Starting point

1. Mukadimmah 

• Salam. It was my initial intention to create a blog to share and communicate with outside world as I realized that blogging is the "IT" thing nowadays. This is it. It's final and I'm writing my first post.

2. Updates

• I will, from time to time, update the blog with some useful information especially the things related to teaching. 

3.Journey to an end??

• This year is the starting point for me to embark the journey of being an English teacher. Yes, I have a spot to plot  Despite the challenge of being new and amature among the bunch of senior teachers, I foresee more challenges coming from students. Currently, I am teaching a semi-rural school located in Gua Musang, Kelantan. All students here are felda entrepreneurs's children and they lack proficiency in utilizing the target language which is English. However, the fact that teaching is difficult at times, I kinda like the whole situation of thinking what methods and materials that best suit the level of my students. I often took a chance of brainstorming things needed for my Eng classes while drinking a cup of coffee. The sugar rush gave me the extra kick in finding the consensus to every single problems. So far, teaching has been great and I am NOT afraid or ashamed to say outloud that I LOVE MY CAREER.

Kudos to me! haha. hopefully all the knowledge that I gained during the college years and practicum will guide me to sail further in the ocean of being a great "sifu".