MINI TEST

1. Use the picture given to write instructions for two activities. Your instructions must be specific and engaging.

First activity: Create a conversation around 100 words.

Naomi, a foreign tourist from Japan wants to take a tour in Kota Kinabalu. As a receptionist of Hyatt Regency Kinabalu Hotel, you have to show her the direction from the hotel to CBS Gaya Centre, Wisma Merdeka and Australian Place. 

Use the prepositions given to complete your conversation.

on

by

from

to

at

Second activity: Write a letter around 150 words.

The English Language Society of your school is planning to organise a field trip to Kota Kinabalu. As the secretary of the society, you are asked to write a letter to your principal to approve the field trip. You have to include the travel route by giving information about the places that English Language Society’s members are going to visit during the field trip.

2. You are teaching the theme ‘Environment’ to a form three class with intermediate level of proficiency. Describe one activity on how to integrate the following thinking skills into your lesson:

a) Analysis

b) Application

World Environment Day is held each year on June 5. It stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action. The industrialization growth damages the world environment by its harmful gases in the air which also damage the ozone layer. It is harmful for living creatures when this world environment is heated day by day.

According to the poster, write an article on importance of World Environment Day to advocate awareness among students. It is a good step toward the neat and clean environment of the world. This is very important for us and also for our coming generations. The article must be around 200 words.

Assessing Student's Essay

I was marking on another essay with Leanza this time. We both agreed that we will give this essay 7 out of 20. I know it was cruel but I cannot help myself from not giving this mark. Although the setting and the storyline of this essay was clear, yet, mechanical errors cause serious disruption in communication. 

The student is facing problem to use the correct irregular verbs. For example, he/she wrote “feeled” instead of “felt”.  Then, the student did not use base form after the word “can’t”. The student is also having difficulties in capitalisation. He/she did not use capital letter for names.

By assessing this student's essay, I know how to comment on students’ writing:

•  Begin by making positive comments.

•  Remember that students' egos are very fragile.

•  Don't mark errors or make comments in red.

• Ask questions to help students revise and improve.

•  Criticize "this paper," not "you".

•  Respond as a reader, not as a writer.

•  Be specific.

• Limit your comments; do not try to cover everything.

A Scary Experience

I was asked to correct a student’s work titled 'A Scary Experience'. That was the first time for me to correct a student’s work. It was my scary experience too.  :)

For me, I will give this essay six out of ten. I use written comment to let the student knows his /her mistakes. The setting of the story was clear. The main problem is this essay was written in present tense; we should use past tense in narrative essay. Next, there is punctuation problem in this essay. I found out that there were a lot of commas in one paragraph. He/she should start a new sentence instead of joining all phrases together.

To overcome the punctuation problem, I will create a worksheet to let students to correct the run-on sentence. For example:

Question: I need to write down your email address otherwise I will never remember it

Answer: I need to write down your email address. Otherwise, I will never remember it.

 

Inside the Haiti Earthquake

Inside the Haiti Earthquake is designed to challenge assumptions about relief work in disaster conditions and situations. Everyone will be given the opportunity to commit to various strategies and experience the consequences by playing the role of an aid worker, journalist or survivor.

Start from the beginning, I was able to see and feel what really happened that day when there was an earthquake in Haiti by looking and listening to the footage start from the beginning. The use of real footage impacted greatly. The interactive nature rather than passively listening and watching the news made me feel like I experienced it before. 

I liked the customization of seeing different experiences based on character selection. It allowed for risk taking and even though it was a game I found myself hesitating over choices and not wanting to be even virtually responsible for causing more suffering. The agency through each of these was clear. I appreciated the design in terms of situated meanings as I was presented with situations in the role and asked to make decisions in that role. 

I made the wrong decisions at times and was pleasantly given the reason why it was wrong and redirected to the better answer. I never felt like giving up because I was at a dead end. This was a good example of systems thinking because actions and consequences were explained. 

Since everyone will be given the opportunity to commit to various strategies and experience the consequences by playing the role of an aid worker, journalist or survivor, I would like to ask students to write a conversation according to this game. Write a conversation between a survivor and a journalist after the earthquake occurred. The conversation should be around 150 words. Students will able to know more about disaster condition by creating a conversation.

HOTS Activity

In my opinion, analyzing has become an imperative for students’ thinking skills. So, I would like to create an activity based on analyzing.

Students have to write a short passage of 100 words about The Poster Competition according to the poster above.  Students need to analyze the information on the poster before start writing, this make them able to think deeply about the details of the competition that they are asked to write. Image analysis is the extraction of meaningful information from image. It provides the information that students needed to complete their short passage.