Reflect 10 : The activities from The U.S Embassy

                                                   The activities from The U.S Embassy  22 / 8/ 2014

                       In the morning at American Corner , teacher told us that American Embassy would come to visit us that day. When the visitors arrived, Ajarn Anirut introduced us who are they.Three people, I haven't caught their names, came and provided us an opportunity to play game so as to practice English skills; speaking , listening, and reading. Afterward, students were divided into three groups and were ready to play game they prepared. All group were supposed to play every stations so we had to do rally walk for every station. They are listening game, speaking game ,and reading game.

                      For my group , we started at the first activity which was listening game. The administrator said that this station aimed to practice us how to listening with three rules in order to listen more effective. He would read us the story three time with different short story. Then , we had to tell what was it about. The first time we had to close your eyes when listening,second, do not translate the hard words ,and the last always repeat the unfamiliar word to remember. Activity 2 is telling story from pictures of dices .On the face - sides of dices will have pictures.You must throw the dice and make a story by including the vocabulary of the picture from the dice.In harder way , 2 or 3 dices were thrown and you have to make the narrative story by putting all words into the story you make.Activity 3 is reading skill .In big group , we have to match the headlines and the details of the news together. In small group , we will be given a news and have to answer these question  ; what ; where , when , why , how.

                      In conclusion , I think the activities they provided are very fun and interesting. All fellow students seem very happy with the games and we can take those  to apply with the classroom we are going to do when going for internship. They will be very useful game for communication skills which we can stimulate students practice English skills with fun.
             

Reflect 9 : How to create lesson plan

                                                    How to create lesson plan

                     Lesson plans which is used to teach students are divided into different levels , units and subjects in order to be a guideline for teacher's teaching. Teacher has to run the classroom activities by planing the sequences in teaching . The good lesson plan must consist of the main 3 parts  , pre - task  , task circle and language focus .Moreover, in each part will explain the activities  , materials and the assessment clearly. How to create lesson plan depends on the the curriculum , standard and indicator  that teacher must focus on in writing lesson plans.

                       Before designing the lesson plan, teacher must study curriculum and its standard .Educational curriculum is content and amount of experience prepared for learners in each level to learn. It is regarded as an important mechanic for country education so as to gain the population with goodness, ethic and potential that they can compete and corporate with foreign labor effectively. The steps in designing lesson plan should follow these steps to make the productive lesson plan. First , teacher has to investigate the standard and study each indicator . Indicator is very important for classroom activities . Teacher realize that what is the main purpose and teacher has to create the activity to teach student to meet with its indicators. The materials are also important because it will help students learn easier and remember longer. The authentic materials must be used because they might encounter in the real situations .Authentic materials  or contextualized , real - life materials are those that a student encounters in everyday life but that weren't created for educational purposes (Alejandro G. Martinez, 2002 ). And, the steps for finding materials are search , process , synthesis, evaluate , and write . Moreover, to set up the objectives will consists of three parts, performance , condition and standard . 
                   
                  In conclusion, for teacher , familiarizing the curriculum is very needed in order to follow the purpose of the education. Most teachers are successful on their teaching because of many aspects. One of them must be effective lesson plan. So, we can say that if teacher has a good lesson plan, good result is waiting.

Lesson Plan 2 : How to be a volunteer teacher

Lesson Plan  2

Unit  :   I want to be a volunteer.

Lesson :  How to be a volunteer teacher

Unit Aim : Students express their ideas concerning volunteer teacher.

Objectives

By the end of this lesson, student will be able to

1.  Seek the program related to teaching volunteer.

2.  Ask and answer for information in the school and society.

Standard

1.2.1  Converse and write to exchange data about themselves, various matters around them, situations, news and matters of interest to society and communicate the data continuously and appropriately.

1.3.1 Speak and write to describe themselves, experiences /matters/various issues of interest to society.

1.3.3 Speak and write to express opinions about activities, experiences and incidents, as well as provide justification.

2.1.3 Participate in/ organize language and culture activities in accordance with their interests.

Lesson Plan Outline

         Pre- Task  (20 minutes )

1.      Teacher stimulates students by showing a video about volunteer teacher and ask them questions  like what is the video talking about ? who are in the video ? what are they doing ?   and  how do you think about it ?   Teacher and students discuss to the video shown and  teacher asks can you guess what are we going to talk about today.

2.      After that , teacher introduces the vocabulary relating to the lesson such as   traditional ,  appreciation  and  access , etc.   

                   Task Cycle  ( 30 minutes )

3.      Teacher asks students to sit in group and discuss concerning to the handout provided

 “ Rural teaching opportunity in Thailand ”.  In this time students have an opportunity to discuss together and teacher have to walk around to encourage them talk as much as possible by showing up any question if the group seems silent.

4.      Teacher distributes application form for volunteer work, they have to fill out the form. Then , they have to present to the whole class briefly and also open for their friend to ask a question.

            

       Language Focus (10minutes )

5.      Teachers explains the grammar point Future Simple, how to use and give example according the handout given.

6.      Students practice conversation with partner by the dialogue given. Some will be selected to present to the class. The conversation is tentative and can be changed if they want.

7.      At the end of the class, teacher summarizes grammar rules ,vocabulary and some useful content.

Lesson Plan 1 : Let's go to Phuket.

Lesson Plan 1

Unit:  Environment needed for life

Lesson: Let’s go to Phuket.

Unit Aim: Students introduce Phuket and Pathong beach to the visitors.

Objectives

         By the end of this lesson, student will be able to

1.  Introduce Pathong beach with easy sentences.

2.  Ask and answer about tourist attraction.

3.  Give direction to the tourist.

Standard

         1.2.3 Speak and write appropriately to express needs, offer help and agree and refuse to give help in various situations.

         1.2.4 Speak and write appropriately to ask for and give data, explain, compare and express opinions about what has been heard and read.

         1.2.5 Speak and write express their own feeling about various matters around them and various activities as well as provides brief justification appropriately.

Lesson Plan Outline

         Pre- Task (20 minutes)

1.      Teacher stimulates students by asking a question that has anyone ever been to Phuket so far. If you have, what did you do there ?  Teacher asks and waits for their answers.  Today, we are going to Phuket  . Would you like to go there?  What would you like to do there? Teacher asks and provides students a couple of minutes to express their needs and ideas. 

2.      After that , teacher introduces the vocabulary relating to the lesson such as   collection  ,  internship  and trash , etc.  

3.      Then, Teacher shows student the video introducing Phuket  island.

Task Cycle  ( 30 minutes )

4.      Teacher asks students to sit in group and discuss concerning to the handout provided  “Keeping Patong beach clean”, who, what , where , when and why.  In this time students have an opportunity to discuss together and teacher have to walk around to encourage them talk as much as possible by showing up any question if the group seems silent.

5.      Teacher distributes leaflets ,which is related to situations or occasion happening in Phuket  to every group with different ones , they talk and discuss about it. Each group has to present the content in the leaflet to the whole class.

                

  Language Focus (10minutes)

6.      Teacher explains the grammar point  Present Perfect and Past Simple  , how to use and give example according the handout given. Then,  they practice

7.      Students practice conversation with partner by the dialogue given. Some will be selected to present to the class.

8.      At the end of the class, teacher summarizes grammar  rules ,vocabulary and some useful content.

  

Reflect 8 : Assessing and testing

                                                         Assessing and testing

                 Assessing and testing are the process to find out the quantity or an amount of things by using some instruments. The result from the assessment will be explain into numbers or symbol; for instance, John is 182 centimeter high. Educational  assessment is an assessing procedure acting systematically so as to compare the person ability  by using the questions or items to stimulate students express their idea or ability. In the same way , evaluation is the judgement or diagnose something derived from the assessment.

                  In order to assess the students' ability, the result of assessment must meet the objectives of the course.First, development assessing is the the process of testing to find out the deficiency of students and teacher aims to try to develop their learning in case of which remain the problem. Second, diagnostic assessing is to investigate the weak point in order to help further. Third , placement assessing is a process of testing to place students in the the group according to their ability. Fourth, to compare or know the development of their learning  is to do pre and post test and then compare between them both. Fifth, prediction assessing is to get the result of the assessment to predict or guess the situation in the future. If they get good result ,they might tend to do well in the future.And the last one is assessment in order to evaluate student proficiency , that is to take the result to judge the quality , what is good and what should be developed.

                 There are many ways of assessment that teacher can use with the real classes. Some can be used but some can not be used with specific situation.Before creating the instrument , teacher should make a decision which way of assessment must be used , and then teacher will create the instrument later. The famous methods are observation, interview , questionnaire, rank order , authentic assessment, performance assessment,  portfolio, test , aptitude test, etc.

Reading 10 : Storyline Technique

Talking to Storyline ,it is a speaking and listening communication activity which is aimed at pre-intermediate students and above. It was developed to help students practice narrative tenses and structures. The duration of the activity depends on the size of the class, but will take at least twenty minutes for an average size class.

         The procedure how to run the activity in the class is quite easy if the teacher knows the sequence very well.  First you need to prepare a card or piece of paper for each student with a key word written on it.   Then , explain the task to your students - they must remember the story which is told them,  relay it to the next student in the storyline and add a sentence or two to continue the narrative, including the key word you give them on a card or piece of paper. With small groups or slightly weaker groups, get the students to sit in a circle and do the activity in the classroom. In the other hand, with larger, stronger groups, ask one student to remain in the classroom and invite the others to wait outside until you ask them to re-enter the room. Now tell student A the beginning of the story and give them a keyword card. Invite student B into the room. Student A passes the story to student B with his/her addition to the narrative. Then invite student C into the room and ask A to wait outside. Give students help and encouragement where appropriate in order to keep the activity going and the story more-or-less on course. However, this is a communication-based activity so don’t worry too much about grammatical accuracy. Explain to the final student that they must find a satisfactory end to the story. At the end of the exercise, ask the last student to tell the whole story to student A, then ask student A to tell the story to you. If you have access to a tape-recorder, tape student A and then invite feedback from the whole group…

There are numerous ways of following or adding to this activity. For example, with strong groups, go back through the group so that the story continues in reverse sequence, finally ending with student A ,or  arrange the students into small groups and ask them to work together to write down the story in a way which is as grammatically accurate as possible.This is Storyline activity to teach student speaking and listening skill. You can apply it appropriately to your class.  Are there any questions?

Reading 9 : The Ghost Pilot

                                                              The Ghost Pilot

                      Around midnight on December 12,1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 fell out of the sky.The airplane crashed in the Everglades area of Florida. From this accident , it caused 99 died of the 176 people on broad, including the airplane's pilot, Bob Loft, and the flight engineer, Don Repo. About three months after the crash, a high - ranking executive of Eastern Airlines boarded an aircraft for Maimi , Florida. He  spotted a man in a pilot's uniform sitting alone in the first class section and went to sit down beside him. The executive struck up the conversation with the captain.

                     After a few minutes he realized that he was talking to the pilot Bob Loft. Then the pilot faded away. A week later , an Eastern  Airlines pilot and two of his crew went into a staff room at John F. Kennedy Airport, in New York. They all saw Bob Loft in a chair. He talked to them for a while , then vanished. The men were so shocked that the airlines had to cancel their flight.  Three weeks later , a passenger was sitting in a first class section of a flight to Maimi. She was worried about the man in an Eastern Airlines uniform sitting next to her. His face was white and he looked ill, so she call the flight attendant. The flight attendant leaned down to speak to the man but he ignored her . Then , as she touched his arm, he slowly faded away , leaving only an empty  seat. When the plane landed in Maimi, the passenger was taken to the hospital in a state of shock. Later , when she saw photographs, she identified the ghost as flight engineer Don Repo. Over the next few months, more than ten flight attendants claimed to see Don Repo. The ghost seemed to appear more often on some aircraft than on others.

                   Rumors began to spread that he appeared only on planes with replacement parts from the crashed flight 401. It was usual practice for an airlines to use undamaged parts from a crashed planes in another plane if they passed strict safety test. The story must have worried the bosses of Eastern Airlines. They ordered an engineers to remove from their planes all equipment from the 401 wreck. It seemed to work . When all of the parts from Flight 401 had been removed ,Bob loft and Don Repo left Eastern Airlines and their aircraft in peace. No one has seen ghost since.


                     Reference : Linda Lee ,2002. Select Reading .New York: Oxford Press.