Answering SPM Literature Component (Sing to the Dawn)

The question given in the slide above requires students to relate an event and how the event has affected the way they look at life. The question may seem to be difficult but if students have good understanding of the story it would be very easy to link one of the events and how it has changed their perspective towards life. 

Students can always start with a brief introduction but they should always keep in the mind that they should answer; in this case the event and their view on life. 

It is essential for students to always make things very clear in the beginning of their answers. In this case, they should make it very clear which event they are to narrate. They should also know what is an event so that they do not deviate from hitting the nail right. In many cases, students do not understand events and end up narrating the entire story as event which may not fetch them a high score. 

Sustainability is also important while answering a 'literature question'. Many a time, I have noticed that students would start off well but get carried away and write answers which are irrelevant to the question. It is important for students to stay relevant at all times. To stay relevant one should always stop and read their answers and think how it is related to the question. The elaboration in the slide above has linked to the event very well. In this answer, the student has chosen to write about Dawan's encounter with Bao in the marketplace and has related to her own life on how things are better for her but not everyone has a good life, therefore she has learnt to appreciate what she has. 

The student has also further elaborated how her perspective on things around her has changed based on that one event. To answer well it is important for a student to think and plan the answer well. There may be many events in a story but selecting an event that we can elaborate better is important as we will have more ideas to link, but always remember do not try to dump everything in one idea, that may make your composition messy. 

In this slide, her elaboration leads to the ending note. It is important to notice that, from the beginning till the end the student has linked her perspective towards life based on only an event as required by the instruction. The utmost important thing is we should not only read the story but  understand  the content well and try to link the ideas. I notice that the questions for the literature component has changed and they are most likely to be HOTS. 

Creative Writing Workshop During Holidays

I conducted a two - day workshop for  form five students during the holidays. I thought nobody would turn up for a workshop during holidays but could not believe that almost all the students who were hand - picked to attend the workshop turned up and it was almost a full house. The commitment from the students  lifted my spirit and I was more than enthusiastic throughout the two days. 

Discussion of task 

I decided to have a creative writing workshop this year as in the past I did not have much time to guide students to develop ideas and creative expressions during formal lessons and most of the time I only shared with my own students and did not have the opportunity to share with students from other classes. Therefore I decided to have this workshop during holidays so that I could work with all the students. 

The objective of the workshop was to help learners to develop ideas and techniques to write creatively. The workshop started with word level activities where students were taught how to use adjectives creatively to make their composition interesting and then it was followed by creative sentence construction. 

The final slot was paragraph writing. It was time for students to let their creative juices flow without any limitations. At the end of the day they shared their ideas with other students. Pondering from the workshop, I could see that many of them have got the talent in them and if guided to the right path they would turn up to be better writers one day. 

Sample of powerpoint presentation 

I hope through the workshop the students have learnt some new ideas and techniques for essay writing that would help them to obtain a better grade in their SPM examination. 

For those who are interested on the materials used for the workshop. Please click here to download them. Sharing is caring. However, I do not provide answers as I don't believe in spoon feeding.  

'HEBAT' MODULES

Here is the compilation of HEBAT modules. HEBAT stands for "Hayati Eksplorasi Berfikir Aras Tinggi. This module is developed to develop higher order thinking skills through reading activities. Each unit comes with lesson plan and also relevant materials. I think they are quite useful. 

There are 20 modules altogether and every module is developed for students of different level. The one thing I like about this module is, they are all focusing on issues and topics relevant to the current generation. Honestly, I do not use textbooks anymore as they are very outdated and I don't think the contents are relevant anymore. I use to make my own worksheets and I find this modules to be interesting and will be able to arouse students' interest if  the lessons are planned carefully. 

Thanks to my friend Aishah for sharing this.

UNIT 1
UNIT 2 
UNIT 3
UNIT 4
UNIT 5
UNIT 6
UNIT 7 
UNIT 8 
UNIT 9
UNIT 10 
UNIT 11
UNIT 12
UNIT 13
UNIT 14
UNIT 15
UNIT 16
UNIT 17 
UNIT 18 
UNIT 19 
UNIT 20 

Proverbs with Mohana...

Finally I have completed my 10th module, that is on proverbs which I have been working on for the past 2 months....Thank God...Finally it is done....The purpose of this module is to share my passion on proverbs with my students and also to expose my students to the usage of proverbs in writing. The module contains 35 tasksheets which will help students to explore proverbs using various interesting ways...The objective of using any module can only be achieved when proper teaching strategy is used, therefore I am planning to use explicit teaching strategies to complement this module so that learning will be optimum . The content of the module is :

a) introduction to proverbs

b) Pre - test

c) Preliminary practices

d) 35 tasksheets - tasksheets designed based on the themes/topics given in the syllabus so that the lesson will not deviate from my scheme of work.

e) test for every level

f) Post - test

This module is designed for form 3 students and I will start experimenting it on next year... I have also decided to conduct an action research on the effectiveness of this module...Hopefully everything will be fine....

God Bless...

Taaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!