Precious

This movie shows how 16-year-old Claireece P. "Precious" Jones suffers throughout her life. Since she is abused physically, sexually and mentally, she finds it is hard for her to focus on her study. Precious has been arranged to an alternative school to help her to change her lousy life. It is not only for her academic but also for her psychological therapy. Precious cannot focus on her study because of she is mentally disturbed and he black experience keeps appearing in his mind.
What will I do if one of my students has the same problem? Then I realise that as teachers, we must concern about our students. Sometimes teachers tend to scold their students for not paying attention but they never notice that the students are actually in dilemma or problem. By giving them input and homework will not be helpful to them until the students are able to accept the lesson.
From this movie, I see that being a teacher is a tough work. But a good teacher will always be there for their students to help them. Teacher's touch can sometimes be an effective remedy to the unfortunate students.

Chalk

Chalk is a documentary of teachers' life. It shows how the teachers survive in teaching field. When I watch it, first thing that appear in my mind is teaching is not an easy job like others assume. From the documentary, one of the teacher has a lot troubles with his students that take away his presence as a teacher in the class. It means he is unable to control his class. This is not good thing in teaching if the teacher cannot manage the students.
Problem is still a problem until you sole it. So, the particular teacher decides to learn his students attitudes and styles. Why he does so? Because he wants to know his students very well. Once you know your students, you will automatically know what your students need. This teacher learns the slang that is used by his students. He slowly learns it and the students are slowly getting closer to him.
Personally I think, to be a good teacher is not that easy. It takes effort and passion to develop self as a good teacher. It sounds difficult but it is not impossible.

Research Paper

Research paper is kind of a nightmare to me. To analyse a literary work is more difficult than solving a math problem. My supervisor wants something new and original for my research paper. Every time I submit my draft, my supervisor will ask me what's new about it. It drives me crazy after my supervisor wants me to work on something else, something original.
Since supervisor does not allow me to work on text that we have learned in class, I choose to leave King Lear and work on The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe. This text is an interesting text that talks about superstitious. I use this opportunity to write about superstitious in human nature. And the idea has been proved as an original idea and I consider it as my first draft even though it's pretty late. Now I know what and how to write. =)

Finding Forester

First impression that I give to this movie is 'boring'. But still i pay attention and watch it.
Forester in this movie reminds me to Peter Elbow who introduces the idea of Free Writing. Forester teaches the boy, Jamal Wallace to write stories. Forester finds that Wallace is facing difficulty to put his ideas in flow. Then. Forester asks Wallace to keep writing without thinking. It is like it is free for you to write anything on the paper. I think this idea is really good and it should be used in class.
Like Forester does, as teachers, we should let our students to write freely. It will make them write more and the stories they write will be more interesting.
In fact, this movie is focusing on literature as a subject. Producing stories is a part of literature. Wallace in this movie is actually producing literary works.So, as teachers, we need to encourage them to keep writing because their writings can be the master piece of the literary works.

Lean On Me

Do you still remember your school's song? I do. =)

The movie 'Lean on Me' is one of the best pedagogical movies that I ever watched. In this movie, we can see that school can be a battle field for some children and the environment may not be conducive and effective for learning. In this kind of environment, most of the students will become miserable and poor in academic.

'Lean on Me' is actually inspired by a true story. It tells us how a principal controls and changes his school. It is awesome and not every teacher can do it.
Mr. Clark is an experienced teacher who is invited by his fellow friends to get back to his old school in New Jersey. He returns to the school after 20 years he left the school. The environment of the school currently is not as good as before. In fact, it is way worse. He is there to make changes to the whole school. When I watch the scene where he comes back to that school, I question myself,"Is he going to succeed?"

The way he controls the staffs, teachers and students is very harsh. But I don't think it is a bad way to control them. If we live in that kind of school, I think we will do the same. Mr. Clark looks like an autocratic leader and a mean teacher but he knows his goals very well. I remember one of his lines which is "If you can't control it (school & students), how can you teach it?" What he says is absolutely right. Teacher control is very important to make sure the students listen to the teacher and learn. In this case, teacher's authority is needed and learner-centered can't be used.

Although Mr. Clark is a very serious person, he actually concerns about the students.
He concerns about students' interest. In this movie, the students do not like the school song and they do not even bother to memorize the lyric. The students find the song is boring and they prefer to sing the song as an acappella song. They love it that way. For the students' sake, Mr. Clark assigns the music teacher to teach all students to sing the school song the way they want. That is a great decision.

The way he touches the students is very special. We can see the result is printed through the students' behaviour. He changes the students from zero to hero and he manages to help the students to pass the state examination as well as makes the students believe in themselves. He provides high motivation to his students and he trusts them. It seems like he brings the miracle to the whole school hold the students' hand to walk to a better future.

Akeelah and The Bee

19th August 2010

"Can you give me the definition, please?" =)

Spelling Bee is a good activity to improve our vocabulary. I love the movie called "AKEELAH AND THE BEE" which portrays a dream of a girl who is able to master thousands of words. What have I learned from this movie? Well, generously speaking, I think this movie shows a big impact in students' life. Akeelah in this movie shows how passionate she is in Spelling Bee. She tries her best to learn all new words. But as teachers, we cannot forget that all students are born with different styles. What I'm trying to say is we need to study how our students learn instead of asking them why they cannot cope or fail in certain subjects. We must provide enough input to the students. Like this movie, the professor himself provides Akeelah enough vocab to compete herself in Spelling Bee. The input will make her confident. In school, all teachers need to do the same. Give students enough input will help the students a lot. By giving them enough input, the students will be confident enough to perform in academic. As the result, all of the students have chances to success just like Akeelah.

Ron Clark's story

I was inspired by a movie called The Triumph whereby the protagonist was an excellent teacher. Ron Clark was a teacher who always believed in himself that he was able to make changes in students’ lives. In this movie, he moved to New York City to teach. He made it and got a job in a public school in New York. He was a bold teacher who loved to take risk and challenge. For him, teaching is like taking risk.

He agreed to be a homeroom teacher to a class which had been labeled as hopeless class. The kids from that class were looked down. Mr. Clark insisted to help the students and promised a change in them. It was not as easy as he thought. It was beyond than that. His students were kind of rebellious, stubborn and uncooperative yet he never gave up. He knew what he wanted and he started to come out with his own rules to that class. It indicated he had a strategy to control the class which I found interesting. In fact, whenever he failed or students against him, he tried his best and negotiated with the students. There was a teacher presence in him. That was what a teacher needed to do if this situation happened.

Being a teacher was a heavy job. The reason I said so because a teacher was supposed to know or able to see the potential of his or her students. Mr. Clark in this movie already did it. Incredibly he managed to see the potential of his students and he helped them to shine the talent that they had. He made it as a part of his teaching. It was wonderful, isn’t it?

Mr. Clark was a good role model for teachers all over the world. He made changes and shined his students. He never looked down upon them. Therefore, he tried to a part of them. He tried to adapt the students’ styles in his classroom which was brilliant. Then he used relevant materials in class to teach and of course the students enjoyed it very much. They even scored in test. Even though at the beginning of his teaching, he used extrinsic motivation to promote students’ interesting in learning, then slowly it turned into intrinsic motivation when the students realized they wanted to graduate from the school.

After watched this movie, I asked myself, “What kind of teacher am I going to be?”

Position Paper

10th August 2010

We discussed about the issue of arranged marriage during lecture. Actually it was a discussion on how to write a position paper. It was just an issue to be used as the example to write a position paper.

At the beginning of the lecture, we were asked to study the advantages and disadvantages of one sex school. We talked about it in class and everyone had different views on this topic. Then I realised that in position paper, we should learn how to stand with our opinions and argue when it would be debated. To make it ours, we needed to stand and fight for it. I knew it didn't sound so easy but that was what we must do. Learn to express our thoughts and stand for it.

Drowgames Prize-Giving Ceremony

6th August 2010

Drowgames was part of my routines and I missed it very much. On 31st July 2010, all of the players played like crazy till midnight. It was fun even though it made me exhausted. The efforts that we put to play the game were worthed. I won the 6th place in the competition and of course i received one ipod nano as the prize. I also wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate to my beloved coursemates who won ipods.

On that day, we were told that this game was for teaching and learning purposes. We did play it as an English game but this game could be existed in many languages and terms in all courses in the world. Seriously it was amazing. All of teachers or even lecturers could use this material to teach their students. This game could be created in various level of proficiency and it would be beneficial for every student who was basically from different level of proficiency. Since it was a game, it would bring down the affective filter of the students. That was something crucial to make sure the students could engage to the lesson without any problems. I believed this game could be effective and the students would definitely enjoy it.

We were cartoonists =D

5th August 2010

I kept asking myself? Could I draw? My teammates kept encouraging me to draw. It meant I had to draw. I could not believe we came out with our own fable. It was interesting because we told the fable in comic strip form and I was loving it.

Our fable entitled as Food for Winter. The fable itself looked quite simple but the message that was conveyed was salient. We added sense of humor into the fable to make it more fun and enjoyable. In 45 minutes during tutorial, all of us were struggling to finish up the comic strip. Luckily we managed to do it. Congratulation to all of us.

In fact, I believed that fable was a very good material that could be used to teach language in class. The script or dialogue was simple and the visual would help the students to the story line. It was like reading a book except more visual and pretty much shorter. All fable carried their own values that could be inculcated in the lesson. By using fable, students would enjoy it and the lesson would be relevant and effective.

Drowgame Knock-out Competition

29th July 2010

During tutorial, we were asked to bring our own notebooks to Resource Centre. All of us quite excited since we already noticed that we would play Drowgames at that time. I played three rounds if I was not mistaken. My first opponent was actually refused to play with me because according to him, I was an expert but seriously I did not think so. For me, it was a competition, what u needed to do was performed your best. As he expected, I won that round. I played with another opponent for the second time after that and I won again. The last round I played was the third round where I lost to the champion of Drowgames Knock-out Competition. I was having fun although I didn’t win. All of us were giving our best to grab the champion title. Never mind, for those who had lost, took it as a fun time to play game with your friends or just thought as drill and practice to improve your English =). For those who had won, congratulation.

Mona Lisa Smile

I liked this movie called Mona Lisa Smile. I was attracted to this movie because I put an expectation on this movie. I expected I could learn something from it since it was about a teacher who was facing a number of obstacles through out the years while she was teaching at the girl school.

Mona Lisa Smile was a very good movie and of course it was entertaining. Why I said so? It was because the story line was perfect and the actresses were great in playing their characters. I did enjoy it and I would definitely watch it again next time. From 5 stars, I gave it 4 stars as its ranking.

From the perspective of education, I noticed that this movie revealed how education was important at that time. The teacher tried many techniques to teach her students even though at the beginning of the movie, she faced a lot of problems. In fact, this movie portrayed how women at that time tried to be perfect by gaining knowledge and it made them looked as high standard women. The teacher did a very good hard work to make sure her students would be able to achieve their dreams and become who or what they wanted to be. She tried very hard to approach her students since her students were not sharing the same characteristics. She managed to do that. In fact, she taught about life and she made the students looked at life in different ways and perspectives. That was the reason why she left her students to look at a huge painting and asked them to interpret the painting based on their own opinion. It was a beautiful job that had been done by the teacher.

As a future teacher, like I said before, I loved the way the teacher taught her students to look at life in different perspectives. Different students might have different interpretation. I wanted to make changes in my students' lives just like what had been done by the great teacher in Mona Lisa Smile.

PRPi10

When we were asked to go to Dewan Besar, we were kind of excited to have class outside of the lecture hall. Well, we walked all the way to our destination and met Dr. Jayakaran Mukundan there. That was my first time attending a research exhibition. We walked around and looked at many kind of researches that had been conducted by many lecturers and other students.
We saw a lot of new things that newly produced by those brilliant people. Research is one way of gaining knowledge and i found it was interesting.
The last booth that I visited on that day was Dr. Jayakaran Mukundan's. His research was more attractive to me since it was related to English Language. The products that produced by our lecturer and his students were really helpful for teachers (unfortunately I could not remember the name of the products).
I believed research was a good way to learn something or to be expert in something. To make it a success, of course effort was needed.

Drill & Practice

Drowgames is officially my favourite game recently. Why I said so? I can't even stop myself from playing the game. I'm addicted to the drug called Drowgames. Hahaha...i can't believe I'm saying this.

If you curious to know if i like this game or not, i think i already answer that question. YES, I'M LOVING IT. I'M ADDICTED TO IT. =)
This game actually is like drill and practice. Believe it or not, the game consists of the most common English words that we use everyday. We use those words every single day. Even though we use them everyday, it doesn't mean we know how exactly to use the words. For me, it's like an exercise which i find really good.

This game is suitable for students in school. The used is simple and I'm sure students will be able to understand and play the game. In fact, if my students are lower proficiency students, I think it will not be a problem since this game is using simple English. I think young adults will enjoy this game and they will try to be more proficient in the target language. They can use this game and compete with their friends to improve their level of proficiency.

I'm pretty sure that students will have a great opportunity to learn vocabulary and how it is functioned. By knowing the words and their functions, it will help the students more to improve their English.

1st lecture with songs..

Sufi Song

On the 1st lecture of this course, we had been introduced to a sufi song. The song was sang in other language, of course it was not English. Well, it was a task, all we needed to do was just listened to it.

First thought that came accross my mind was, "it sounds like Hindi song". But still i listened to it. The song was about praising GOD...although the singer, Saeen Zahoor was a Muslim and the song itself was about praising Allah, we still could listen to it as a universal song. Basically, my class was consisted of multiracial friends, so the song might give them different meaning. I didn't think it was a problem.

The song was sang beautifully by the singer. I didn't get the meaning when I listened to it but the beat of melody helped me to feel.It didn't matter if we didn't understand it by looking at the alien lyric, what we could do was listened and felt with heart. Then we could feel it and understand it. =)

Alejandro by Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga is a famous singer all over the world and her songs are always hit songs. During lecture time, on the same day we listened to Sufi Song, we listened to ‘Alejandro’ sang by Lady Gaga. The song was played in class and almost everybody enjoyed listened to it.

Even though the song was just a hit song, it is actually beyond what we thought. The song itself carried a number of interpretations and different people might view it differently. For me, I felt like I was watching a drama that was played by Lady Gaga with a group of men. It was pretty much like watching a theatre. The songs itself indicated the feeling of the woman in the video clip which was obviously played by Lady Gaga. She expressed her feeling and emotion which were conveyed through the choreography of the song that suggested her sadness and regret. If we wanted to use this song in classroom, I didn’t think it was a good idea for a teacher to show the video clip to class but it was fine to let the students listened to the song and learn the message from it.

Of course ‘Alejandro’ was different from Sufi Song. We couldn’t compare the content of the both songs. But what I was trying to share here was although both songs were composed in different genres and purposes; both of them carried their own interpretations and meanings. They were just like literature and they had their own ways to convey different messages and ideas. For me, in our classroom, it was fine to use songs because songs were part of art as well as literature.