Target Group The target group consists of HALUS /GALUS students from Year 6 .

This group of students is a mixture of the average and weak language proficiency group. One of their main problems is to construct correct sentenc INTRODUCTION Reflection on Previous Teaching and Learning I have been teaching Year 6 English since I started my teaching career. From my observation, writing is a very complex skill to get my target group to master it. The problems among our students are having tenses errors in sentence constructions, having problems to add and use new words including adjectives and adverbs appropriately. A number of single word errors in use of conjunctions, prepositions and subject-verb-agreement, having unclear, incoherent sentence structures and sometimes with total distortion, little or no meaning. Based on those factors, I need to do some improvements to my target group and make sure that they will construct their own simple sentences without guidance anymore. The weaker students will learn more how to create their own sentences. English Language has been identified as the problematic subject. Most students find English subject difficult due to the lack of interest and poor command of English. The most difficult part for the students is the writing skills. Many approaches and techniques have been adopted to teach and hence improve writing skills but, the writing performance of the students is still unsatisfactory. The problem lies in the fact that our students have a poor command of the language and as such are unable to apply the rules of grammar in their writing. For the purpose of this study, I believe that our students need to internalize grammar rules first, as this would provide them with a basic foundation which would in turn help them improve their competence in English and contribute especially towards students enhancing their writing skills. Plan-in-action Students learn what they are taught students learn by listening methods turn out to be better at listening; students taught through the reading are better at reading. The best major source of language available to the learner is what they encounter in the classroom. Learning is to be managed through a variety of grouping; a class, small group, pairs or

individuals, appropriate to skills be taught and the diverse abilities and interests of the pupils. Greater diversity and flexibility is to be applied in the selection of the body of knowledge and skills to be taught in a particular lesson. More attention to be given to the individual needs and interests of pupils through remedial and enrichment programmes. Utilisation of available local materials and resources to enhance the teaching and learning process. Schools can encourage their pupils to read more extensively to build a wider vocabulary in English, ( simple story books / Lady Bird Series) ACTIVITIES Students create their own dictionary. The write at least 5 words a day and 5 sentences. Activities planned to improve writing skills.. Implementation of Activity 1 A small booklet was given to each student. List of words with blanks to be filled in with the meanings of the words in Bahasa Melayu are provided. The topics include buildings and places, numbers, food, occupations, sounds, plants, animals, synonyms, antonyms, colours, shapes, flowers, vegetables, fruits, places, things, materials for buildings, locations, direction. From the practices of knowing the words and their meanings, the students are able to understand English better and easier. Even though it is a long term process, the students did show improvements in terms of understanding and interest. After providing the students with the appropriate vocabulary in order to assist them in writing, the students need to write simple sentences since their performance in writing do not show a vast improvement. Therefore, they need more practice in constructing simple sentences. Simple sentences are the basic sentence patterns that the students should know in order to start writing. A booklet with ten blank lines were given to the students. The students were required to write ten simple sentences everyday. Basic simple sentences are taught to the students until they really understand to write the sentences themselves.

Implementation of Activity 2 The students were given the graded pictorial exercises. From simple to difficult. The objective of giving these exercises is to guide them in writing in a more proper way by considering not only the grammar rules, variety of sentence patterns used but also the flow of the writing. APPENDIX

A and an are indefinite articles used to refer to a singular countable noun. An indefinite article means that we don't know which one, or it is not important. A is used before a consonant (b,c,d,f,g,etc.): a car An is used before a vowel (a,e,i,o,u) : an animal *Tom lives in a town. *Julie is reading an English book. *We eat meat with a knife and a fork. the The is a definite article used to talk about something specific. *The town where Tom lives is very big. *What book is Julie reading? She is reading the book Tom gave her. The is also used to refer to: *Rivers, seas, oceans : the Mississippi, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic. *Nationalities : the British, the Americans, the Japanese 1. Use the language o Use English at home, in school and everywhere Be independent learners o Do not rely on your school teachers o Read on your own Keep a vocabulary notebook o write down words and phrases you learn every day Use dictionary o Use the one hat has examples of sentences and usage Read, Read and Read o Read plenty of good reading materials o Try guessing the meaning of words as you read

2.

3. 4. 5.

6. Keep a journal o You have to write daily o Get a small, nice notebook for this o Write about anything under the sun I hear and I forget I listen and I understand I do and I remember ( Chinese proverb) 3. Children like dialoque type passage and stories ( to include a few samples ) You have to write daily Get a small, nice notebook for this Write about anything under the sun TEACHING WITH CARTOONS The students love it . - to illustrate idioms, sarcasm, hyperbole, inferences, and different elements of writing. TEACHING IDEAS IN THE CLASSOOM These are some of the ideas for the teachers to use which might be useful in the classroom . - Ask a student to demonstrate a dance, and assist the student in explaining the movements in English. - Ask students to name as many objects in the classroom as they can while you write them on the board. - Ask students to present to the class a gesture that is unique to their own culture. -At the end of class, erase the board and challenge students to recall everything you wrote on the board during the class period. Write the expressions on the board once again as your students call them out. Bring a handphone phone (real or toy) to class, and pretend to receive calls throughout the class. As the students can only hear one side of the conversation, they must guess who is calling you and why. Make the initial conversation very brief, and gradually add clues with each conversation. The student who guesses correctly wins a prize.

-Bring a fork, knife, spoon, bowl, plate and chopsticks (if you have them) to class, and mime eating some different dishes, letting students guess what they are. Then let your students take a turn. - Bring in some snacks that you think your students haven't tried before, and invite the students to sample them and give their comments. -Display a flag on the board, then teach him or her how to describe the flag to the class . -Collaborate with your students on a list of famous people, including movie stars, politicians, athletes, and artists. Have every student choose a famous person, and put them in pairs to interview each other. - Display different cultural dress than usual and have students comment on what's different. -Copy a page from a comic book, white out the dialogue, make copies for your class, and have them supply utterances for the characters. -Copy some interesting pictures of people from magazine ads. Give a picture to each student, have the student fold up the bottom of the picture about half an inch, and write something the person might be thinking or saying. Put all the pictures up on the board, and let everyone come up and take a look. - Describe something observable in the classroom (while looking down), and tell students to look in the direction of what you described. - Draw a map of your country or another country that your students know well. By drawing lines, show students where you went on a trip, and tell them about it. Then call on several students to do the same. The trips can be truthful or fictional. - Fill the board with vocabulary your students have encountered in previous classes (make sure to include all parts of speech), and get them to make some sentences out of the words. - Find out what famous people your students admire, and work together with the class to write a letter to one of them. - Give each student a marker pen and create a new dialogue. -Hand each student an index card, and tell them to write down a sentence that includes an error they have made this week, along with the correct version of the sentence. Next, tape all of the index cards on the board for students to look over. -Hang up four different posters (example - one of a world map, one of a famous singer, one of a flower, and one of Einstein) in the four corners of your room. Tell students to choose

one corner to stand in, and talk about why they chose that poster. -Have students come to the board one by one, draw a poster of a movie (without the title) they think the other students have seen, and let the other students guess which movie it is. -Play a musical instrument for a few minutes and students write comments. -In small groups, have your students design a billboard for something other than a product (wisdom, humility, friendship, etc.). -Inquire to see if your students have any unusual talents (can wiggle their ears, can bark like a dog), and encourage them to demonstrate. - Instead of saying "Very good!" all the time, vary the ways you praise (and correct) students as much as possible.- e.g.You have done well - Instruct your students to find something in their wallets/purses/pencil boxes, and tell the story behind it. - Just a few minutes before the bell rings, call on your students to choose the ten most useful words they came in contact with during this class period, then have them narrow it down to the three most useful words. - Pass around some magazines, and have each student choose an ad that he or she likes. Give students an opportunity to explain their choices. - Play a listening activity from radio / cd etc and students recall. -Play a recording of music and have some students draw on the board what the music makes them think of. - Prepare several paper bags, each with a different scent inside (perfume, cinnamon, cheese), pass the bags around the class, and let students describe what they smell. - Produce a list of commonly used sentence-modifying adverbs on the board, such as suddenly, actually, unfortunately, and happily. - Provide each student with a list of the current top ten popular songs. Play excerpts from some or all of the songs, and choose some questions to ask your students, such as: Did you like the song? Have you heard this song before? How did the song make you feel? What instruments did you hear? - Purchase a postcard for each member of your class, writing his or her name in the name and address space,then he or she will write a message . - Put the students in small groups, and ask each group to plan a vacation for you. They must

plan where you will go, what you will do, who you will go with, and what you will buy. When they are finished, have each group present their plans. - Review a phrase or sentence that you want students to remember, by holding a competition to see "Who can say it the loudest/the quietest/the quickest/the slowest/in the deepest voice/in the highest pitched voice?". - Supply each student with a copy of the entertainment section of the local newspaper, and tell them to choose somewhere to go next weekend. - Teach on a different side of the classroom than you usually do. - Tell each student to report the latest news in their country or city to the class. -Tell your students to practice a conversation from their course book that they are familiar with, but this time they can only use gestures, no words. - When they are practicing a dialogue, have students play around with the volume, intonation, pitch, or speed of their voices. -Write "Tell me something I don't know." on the board, then ask students questions about things they know about and you don't, such as their lives, cultural background, interests, and work. -Write a common adjacency pair (Thank you./You're welcome OR I'm sorry./That's alright) on the board. Ask students if they know of any expressions that could replace one of the ones you just wrote. Write any acceptable answers on the board. - Write a number of adjectives, such as mysterious, happy, peaceful, sad, angry, and frustrated on the board. Call out a color, and ask your students to tell you which adjective they associate with that color. -Write a word on a slip of paper and show it to a student. This student must whisper it to the second student. Then the second student must draw a picture of what he or she heard, and show it to the third student. The third student, then, writes the word that represents the picture and shows it to the fourth student. Then the fourth student whispers it to the fifth student.... and so on. This continues until you get to the last student, who must say the word to the class. -Write an idiomatic expression (such as "It beats me." or "I'm fed up.") in big letters on the board. Call on a few students to guess what it means before you tell them. - Write down the names of about five very different people on the board (a small baby, a rude waiter in a restaurant, a fashion model, a stranger in a crowd, and a grandfather). Give students a common expression, such as "Good morning!" or "Sorry!", and ask students

how they might say it differently when talking to a different person. - Write your name on the board vertically, and add a suitable adjective that begins with each letter of your name. The next step is to invite students to do the same. * Source: http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Houston-TeachingIdeas.html More Activities. - Select a cartoon strip consisting of a series of four pictures that tell a story. - Divide the class into groups of four, and give one picture to each student so that there are different pictures for each student in each group. - Tell the students that each of them now has got one picture from a four-picture series that make up a cartoon strip. Tell them what the topic of the cartoon stands and ask each student individually to write with a short sentence .Then arrange the pictures in the most logical order. T -Ask each group to present their cartoon strip to the class and to invite their classmates to comment on their suggested presentation. DialogingDialoging is simply one more way to increase the frequency of communication between teacher and student and student and student. Below are examples of different kinds of dialoging that has taken place in the context of my writing classes.

Student to teacher o journal writing o asking and answering questions o progress reports and updates

Teacher to student o announcements o assignments o homework

Student to student(s) o. social events and announcements

One perfect paragraph This is a simple activity that helps students practice editing short paragraphs looking for grammar, agreement, spelling, and structural mistakes. The teacher prepares one practice paragraph or two with several mistakes . This paragraph has about 9-10 mistakes. Find and correct them. Lat months I spent two wonderful day with host family. They have 3 child and we played a lot together. We cook Japanese foods for them Saturday evening. They thought it dericious. On Sunday we wnt to the church. I enjoyed the music, but didn't understood the speech. I hope see them again in the future. Example 2 of what to send to the group Here's another paragraph to correct. It has about 11-12 mistakes. Find them and correct them and send the corrected paragraph back to me. This wekend I will go grand Culee dam and Leavenworth. I looking forward to go there. I have never seen dam before. I want to go shop. I want to stay a nice hotel. .Chain stories or sentences This is a simple activity that help students with basic sentence level grammar reinforcing such grammatical structures as countable/uncountable nouns, prepositional phrases, and so on. Before class send a partial sentence to the group, such as "It was a dark and stormy night and " or "I went to the store and bought some " Students then add to the story or sentence and forward it on to an assigned partner in the class. The story is passed around to all members of the class with each adding their part. Have each student add something different each time. . Story puzzles Story puzzles are stories in which sentences are randomly mixed and rearranged by the students in a correct sequence. Cloze passage exercises Students fill in sentences with every x th word omitted, or every noun, or verb, and so on.

Treasure hunt The day of the treasure hunt, each student writes the clues .

Tables: AM - IS - ARE Long form I am You are He is She is It is We are You are They are Short form I'm You're He's She's It's We're You're They're Example I am late. You are clever. He is happy. She is hungry. It is cold. We are late. You are sleepy. They are great. Affirmative Yes, we do. Yes, she can. Yes, they have. Yes, he is. Negation I am not late. You are not (aren't) clever. He is not (isn't) happy. She is not (isn't) hungry. It is not (isn't) cold. We are not (aren't) late. You are not (aren't) sleepy. They are not (aren't) great Negative No, we dont. No, she cant. No, they havent. No, he isnt. Question Am I late? Are you clever? Is he happy? Is she hungry? Is it cold? Are we late? Are you sleepy? Are they great?

Question Do we know him? Can she see me? Have they read the book? Is he hungry?

Mind: If you is the subject of the question, you must be replaced by I or we. Question Do you know him? Affirmative Yes, I / we do. Negative No, I / we dont.

If the question starts with are you, are must sometimes be replaced by am. Question Are you hungry? Affirmative Yes, I am. Negative No, Im not.

For the average and weak students. Examples . ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ AbcdefghIjklmnopqrstuvwxyz

A book , a cat , a boy , a tree , a carrot - An apple , an egg , an Indian , an orang, an umbrella I am a boy, He is a student, She is Anita, It is a dog , The Sun is shining, The sky is clowdy. You are a good man . We are close friends. They are playing .Are you ready? This is a new car .That is an old bus. Is this your pen? Is that your bicycle? These are toys. Those are trees. Are these your books? Are those your toys? He has a new friend. She has a pretty doll. It has a sharp teeth. Ravi has an egg tray. I have a brother. Do you have a sister? We have many relatives. They have a big house. Q : Who is your class teacher? A : My class teacher is Miss.Vivian. Q: What is in the box? A: There is a glass in the box. Q: Where is your home? A: My home is near the school. Q: When did you buy this computer? A: I bought this computer last Sunday. Q: Why was he late to school? A : He was late because he missed the bus. Q: Which is your bag ? A : The green bag. Q: Whose car is that ? A : That is my grandfathers car. Q: Whom were you talking over the phone? A : I was talking with my mother. Q: How did you go to Melaka ? A : I went to Melaka by express bus. PREPOSITIONS - movement She ran to the door. She ran through the tunnel. She ran across the road. She ran along the road. She ran over the bridge. She ran off the stage. She ran round the track. She ran into the room. - At , on . in , by, since , Someone is at the door. The cat sat on the mat. The Astro dish is on the roof. I start work at 8.00am . I dont work at night. My birthday is on 8th October. We must complete our lessons by the end of July. Thiru was preparing for his exam since January2011. UPSR: English Paper 2: Section B Question 2 (b) TOPIC

REASONS

1. Place / Venue/ Location

I can go there easily. It is near my house. I can go there at anytime. It is a nice / beautiful place. It is very enjoyable. It is very useful and has a lot of benefits. I can gain more knowledge. I can improve my vocabulary. I can widen my knowledge. I shall be more confident of myself. I can get a lot of new friends. I can do something beneficial during my free time. I shall be able to know more about new things. It gives me a pleasant feeling. It teaches me to independent / confident. My parents always encourage me. It is reasonable and affordable. I can save my money for other expenses. It is a reasonable price and I think I can afford it. It is also worth buying. The price is low and reasonable. I can afford to pay for it / buy it. It is cheaper than the others. It is attractive offer. I can save my pocket money.

2. Society

3. Price / Fee / Fare / Rent

4. Free gift / Discount / Offer / Souvenir

I do not have to buy it anymore. I dont have to spend more. It is delicious and appetizing. It is nutritious, tasty and appetizing. It is my favourite food / drinks. It is good for my health. It is comfortable / convenient. I can relax myself during a journey. It is an economical way of travelling. It is suitable for a long journey. It is fast and I wont feel bored. I can enjoy watching the beautiful scenery along the journey. I can enjoy them. I can use them. It is comfortable and convenient. I am free at that time. It takes a shorter / longer time to finish it. I would not feel bored. The time is enough for me to spend it there. 9. Colour / Fashion / Pattern / Design It is beautiful / attractive / eye-catching. It is my favourite colour / design. It suits me. It is the latest fashion / pattern / design. I can earn money for living. It teaches me to be responsible / independent.

5. Food / Drinks / Menu / Dishes / Meal

6. Transport

7. Facility

8. Date / Time / Duration

10. Occupation

I will commit to my job. I can support my family / parents. We can exchange ideas. We can share the same hobby / ideas / interest. I can learn many new things from her / him. I shall be able to know more about his / her country. I have a chance to visit him / her country one day. It is cute. It is easy to look after / to take care / to manage. It is easy to feed. I can play with it. It can be a great company to me. It can help to look after the house. It is cool and comfortable. It is long-lasting. It is worth it to buy. I can wear it for a long time. I am sure I have made the best choice. Definitely, my choice is right. I hope my father / mother / brother / sister will like my choice and appreciate it. Tips Of Answering Question 1 Paper 2.

11. Pen-pal

12. Pets

13. Material

14. Finally / Lastly

Read the instructions Study the picture stimulus and find out the location You must read all the words given in the boxes Make sure you understand and try to relate them to the situation in the picture Look out for the activities shown in the picture Try to find the object and its location

You can also include attire in one of the sentences You are encouraged to use Simple Present Tense and Present Continuous Tense

Tips Of Answering Question 3 Paper 2.

Read the instruction given Study each picture carefully Read all the words given and try to relate them to the story line Look for the characters in the story line Identify the verbs given. Justify whether you should use present or past tense to write your essay You should also master the use of infinitive 'to' Construct simple, compound and complex sentences in your story line to score good marks Be creative and think 'outside the box' Use suitable adjectives, adverbs, similes, proverbs and collective nouns to make your story interesting Use correct spelling and punctuation Handwriting should be legible, neat and clean

You are going to sit for the English Paper 1 and 2 on Thursday after recess. So don't take heavy breakfast as it might make your stomach upset. Don't take spicy food and within this week please take care of your health. Get enough sleep and study, study, study and study. Easy to talk It is not a easy task but it is not impossible.