This term the Year 6s were learning about natural disasters, which was perfect, because in Indonesian language class this acted as the vehicle for a specific "case study" of volcanoes in Indonesia. It was great scope for discussing the impact of volcanoes erupting and the relationship people in Indonesia, and comparing city and village lifestyles in Indonesia.
I focused on vocabulary from transportation, places in the city and village. Below is outlined a few activities I completed as part of this unit.
Kota dan Desa: Collaborative Craft Activity
Students also made a small popsicle stick person of themselves using scrap paper. I had printed off school photographs of the students themselves which they cut out. Here is an example of a student that didn't have a picture of themselves. I found that setting a timer for 10 minutes was enough for Year 5/6s to easily complete the puppet of themselves.
This was spread over 2 periods (35 mins each).
Students absolutely love this wall, and love playing with their puppets, and looking at where people are in the town every lesson.
Teaching Proficiency with Reading and SToryTElling
This can be quite spontaneous and very fun for the kids, but needs a lot of development from the teacher skill set. The teacher needs to be very "switched on" in order to listen out for quirky contributions from the students, constantly search and check who is understanding and it is a very noisy environment. It can be quite challenging to engage weak students, and focus on using language that is simple and clear. Also, students who are weak often decide from the very beginning that they don't know anything and disengage.
But on the other hand, I've found all the students who normally are disengaged in the classroom, that are often fidgety, inattentive types absolutely love contributing to storytelling. So there is positives and negatives, but overall, I enjoy the increased amount of spontaneous speaking/writing from the students receiving so much comprehensible input. I believe that this can be very successful, but I definitely would benefit from some more professional development courses regarding this.
Inquiry Question: Mengapa orang suka tinggal dekat gunung api?
Context & Reading
This short video highlighted this young person's experience with a volcanic eruption. He needed to escape and became scared when they could not find their family. This helped put into context the story we read next, and linked well to the language focus.
Production: Di mana Adik laki-laki saya? Comic
This was big project, and took at least 3 weeks to complete. We had many interruptions which made it very difficult. Below are some finished products which look great! Kids who were familiar with anime or manga absolutely loved this task, and knew what to do, but many were unfamiliar with the type of book, so I had to also explain this to those kids.