I thought I would share an example of short successful activity which I did with the Year 8s today.
Our topic is Upacara (Celebrations) and I was covering the topic of giving gifts. Our learning intention was to be able to say whether a gift was suitable or not for a person and giev a reason. After doing a quick revision of key vocabulary from the past lesson, I gave students a mini whiteboard and texta with eraser.
I absolute love love LOVE having these mini whiteboards and highly recommend them to any language teacher because of the versatility in use as well as level of engagement from students in writing tasks. They ALL write and this is simply because of the novelty of the whiteboard!
I prepared a number of slides with a pop culture character and an object which asks Apakah hadiah ini cocok? (Is this a suitable gift?). Below are some examples slides.
I have realised that this group of students have needed alot more scaffolding than other students, so I included the writing prompt for answers.
The students simply gave their answers by writing it on the board, and created their own reasons.
Some examples of answers:
Homer picture: "Tidak cocok, karena dia gemuk!" (Not suitable, because he is fat.)
Batman picture: "Tidak cocok, karena kuda kecil. Dia suka mobil." (Not suitable because the horse is small. He likes cars")
Some students were very creative and used alot of language they have learned in the past, some students were not, and copied others. However, that wasn't an issue because it was language practice and students who normally would refuse to write were happy to have a go. I definitely know they had fun, because they even said so.
At the end of the lesson, all students indicated on their fingers to me whether they felt confident they had achieved it. All students indicated from 3-5 and only one said 0. I felt this was a very simple way for the students to reflect on their learning and cement our objective.
It's a simple lesson, but I felt was very effective. What do you think? Have you done similar lessons to this before?
Sampai jumpa!