1.0 Introduction

Teaching and learning materials play an important role in completing a teaching and

learning process. They support teachers’ lesson plans and assist learning process

(Doyle & Robson, 2002). Without those materials, a lesson will be incomplete and less

purposeful. As stated in a document published by a website, Curriculum Development

Council (2007), teaching and learning resources served the purposes of providing wide

range of learning experiences to the pupils, facilitating as well as enhancing the

interactions among teacher and pupils during the lesson and catering pupils with

different needs such as multiple intelligences and learning styles. Teaching and learning

materials also proved to be able to help pupils in constructing long term memory towards

a particular knowledge (Nikky, 2010). Teaching materials are able to provide direct

learning experiences to pupils and enhance pupils’ high level of interest towards learning

if the materials are selected correctly and used wisely.

2.0 Insights Gained while Selecting and Managing Resources

Based on the functions and purposes of teaching materials stated above, we gained

some ideas on how to select and exploit the materials. The knowledge becomes more

meaningful when we start to select and adapt the teaching materials to suit to the lesson

plan and the pupils. The selection of teaching materials occurs throughout the whole

process of planning a lesson. During the process, the first thing that came across my

mind is all about the learners which include their proficiency level, learning styles and

most importantly, their interest. The lesson plan was designed for an average classroom.

From here, we have made our decision of using the concept of “Wheel of Fortune” as

main teaching material to create a teaching material to teach sentence structure. In

order to cater the learners’, appearance, layout and design of the teaching material are

taken into consideration.

The appearance of a teaching material includes both the illustration and wording.

A quality teaching material should have visible visuals which are easily seen by the

learners and able to attract their attention towards the lesson; the writing must be neat

and legible with suitable size and the not to forget, it must be error-free (Gower, Philips,

& Walters, 2005). Based on this principle, the cartoon – minions are chosen as the

background picture for the teaching materials. Minions are the popular cartoon in current

trend. Thus, using minions as background visual is to accomplish the mission of

attracting learners’ attention towards the learning process. Pupils learn better when their

interest is arisen and highly motivated (Broderick, 2013).

Besides visuals, wording is another factor to include under appearance and

layout design of the teaching materials. The words written on a teaching material should

be able to be seen by every pupil from any seating location in the classroom. Research

shows that text-plus-graphic materials stimulate learners’ cognitive skill and help

learners to perform better (Stokes, 2012). Therefore, the wording used in the teaching

materials should be clear and visible to enhance the learning process. Learners will be

motivated if they are performing well in the learning process. This fulfills one of the

criteria on effective teaching materials – ability to engage learners both affectively and

cognitively (Crawford, 2002).

The discussions above are regarding the external evaluation while selecting

teaching materials. Despite of external evaluation, internal evaluation of teaching

materials are carrying the same weightage as internal evaluation. Through this

experience of preparing teaching materials, I realized a good teaching resource is not

only judge through its appearance but also its internal content which include the level of

difficulty in terms of structures and lexical, content and activities for practices. These

judgments are to be met with the four basic overall requirements of a teaching material

which are usability, generalizability, adaptability and flexibility (McDonough & Shaw,

2003).

Vocabulary is the main ingredient found in a text. It plays an important role in

determining the effectiveness of the lesson as vocabulary determines the

comprehension level of learners towards the text given (Westwood, 2005). In order to

make the learning process more meaningful and smooth, the vocabularies used in the

“Magic CD” are those that the pupils have already learnt. The word choices are suitable

to their level and at the same time, refresh on their prior knowledge. As claimed by

Stephen Krashen (1981) in his Theory of Second Language Acquisition, the process of

acquisition of a second language takes place if the learners are exposed to

comprehensible input (Schütz, 2007). Therefore, exposing pupils with the vocabularies

which they have learnt the meanings help to make the learning process of sentence

structures more sensible and purposeful.

Besides, the content of the selected teaching material also parts of the contribution

towards the comprehensible input. Content which is familiar to the learners make sense

for them in comprehending the new knowledge. In order to achieve this, learners can be

assigned to be their own writer in producing learning materials (Clarke, 2008). Learners

know themselves well on what they like and what they are familiar with. By asking them

to produce teaching and learning materials with teacher’s guidance, the learning process

becomes livelier. For instance, in our lesson plan, the pupils are asked to highlight the

verbs and construct their own sentences. From here, they are able to use familiar

content to create sentences such as activities that related to their life and names which

can be found from their living surrounding.

At the same time, the Magic CD provides pupils with plenty opportunities of practices

as well as follow-up activities after the lesson (Crawford, 2002). During the process of

producing their own Magic CD, pupils are given the opportunity in parsing the sentences

into subject, verbs and predicate. They are required to parse their sentences correctly,

so that when come to competition, pupils are able to form correct sentences based on

the structures created. At this stage, peers editing occurred indirectly. This fosters

learners’ autonomy towards the learning of the language which is claimed as one of the

principles while selecting and evaluating teaching materials that is able to promote

intrinsic motivation among the learners (Hafner & Miller, 2011; Gardner, 2011). The

Minions Wheel provides self-learning opportunity for the pupils to practice by themselves

as the material will be displayed at the back of the classroom. They can access to it

anytime when they are free.

3.0 Conclusion

In conclusion, from the whole experience that I have undergone, I realized that a good

teaching material will meet the needs of internal evaluation such as language content,

activities, flexibility, authenticity; and external evaluation which includes appearance,

layout and design. Those factors are important to be taken under consideration in order

to ensure the effectiveness of the teaching materials in contributing to the lesson. As a

whole, the value of a good teaching material is lying under the four basic requirements of

evaluation – usability, generalizability, adaptability and flexibility.

References

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