My Reflection of the Language Camp (Aliya)

Hi everyone!

Finally, the day had arrived. It's the day for the Language Camp!
We stayed at Dewan Merdeka, Kolej Rahman Putra since morning until evening, walked around the hall, mingled among ourselves and with the participants, conducted the sessions and finally the camp came to an end.

One word to describe what I felt at the end of the day:
Happy.

It's a simple word, but I really felt that way. Although we were tired, but I guess everyone had fun doing this event together. We noticed our flaws, but I know that everyone had done their very best. So, I was very satisfied.

The Game Masters

That morning, all the game masters were nervous. Hence, we gathered and cheered each other up. Alhamdulillah during our sessions, the facilitators cooperated really well, helping our sessions to go smoothly. We did find it difficult to give instructions clearly. From that, we learnt to rephrase our sentences to explain the instruction in a simpler way. 

Oh hey, that's me conducting The Betrayal Game.
Arifah was by my side, writing the money scores

While I was not carrying out my responsibility as the Game Masters, I played many other roles, such as being an extra facilitator, a photographer and the DJ (to decide on the songs to be played in the speaker). I believe that many other facilitators played many roles as well, to keep ourselves busy by helping others, making sure our sessions to go smoothly. This is because everyone was always ready to receive orders or fulfill requests from our director, the game master in charge of a session and the facilitators. We also interacted with the participants to encourage them to converse more in English as on of the objectives of this camp is to enhance their English speaking skill.

Overall, I have learnt many things from this camp. I am grateful that Mr. G had given us the opportunity to organize this camp. Organizing this had enrich our experience and knowledge both in management and English language skills. It was interesting that because we were so used to speaking in English during the programme, we continued speaking in English in our room. haha. However, the best part is, handling this programme together with fellow TESLians had tighten our bond. May our friendship lasts forever :)

Alright. That's all.
Thank you TESLians.
Thank you Mr. G.
Thank you Allah.

One Day before the Language Camp (Aliya)

Salam and hi, people! *bows to everyone *smiles widely

Now let me share about our preparation a day before the Language Camp, which was on Friday.

A day before the camp, I went out with my roommate and game-masters-mate, Arifah to buy the materials for our games. We went to AEON, Taman Universiti. We were lucky because there were promotions and discounts for Year End Sale and Back to School promotion. Therefore, the stationary was a bit cheaper. *WIN!

That evening, we had a final meeting with all committee members. All committee gave updates on their progress. Then, Shafiq, Dzamir and Chang told us about the problem on our event venue. We were all feeling angry towards the other party, but tried to keep our head cool. Because it was only one day before the programme, most would feel stressed. I realized that it was important to be calm in that situation so that other committees would not feel so stressed out, especially the ones having problems. Alhamdulillah the problems were settled after several times of negotiation and discussion.

After the big meeting, the game masters had a final meetup to rehearse our session, especially on the way we give instruction for our games. Even during the rehearsal, we were feeling nervous because we could already imagine how we would be in front of everyone, conducting the game. After all of the game masters are done rehearsing, Sarah highlights on several things that we need to take note of. Then, she wished us good luck. Finally, we went back to our room as night approached.

That night, Arifah and I prepared our materials in our room together. I prepared the mini whiteboard, mahjong paper for the 'money' scoreboard and presentation slides for The Betrayal Game.

The Slides

After that, we rested and got some beauty sleep as we need to use a lot of energy for the camp on the day!

To be continued...

My Responsibilities for the Language Camp (Aliya)

Hi, everyone!

In this post, I'm going to share about my responsibilities for the Language Camp. During our first meeting, we held an election to choose the committee members for the camp. Shafiq was chosen as our director while Seha, our vice-director. As for me, initially, I was given the responsibility to be in charge of the Food and Hygiene committee, together with Arifah. Fatin was also assigned under our committee. However, a few weeks later, we were informed that we did not have to prepare the food for participants to cut our expenses. Hence, because we have less job, Arifah, Fatin and I were assigned to be under the Activity committee, in which the people in charge were Sarah and Esther.

During our third or fourth (can't remember accurately) meeting, we discussed on the activities to be done in the camp. A lot of ideas were proposed by our friends, including the games that were actually carried out during the camp. At first, I came to the meeting with a blank mind, not having of any idea to propose of the activities. However, after listening to the others' ideas, an idea suddenly popped out of my mind. It was the game I once played when I attended a camp during secondary school. Back then, the game was called 'Game Saham' or 'Stock Game'. I proposed this game in the meeting. After the concept of the game was explained, we named this game 'The Betrayal Game'.

Since I proposed this game, I automatically became one of the game masters. I feel powerful having that title *proud*. But with great power, comes great responsibility. Now I have to conduct the game during the camp! Aaaaaaaaa~! I was feeling nervous, but The Betrayal Game received positive feedbacks from my friends, so it raised my confidence :)

From a member of the Committee of Food and Hygiene to a Game Master.

I will further write about my experience as a game master in the next post. Till then!

What do I learn from the training session (Aliya)

Assalamualaikum and good day, everyone!

Today marks our final day of the training session (yeay, alhamdulillah!). In total, we have played nine different games. I am very sure everyone who participated during the whole training session had a lot of fun, right? I, myself enjoyed the training session so much. Hence, in this post, I am going to share my most memorable personal experience throughout the whole training sessions.

I had to admit that the most memorable experience was when I was conducting the “Guess the Idioms” game. I conducted the game with the help of my friend, Fatin. While carrying out the game, I realized that there were weaknesses that I overlooked which include giving clear instruction or rules of the game and recapping the game to discuss the lesson learned from the game.

My game required students to draw out the idiom, not doing gestures of it, but I did not clearly mention about that at the beginning. In the end, most of the students do gestures aside from drawing. From here, I learned that an instruction need to be clear and we need to check the students’ understanding in order to play the game effectively.

I also overlooked on recapping the game, in which it was mentioned by Mr. G after I had finished carrying out the game. Yes, I agree that it is important to recap on the game for the students to know what they learned from the game. Only then, the students can feel that the game is meaningful and there is a fun way to learn English. This would trigger the students’ interest in learning thus increasing their intrinsic motivation to learn English.

All in all, conducting and participating in the training session was awesome. Thanks to my partner, Fatin for helping me and also to my classmates who participated well and prepared many interesting games.

Thank you :)

P/S: Looking forward to our next event, the negotiation camp! 

Guess the Idioms

Hi. I'm Aliya Khairuddin. Each of us has been assigned to prepare a lesson plan for a language game of our own choice. While choosing the games, I recalled the games that have been carried out during my teaching practical and during micro-teaching sessions in UTM. I considered doing Bingo, but since that have been carried out once, and most of my friends are familiar with it, I thought of getting other alternative. I googled for some language games on the internet and found several games on idioms. This reminds me of my school days, where we played a lot of language games in during Language Month. Therefore, I had the idea to adapt one language game from one of the game sessions in my English language class.

Here is the lesson plan of the game that have been adapted:

Guess the Idiom

Language: Idioms, Vocabulary
Skills: Speaking
Control: Free
Level: Beginner (Year 5 and Year 6)
Time: 30 minutes
Materials: Paper strips with idioms written, five (5) small boxes, whiteboard/sketch book   and marker
Theme: Nature

Preparation:
A list of 50 idioms is prepared. Each idioms are written in a paper strip. The idioms are then put into boxes, with 10 paper strips for each boxes. The boxes will be given to each groups.
Before the game started, the students will be given a list of idioms with its meaning. They can read the idioms first to familiarize themselves with the idiom, to help them guess the idiom better.

Procedure: 
Group work
The game is played in two rounds. For both rounds, each groups are given 2 minutes. When it is a group’s turn, one member of the group will have to draw one paper strip from the box, read the idiom silently and illustrate the idiom on the whiteboard. The member may illustrate the idiom word by word. Then, the other members need to guess what the idiom is. If the idiom is correctly guessed, the paper strip will be taken out of the box. If it’s wrongly guessed, the paper will have to be put inside the box again.
This procedure will be repeated for other paper strips of idiom until the 2 minutes have ended. Then, the next group will do the same. After the first round have ended, the first group will start the second round again, followed by the other groups. For the second round, the game will only be played for 1 minute and 30 seconds for all groups. At the end of the second round, each groups will count how many paper strips are put outside of the box. The group with the most paper strip out wins.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Basically, in this games, the students need to draw out the idioms. In the original game, the students need to act out the words from the idiom. There is one important thing to do before playing this game in class, which is to expose the students to the idioms in previous classes. This is because idioms are difficult to remember, hence using unfamiliar idioms in this game will make this game difficult.

That is all from me. Thank you :)