Mr. Crab And Mr. Squid

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So tonight I would like to share one of my lesson plans that I designed for my Year 3 kids. It was not in the textbook because I created it myself. So, please expect some flaws. Haha

Lesson 1 : LISTENING / SPEAKING
After I read them the story, I asked them simple WH Questions such as, ‘How many characters in the story?’ “Where did Mr.Crab live?’ and etc.

I wrote this story at 3 a.m. I just couldn’t find the best, simplest and easiest story to teach Simple Past Tense on the internet, so I had to come up with my own story. I dunno why I chose crab and squid as my characters, but these two characters remind you of something right? Haha. SPONGEBOB!

If you look at the ending of the story where the food was gone, I was actually so sleepy and exhausted at that time. I didn’t know how to finish the story, so sengaja buat tergantung. Kunun2 nk suruh my kids sambung cerita la and it worked. Haha

Lesson 2 : READING
Match the sentence halves based on the story.

Answer and colour. Colour and answer.

This is what I did in Lesson 2, after doing shared reading. First, I asked them to retell the story using picture cards that I pasted on the board and then, we moved to this activity. Basically, they just had to choose the correct phrases based on the story, but to add more fun in it, I asked them to colour it. They loved colouring. Semua pun nk warna. Gambar Mr.Crab and Mr.Squid yang memang dh berwarna tu pon nk warna lagi..

Lesson 3 : WRITING
A good platform to expand their ideas.

Talking about outside the box huh?

Here is the best part. I asked them to throw me ideas about what happened to the food. At first, class was a bit quiet because they thought I expected some serious answers, so I started to give examples, ‘The food was gone because Mr.Crab didn’t like it and he threw it away.’ After that, one by one gave me weird funny answers. I wrote properly on the board and asked them to choose any three of the answers and write them on the task sheet.

Lesson 4 : GRAMMAR
Simple Past Tense yaaww. (I suck at writing simple instructions!)

Since the story was in Past Tense, I thought it would be good if I focused on the Simple Past Tense used in this story. I explained about Past Tense and gave examples such as ‘had’, ‘went’ and ‘shared’ from the story. Then, I asked them to help me find few more Past Tense verbs and list them down in the task sheet above.

Lesson 4 : GRAMMAR
Match and match and match!

Then, match the verbs in Past Tense to the root words. Of course, I gave an example on the board before asking them to do it by themselves.

Lesson 4 : GRAMMAR
Fill in the blanks!

Lastly, ‘Fill in the blanks’ exercise as the closure of the grammar lesson. For some reason, they said this exercise was the hardest. I didn’t give examples but I told them the answers were all in the story that they have just read. I helped them with the first two questions, then, baru la diorg boleh buat sendiri. Maybe my instructions were not clear.

For ‘Language Art’ lesson, I just asked them to do a role-play. I divided them into several groups and they presented it in front of the class. I know there were only two characters in the story, but I asked them to insert the ending of the story by themselves (like what they did in Lesson 3) and there, they could add more characters. So, every group presented different ending of the story. One of the groups came up with something like this,
‘The food was stolen by a witch. The witch gave the food to her assistant and children.’

Some even acted as non-living thing, like bubbles.
‘The food got into a huge bubble and the bubble took it away. When the bubble got into the surface, it burst!.’

It was funny but quite tiring especially when you handled a group of over-curious and over-excited students.

Owh, I just love teaching!

p/s – It’s 12.02 a.m. now so Happy Birthday to me! Haha

Getting Cold in Cameron Highlands!

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Our next destination was Cameron Highlands and here, we stayed at SK Brinchang. Hm… How do I describe the place.. Well, nama pon sekolah kan, so faham2 je la facilities tu camana.. Kena share toilets, long queues lagi, thin mattresses, limited space (we were placed in a classroom). We were like refugees. Or flood victims. Yeah, whatever. That was the disadvantage in this trip.

Honestly, this trip to Cameron Highland was not as great as I expected. Yeah, I had fun with my colleagues and students but I think we wasted too much time up there. First day we arrived there, we settled everything before going down to Brinchang night market. Well, it’s Cameron, so there was a lot of fresh vegetables, fruits, flowers, not forgotten, souvenirs, food and T-shirts and etc. I love night markets. This is the place with low price and I also could improve my bargaining skill!

T-shirts, soft toys , gloves, accessories..

The fresh vegetables..

That night, I hung out with two of my colleagues, Kak Fai and Kak Idah. I bought a black short-sleeved T-Shirt with glittering strawberry in the middle of it, so cute! Hmm.. I didn’t buy that much, because like I said, I’ve just been here 3 months ago and later in October, I’ll be going here again with my husband on his school trip. Three Camerons in a year, so no need to waste so much money shopping in the same place, don’t you think? Hmm… As for dinner, I bought Nasi Ayam Percik, with HALF marinated chicken, for only RM5!! That was soooo cheap! It was half chicken, I repeat. I think it’s hard to get that price anymore else where. Actually, if you buy the chicken only without the rice, the price is still RM5. It means, the rice comes for free, but if you buy the rice alone without the chicken, it’ll cost you RM2. Haha.

I also bought this! The best strawberry tea I ever tasted! So wangi!

After dinner, the students were not allowed to go anywhere, so they just needed to get ready for bed. Unlike us, the teachers, KakLeza, Kak Fai, Kak Yun, we went down again to get some night air, as well as to the night market, since they hadn’t finished shopping. I bought more T-shirts for my husband and I this time. Kang dia merajuk lak tak belikan apa2.. Hihi. After walking around for an hour down there, we walked back to the school. The school was actually situated on the hill. There were stairs that linked the ground level, to the school ground floor on top of the hill. To make it more ‘interesting’, our room was on the FOURTH floor, so imagine how many steps we needed to climb before we reached the room. Normal people couldn’t do it. Since I was an IPBArian (IPBA has the worst stairs ever! Imagine you are from Block 3 to the foundation class yang tingkat 4 kat hujung dunia tu, with a lot of shopping bags, sleepy and tired), I managed to get up there in one piece. Haha. I told him about the stairs and he was like, ‘Huh, kalau I mati la dah naik xder nk turun2!’

This is not captured by me. I googled it, just to show you guys what the school look like. That is only half of the stairs.

The next morning, we woke up early to get ready for MARDI and Bharat Tea Plantation. Actually, that night  some of my colleagues faced a liiiiitle ‘problem’ when they were sleeping. You know what I mean. That was a school, so biasalah benda2 supernatural kat sekolah kan.. Plus, kat bukit pulak tu. Huuu… Alhamdulillah, I was not disturbed though I was half awake when that thing happened. By the way, it was a very cold morning (duh!), so at first, I planned not to take showers unless they got water heater which obviously they didn’t. But then, tengok2 semua orang pon mandi though just mandi koboi, so I changed my mind and got showered too. D.A.M.N.C.O.L.D!! I felt like showering in ice, but it was very refreshing!

We started the day by having breakfast by the road, near Petronas Brinchang. Seronok agaknya makcik tu dua bas serbu kedai dia. Haha. After about an hour, we departed from Brinchang and went straight to MARDI. MARDI is actually Agro Tecnhology Park that is situated at Jalan Persiaran Endah, Tanah Rata. It consists of six sections; English Garden, Herb Garden, Orchid Garden, Rose Garden, research and also information centre. You can find a lot of types of vegetables, rare and unique flowers, fresh fruits and others in this place. You also can visit mini tea plantation here, 1 meter of walking up to the hill. I almost missed it.

Agro Technology Park (MARDI) in Cameron Highland

At this place, we spent more than 2 hours walking here and there, camwhoring as usual, scrutinizing and smelling flowers (especially the ones we haven’t seen in our life before). It was quite boring actually because I was not into flowers, but surrounded by your crazy colleagues, they just made everything fun!

At Rose Garden, with Kak Lina, Kak Leza and Kak Yun.

Silver Dust, the name of the flower! Or you can also call it Winter Flower. Haha. This is my favourite. Lawa kan?

I just love this picture!!

Mini tea plantation as our background. Haha. Excuse the gedikness!

The students..

Talking about cabbages! Haha. Kata lawatan sambil belajar kan… Hehe

Don’t forget to try fresh strawberries with hot chocolate dipping!

After two hours, we walked back to the bus to go to Bharat Tea Plantation. That is the biggest tea plantation in Malaysia. This place is a trademark of Cameron Highland. There is not point going to Cameron Highland if you don’t visit this place. Even though it is just an area of tea plantation, the view here is breath-taking.

Sadly, we got a very bongok bus driver. The car park provided was full, so he took an easy way out not to drop us there! He simply said, ‘Banyak keta la cikgu, tak boleh parking. Xyah berhenti laa…’ Personally, I didn’t mind because I have been there and in fact, I’m going there again this October, but how about the kids? Some of them couldn’t afford to go here and wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the school trip! Dahla mcm tu, he was the worst bus driver that I have ever met. So stuck-up, not friendly and very VERY hard to tolerate with. Tolong bukak luggage compartment kat bawah tu pon malas. HE even asked us to do it ourselves. Berat gila kot nk bukak tu. Memang teruk! Along the way from school to Gua Tempurung and Cameron Highland, he kept complaining every time we asked him to stop at RnR. Tah hape2 je.. You are a bus driver, but your job is not just drive. You have to provide good customer service. You are paid to do other things that are in your job description which are assisting the additional needs of your customers. Suruh stop kat RnR pun susah, let alone find a spot at the Bharat Tea Plantation tu. The other bus driver was okay. He was friendly with the students and teachers as well. They went to the tea plantation when we didn’t. We went down straight to Tapah (we didn’t even drop by at Lata Iskandar!). So we, including the students had two different experiences on this trip. Kesian budak bas aku..

So, that’s all for now. Remember if you go to Cameron Highland in a large group (school trip), please organize your time well. One more important thing, FIND A GOOD BUS DRIVER. It doesn’t matter if you travel in a 3-star-bus, as long as the bus driver is willing to provide you 5-star service. Ours was the opposite. 5-star bus, not even a half star deserved by the driver. Puii!

Getting ‘Wet and Wild’ In Gua Tempurung!

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Hubby’s going on school camping today so I’ll be home alone for these two days. Sad.

But you know, since I have nothing to do really, well, besides watching Gossip Girls DVD over and over, I think it’s best if I write about my recent school trip to Gua Tempurung and Cameron Highland.

Well, we gathered at school around 2.00 a.m. and I was the laaast teacher to arrive, at 2.15 p.m. Tgk, lambat 15 minit je dh jadi yg paling last sbb budak2 ni semua excited nk pegi, pukul 1 pagi dah tunggu kat sekolah. Hehehehe.. As for me, malam tu memang lambat packing so lambat la sampai. :-p  After doa and a quick speech by the ‘Ketua Rombongan’, we departed from school at 3.00 in the morning. I slept for the whole journey and only woke up at RnR Jejantas Sungai Buloh at 5.30 a.m., if I’m not mistaken. It was sooo cold, so I didn’t plan to take my shower because right after this, we were heading straight to Gua Tempurung. As I have stated in the previous entry, this caving activity involved a lot of water so there was no point taking shower in the morning, only to get wet in the cave later, right? Hehe

After freshen up, solat and breakfast, we continued our journey to Gua Tempurung. I really like the view along the highway. It was so beautiful compared to southern highway that I found too boring. We arrived at Plaza Toll Gopeng and continued another few minutes to our destination. When we arrived there, there were six to seven school buses by the road. Oh my! It’s gonna be a full cave!

Before I go further, here’s a little information about Gua Tempurung that I found in Wikipedia.

“Gua Tempurung is a cave in Gopeng, Perak, Malaysia. It is popular among spelunkers, or caving enthusiasts. More than 3 km long, it is one of the longest caves in Peninsula Malaysia. Part of it has been developed as a show cave with electric lighting and walkways and there are a range of tours of different lengths and difficulty. A fine river cave, the river passage runs about 1.6 km through the hill. There are three very large chambers and some spectacular stalactites and stalagmites.”

Okay, enjoy the pictures!

Arrived!

Before entering Gua Tempurung..

Gua Tempurung, 2012. Last time I was here, it was in 2001.

Deeper into the cave.. The exploration begins..

Tired of climbing up those stairs, now let’s camwhore! From left, KakYun, KakLina, moi, and KakLeza.

Being here in Gua Tempurung reminds me a lot of memories when I was here more than 10 years ago with my friends. By the way, perkataan 10 years ago tu sound sooo muda kan? Hehe. The landscape outside was quite different, but other than that (inside the cave), the whole thing was still the same. Of course, it’s a cave right. Haha

One of the things that you need to know before having an adventure inside the cave is, there are more than 700 steps here, going up and down. So, you can decide whether you want to stay in, or walk out of the cave. I have not done this kind of activity for a long time, so I was not as fit as I used to be. Kejap je dah out of breath! When I stepped inside the cave and walked 50m deeper, I could see the amazing view inside. Stalactites and stalagmites, both are beautifully formed into beautiful sculptures. There was one looked like a man wearing a turban (Osama, as what they called it) and others. You can see various patterns on the cave walls that were also formed into some amazing carvings, such as a giant turtle and snail, a woman, a man led the solat (imam) and the makmum behind him, and others. They were all so amazing that words couldn’t describe how amazing they were. I’m not exaggerating, really. Subhanallah!

We spent more than 3 hours in there, climbing up and sliding down, walking in the dark with torchlight in our hands, crawling like a crocodile in the water to avoid being hit against the stalactites, entering a very small hole (lubang tikus) to go to the lower level of the cave and etc (as for the lubang tikus part, I bet my hubby couldn’t fit through it haha). It was sooo fun! In fact, it was better than the last time! Thank God the water wasn’t that smelly but it was sooo cold.

Now, getting down babeh! Curamnye hoi!

Sliding down! They said the height is about 20 feet.

Sampai bawah lutut longgar terus! Haha

This is what we call ‘Lubang Tikus’. Kecik gila kan…

Be careful kids…

Done with lubang tikus, we were now at the bottom of the cave. Time to get wet fellas!

Cikgu Bahrin, one of the male teachers (2 org je kot cikgu laki) with his pair of jeans in the cave. Cool x masuk cave pki jeans? Haha

“I’ve been crawling in the dark (in our case, in the water as well), looking for the answers..” -Hoobastank

Resting for a few minutes here..

My friends, my shoes and I.

Yeah, out of cave and back to civilization!

Once we got out of the cave and felt the touch of sunlight against our skin again, it was now time to get back to reality. Arghhh! Feel like staying in there. So calm and peaceful. Not even a sound of a bat. Owh yeah, they slept during the day, I forgot.

So, we took our clean clothes from the bus, showered and changed before having lunch. It was so hot outside that my wet T-Shirt dried before I even showered. I didn’t get to buy any souvenirs here because I spent most of my time queuing in the toilet. Huh! That place was full of students from Penang, Kedah and also Pahang. Crowded!

By the way, there are many things that I learn from this caving experience. How water play the most important roles to create the amazing view and how the limestone hills and hard rocks ‘listen’ to the water. Somehow, looking at the bizarre rock formation that caused by the water in that cave, made me felt touched at this natural phenomenon. Of course we have been told this kind of story many times when we were little (at least I was), ‘camana batu yg keras tu boleh lekuk disebabkan air’, but seeing it yourself before your eyes, it was totally a different feeling. It was like, this time you really believed in it. This thing taught you, ‘nothing is impossible’. What is important is the will, and how bad you want something. Hmm… This phenomenon is very close-related to our life, isn’t it?

At 2.30 p.m., we got on the bus and continued our journey to next destination, Cameron Highland.
Will be continued in my next entry.

School Trip!

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 This morning, at about 2 a.m., I’ll be joining my colleagues and students for a school trip to Cameron Highland. This would be the second time I go to Cameron in 3 months. I went there before with my family during the last school break. It is quite recent right? So, memula tanak pergi sbb baru je pergi, plus it was also due to flu and bad cough that I’m having right now, but then I think, this trip is too good to miss. Why?

Well because, before going to Cameron Highland, we will stop at Gua Tempurung for a cave exploration. I haven’t done this kind of activity in a loooong time! I’ve been in Gua Tempurung before for cave exploration too, when I was in Form 3, which was more than 10 years ago. It was so much fun! We were crawling in the water, climbing up and sliding down, walking on our knees for 3 hours with the smell of bats poop all around. We only had some chocolates with us to keep our energy going. There was one time when our torchlights blinked a few times before dying one by one. Trust me, it was SUPER.CREEPY. It was pitch black in there, we couldn’t see anything. So, terpaksa la jalan berpimpin tangan and berhimpit himpit mengharapkan cahaya torchlight kawan2 lain, menjerit-jerit takut kena tinggal .  I’m dying to relive the moments, not the creepy part of course, but to be inside the cave again. Only this time, I’ll go as a teacher instead of a student like I was before.

Gua Tempurung, Perak. Here I come!
*picture taken from Google*

Though I am pretty much excited right now, I haven’t packed anything yet because I feel sad to leave hubby alone at home. He asked me not to go due to my ill condition, but I told him I could take care of myself and will be taking medicine. Lagipun, kalau tak pergi, takda la memory ngn my Year 6 babies yg baru abis ‘perang’ tu kan.. Some of them really want me to go on that trip. Biasalah… Teacher cool kan.. Haha

Okay, wish me a safe journey! Will be taking lots of pictures and upload them here when I get back. Bye!

p/s- This blocked nose is sooo annoying. And I can’t stop coughing. So, will be bringing a lot of Strepsils! (wow that rhymes! haha)

So, It’s The New School Guys!

This entry was drafted on 27th September 2011, a day after lapor diri in SK Parit Jawa. I didn’t manage to post it then because………. Well, I can’t remember why I didn’t post it, but hey, I’m posting it now, so here you go.
Owh, anyways, while you’re reading it, I’ll be writing second entry about this school from three-weeks-of-me-being-here perspective. See if there is any difference with this my-first-day-owh-i-like-the-school entry.

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Yesterday, was the first day of me being in Johor, or to be exact Muar, for work purpose. Even though this was not the first time of me being in Muar, but I was still nervous. This is different. I’m actually WORKING here now. Instead of just visiting my husband, this , I guess, would be permanent. I work here, I live here. Wow. I’m orang Muar now? Heh, no. I’m orang Sabak Bernam, I just live in Muar.

Anyways, back to the main point here, I actually wanna talk about my new school. Owh. before that, I went to PPD to collect reposting letter and I met our TESL senior there, Fauzi. Or should I say, Encik Fauzi? Haha. He’s now working in PPD as an officer. He was actually an IPBArian but he didn’t recognize me. Hm, why am I not surprised? Haha

Okay, so the school is called, SK Parit Jawa. It’s not very rural I would say, it’s in the heart of the town of Parit Jawa. It’s by the main road and it is actually quite a big school. I’ve spoken to the GPK Kurikulum, Puan Noraini, she said there are about 50-60 teachers, and 600 students all together.

First thing I asked her about the students performance in English. She said, ‘Biase lah Mimi (that’s what she called me, never mind, I haven’t told her that people actually call me, Emy. haha), sekolah mcm ni, ade la budak boleh, ade yang x boleh.’ Then, I asked her about the number of English teachers at that school. Well, there is only ONE English teacher (optionist) and two more English teachers who are actually non-optionist. So, when she told me they are really in serious need of English teachers, I felt relieved. I was afraid that my presence here was not welcomed because they have enough English teachers. Thank God I was wrong about that.

There were not many teachers when I came to the staffroom, but I found one important person. Hehe. The only TESL teacher in that school, Kak Qilah. She was sooooo friendly and nice to me. She said she was happy that I’m now in their English team. Back in SKTJ, I was given responsibility to teach 32 periods per week and here, Kak Qilah was given the same responsibility. I know how tiring it was, especially when you have to teach 8 periods straight from morning till afternoon, only had 30 minute-break in the middle. So here in SKPJ, I guess we could help each other to balance the workload.

I would say, that I’m gonna love the school. I don’t really care about the students, because you know, kids will be kids, (naughty, attention seeker, rebellious), mane2 pon same jer, but the teacher, so far those who I have met, are very very very nice. But hey, it’s only my first day, it’s still early to tell actually. Maybe true colours are gonna start showing in 2 weeks time. Or less than that (Or, is it my own true colours that I am talking about? HAHAHA)?