Name: Ahmad Zulfaqqar Bin Ahmad Zabrin I/C number: 920513-05-5237 Based on the task given for Teaching

of Writing Skills in the Primary ESL Classroom Course, my friend and I have to produce a 30 minutes lesson plan and each of us have to choose one stage to be stimulated in class. I have chosen the post-writing stage to be stimulated in class. During this stage students are asked to sit in groups. Then, teacher gives them a piece of paper for each group. Teacher asks them to discuss about a question based on the topic learnt and write it on the paper given. Teacher will give instructions during this stage. Students are needed to crunch up the written paper and throw it to other group. Students are required to discuss in group about the answers of the questions. During this simulation there are some strengths and weaknesses that can be notice by me. The first strength that I noticed was students were enjoying the activity during this stage. Students are required to do paper snow balls and throw it to other group. Since students are actively participate in this activity they were enjoying the session very much. When they enjoy the session students will easily get the knowledge on that day. This is in line with Armstrong, 1994; Beckman, 1998, providing opportunities for students to learn in ways in which they are most receptive maximizes their potential for success in the academic setting and in real life. So, the activity that I simulated were very suitable in order to produce a successful students. The second strength that I notice after the simulation is by conducting this activity, the learning session had changed from teacher centered to student centered. All the things that happen during this stage were done by students themselves. I as the teacher was just a facilitator that guide them to play this activity.

Students had to discuss in groups and came out with a question written on the piece of paper. So basically, the students are doing this activity by themselves. When students are needed to think about the questions, this will help to enhance their thinking skills on the topic of the session. This will develop their cognitive development which is in line with Piaget (1929), who had stated that be on selfdiscovery, students will be able to learning a meaningful context. The third strength that I realized was the activity in this stage can help students in generating their ideas about the topic. As the students are required to discuss about the questions and also discuss about the answers of the questions, it help a lot in developing students skill in generating the idea. Students will get the ways to generate ideas and it help a lot in developing students writing skills. However, all the strengths in this activity come with the weaknesses. I found several weaknesses while conducting this activity. First is the classroom started to be chaotic when the teacher asks to throw the paper snow balls to other group. It was a ticket for the students to throw the paper to their friends. When I gave the instruction to throw the paper snow balls, students started to throw it and screamed and shouted at their friends. The second weakness is teacher will not be able to trace the students that are not able to get the knowledge on the lesson. Teacher is hard to know whether all students understand the lesson or not. This is because when students sit in a group, some students in the group will dominant the activity while one or two students will not even care about the game. I realized that only a few of the students really play the game seriously while the other was busy with their own things.

From this task, I had learned something new in which could help me to be a good teacher in the future. I had learned about how to handle students with different level of proficiency. By grouping them, students with low level of proficiency will learn for the high level of proficiency students. I also had learned that to produce a good writing lesson plan in classroom, I must refer to the theories from the books or the internet. By referring to all the sources, I could produce a good and effective lesson plan. All the approaches should also be considered to produce a good activity. For the practice stage activity, I had refer to the product approach before I planned the activity. Students using the product approach are normally told to write an essay imitating a given pattern, (Badger and White 2000:154). I did asked them to write a question on a piece of paper and throw it to other group so that the group can discussed about the answer. This is to recall back the main ideas of the topic before they could start to write. By imitate the essay given students will learn how to write an essay. Based on the simulation of the lesson plan, I should change some components in it so that it will be a perfect lesson plan. First, I should change the instruction for throwing the paper snowballs into something proper like selected student go to other group and read the question aloud. This will avoid the classroom from being too noisy and chaotic. Next, I should ask everyone to come out with the different answers for one question. This will help the teacher to recognise the students that do not understand about the topic of the lesson. It can make the teacher easier to focus on the low level students more. The third change is I should prepare some reinforcement so that the students will be motivated to take part in the activity. I should get ready with some sweets to be given to the students that managed to answer the questions correctly. Last but not least, is I should add up the

number of question that the students need to think as a lot of question will help them to generate more ideas based on the topic. (1012 words)

Bibliography
Badger, R. &. (2000). Product, process and genre: Approaches to writing in EAP [Electronic version]. Kim, M. (. (n.d.). Genre-Based Approach to Teaching Writing.pdf. Presnell, F. (1999, may). http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/piaget.htm.