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Story books as materials to develop cognitive , linguistics , moral and aesthetic aspects of standard 3
students in Malaysia.
at 11:23
Posted by Brendon Jikal
Story books as materials to develop cognitive , linguistics , moral and aesthetic aspects of standard 3
students in Malaysia.
Engaging ourselves as teachers into childrens English Language learning will somehow require us to
apply Krashens Monitor Model on Input Hypothesis which emphasis on usage of comprehensible
learning input which can be exploited in systematic ways for teaching purpose. Hence, the inputs will
be the children story books which in this essay will encompass Malaysia Year 3 curriculum
specifications and activities in order to develop linguistics, cognitive, moral and aesthetic aspects of
children within 4 weeks learning period. The materials that I would like to introduce are the books
entitled Little Rabbit couldnt sleep, Naughty Surprise, That Worked, Turtle Trouble and 200
Aesops Fables.

For each week, there will be one hour of English Language learning session. Therefore, I am planning
of having half an hour of activities for linguistics aspect for the first two weeks , followed by
cognitive aspect for the third week and moral aspect for the fourth week respectively. The other half
an hour for every week will be the activities for aesthetic aspect respectively. The justification for
having aesthetic elements emphasized for four weeks is that I am referring to Constructivism Theory
of Learning that emphasizes on students active involvement in constructing knowledge by engaging
themselves in activities that require them to express their ideas and relate their learning into real-
world situations based on the materials that are provided. Besides, hands-on activities related to
arts and discussions about the aesthetic aspects of the materials are actually very crucial for
childrens development. What is aesthetic value? And how it is developed from the activities based
on the materials? It will be discussed later in this essay together with cognitive, moral as well as
linguistics aspects.

Before moving on how I am going to carry out the activities with the materials, I would like to share
on the ideas of why I choose the books mentioned previously for year 3 learning. Firstly , the books
come with Illustrations consisting of colourful pictures which able to depict the storyline. By looking
at the pictures, readers are able to visualize the story. Eventually this suits the requirement of an
appropriate learning material which is comprehensible and attractive. Secondly, the length of
sentences on one page is appropriate, not too long, the font is clear, and most importantly they are
readable. Thirdly, all the themes of the books are based on childrens experience accompanied with
conversational language used, not sophisticated sentences, easy vocabularies, clear, linear and vivid
sentences organization. Fourthly would be the level of vocabulary is between 75%-80% in order for
pupils to gain confidence, embed moral teaching into the storyline or through characters, have
straightforward storyline for example the book That Worked tells the reader about the problem
faced by a boy with his toys, the stories can be exploited by teachers to ask students to read aloud,
books are written in line with Malaysian education specifications and the most crucial aspect is the
reading materials are able to promote students thinking skill.
In line with Malaysia curriculum specifications for year 3 students, the activities are as follow.
For aesthetic aspect, the activities would be like naming the good and bad characters and talk a little
about them as well as listening to and enjoy stories, fables and other tales of imagination and
fantasy and predict outcomes, and draw conclusions. For linguistic aspect, it will be listening to
simple stories and fables and respond non-verbally and verbally as well as repeating formulaic
expressions heard in stories such as Whos at the door?. Activities for cognitive aspect most
probably would be like having the children to recall the names of people and animals in the story,
tell what the people and animals did in the story, ask them if correct information is given by giving
responses such as smiling, laughing, clapping hands or mimic the movement of things in the story
while teachers are reading using gestures and expressions or simply ask students to complete parts
of a story heard or read before. Finally for moral aspect, the activities will be talking about the
people, places and moral values of the stories heard, read and viewed in simple language.
Eventually, all these activities are the basis for me to construct the lesson for weeks using the
materials.

Now moving on to the weeks, in the first week I would like to use the two books entitled Little
Rabbit couldnt sleep a fiction book about a rabbit that searches for moon to accompany him at
night without realizing that the moon is always there with him while he is asleep at night. Another
one would be the Naughty Surprise a fairy tale book which is about the life journey of a tadpole
until he becomes a human and eventually turns into a king. For the first half hour learning, I think
that getting the students to repeat the story aloud after read by an English teacher will do the trick
to improve childrens pronunciation on words and phrases. However, before that happen, teachers
should encourage them to adopt the habit of reading dust jackets and book covers to get their
attention into reading or listening to the story. Furthermore, by doing so, they will get the overview
of what is the book all about in general. Langer (1990) admits that sometimes it is difficult to step
into a story. Hence, getting childrens feelings into the intention of listening to the stories provided is
crucial so that learning will occur. Hence, after done with the two stories, hopefully the students will
be able to grasp the storyline, knowing the characters and other details. This activity will then
followed by explaining the meanings of the words that students are not familiar with. Reinforcement
activity such as giving constructed sentences based on the words will give them better
understanding on how the words are being used in context. Next , for the next half an hour , I will
have the students to draw anything that they can imagine which is beautiful based on either one of
the stories and let them colour their drawings. Hopefully , this will develop their aesthetic value
within them besides to avoid them from feeling bored.
As the second week coming up, for the first half an hour , activity of having the students to
name the characters in the two stories and get them to retell the stories in their own words in
English Language will get the language development to occur besides boosting their confidence
level. As they all interact using different word classes and vocabularies of their second language,
teachers can anticipate by supplying range of words and phrases as well as correct students
mistakes in their pronunciation. In order to involve all students, I think that it is good to have them
to write their story in brief on papers based on the two materials provided. The following activities
are teaching them how to use correct intonation in the given dialogue in the stories. For example
from the Naughty Surprise book , the dialogue; Help! she cried. Save me! is one expressive
conversation which I am sure through reading aloud way will be able to help students to apply it in
everyday life conversation , as what proposed by Humanism Theory on engaging students to real life
learning for more meaningful learning session. Credit to the books, the texts on the stories are
written in bold and vary in size to highlight the emotion of the characters in the stories and make it
easier for above activity to be done. For the another half hour of the session, it is good to let the
children to express their views on good and bad characters which I suggest can be done in groups of
four members respectively. With questions like why do think the naughty fairy is a bad girl? or
simply like Do you think the tadpole in Naughty Fairy deserve to be a king? will be able to trigger
their thinking skills. In line with Behaviorism Theory on reinforcement in learning , I would consider
on giving stars to evaluate their progress in the learning for example for the story writing activity to
encourage them to give their best shoot.

The third week activities will focus on cognitive development of the children which is about
construction of knowledge in mind of pupils for examples relating characters to characteristics ,
memorizing names ,solve problems , ask pupils to predict and relate one events to another events
and to relate the story to real life experience. The books that I would like to introduce are entitled
That Worked and Turtle Trouble which tend to bring students on problem solving situations.
These books are realistic fictions which are derived from actual circumstances with realistic settings
and characters who face problems and possibilities that are within the range of what is possible in
real life. The events raise moral questions that the reader might face in real life. Fiction books
generally help to develop moral , cognitive as well as aesthetic aspects of children as they may come
to feel that they are not alone , begin to learn to reflect choices in their lives , develop empathy for
other people , able to see life experiences beyond their own and take humorous as well as enjoyable
look at life. Cognitivism focuses on learner as an active participant in the teaching-learning process.
Hence , by using those materials , teachers can create activities with effective instructions to help
them acquire knowledge by training them to remember , learn , think and motivate themselves as
well as to figure out solutions on the given situation in the books. After reading the books in half an
hour and gathering all the details in the story, the next activity will require students to fill in their
answers on a set of questions comprising details like what is the problem faced by the boy in
Turtle Trouble? or What do you think the boy should do with the toys in That Worked?.
Otherwise, teachers can introduce Pelmanism or a memory card game in which students will need to
find matching pairs of characters and their characterizations or simply challenge students to hold a
range of language items in working memory based on the stories and recall the meanings of these
items. They have to store the meaning of certain words they find in the story and have to write the
words on their exercise books. Another way of doing it is by having collocation games where
teachers will give several action words from the stories for example picked up and think and ask
students to come out with their own words on how to join those words. For example , My mother
picked up the turtle. Besides , having students to do role plays based on the stories also enable
them to experience by themselves on how to make decisions and to solve problems. Hence ,
students can develop their cognitive skill. In this week , aesthetic aspect is integrated together with
cognitive aspect as teachers come with questions to trigger students to think based on their feelings
and thinking.
The final week will focus on moral aspect of the learning. I will divide all the students into groups of
4 according to the number of books that I have introduced which are Little Rabbit couldnt sleep
,Naughty Surprise , That Worked, and Turtle Trouble. Each of the group will be required to
work cooperatively with each other to list down all the moral values , what are the dos and donts in
the stories. One group will do one story. With provided scissors and manila cards, they may come
out with flash cards consisting of all the values and moral lessons which eventually hung using pegs
on a long strings tied at the back of their class. The final activity will be the teachers role to
encourage students to voice their ideas on what they think of the books or materials. Do they gain
anything from the learning? And which scenes they love the most in any of the stories?. For
reinforcement, teachers can use the 200 Aesops Fables book to introduce few fables to students
to extract the moral values from the stories. For alternative, fables can be good materials to exploit
aesthetic values among children. Aesthetic is an abstract concept that means perception in
Greek.(Schirrmacher. R, 2002). Lankford(1992) states it as a group of concepts for understanding the
nature and art , links knowing and feelings , raise awareness and appreciation towards beauty in
nature. Hence , there are few activities that can be done regarding this aspect and I believe could
also help to develop cognitive , moral as well as linguistics aspects among children as well. The
activities are exploring settings of the story , describing the creatures , animals , plants , nature in the
story , writing stories based on the settings , and plotting the story journey in which students will
make a kind of graph to plot the story journey. Above the line , they can write what happened in the
story. Below the line they can write how the characters feel. In short, teachers can help children to
connect life and literature by encouraging them to use the stories as lenses to view the world.

In conclusion the materials can be exploited to develop cognitive , linguistics , moral as well as
aesthetic aspects of year 3 students in Malaysia curriculum system by applying teaching pedagogy in
line with standard 3 education specifications on language arts.






Reference
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Bilbrough.N.(2011). Memory Activities For Language Teaching. UK; University Press,
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Bromley.K.D.(1992). Language Arts Exploring Connections, pg 119. Massachusetts ; A Division
of Simon & Schuster . Inc.
Brown.H.D.(2007). Teaching by Principles An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. USA
; Pearson Longman.
Byron.K.(1986). Drama in English Classroom. USA; Methuen. Inc
Cox. C. (2008). Teaching Language Arts. USA ; Pearson Education.
Temple, Martinez et al.(2002). Childrens Books In Childrens Hands. USA ; Pearson.
Thorton. G.(1980). Teaching Writing: The Development of Written Language Skills.