Cultural Event Day

19th March 2009 (Thursday)- Alhamdulillah, we managed to conduct our 3rd Cultural Event Day for this semester. The theme was Cultures of the Islamic Countries. There are 25 groups representating 25 diferent Islamic countries from all over the world. For next semester, I'm thinking of doing the'Multicultural celebration', or perhaps I might get some more ideas for next sem.

Generally, it was a great event. The students really put their effort even though they were given like 2 weeks to prepare everything. I hope they have learnt something throughout the process. Majority of the groups chose to display foods, therefore I was a bit tired of testing all the foods..:)

1 more to go

another one more semester....and hopefully everything run smoothly as i have planned

This Eid

I'm so happy this Aidilfitri.

I'm so happy to make my parents happy. I'm so happy to be with my husband, children and family. I have also learned many things this Eid. The visit to my aunts' houses really surprised me.never imagine that I will ever have a chance to meet those who are qualified to be part of 'Bersamamu'. And never ever imagine that they are actually rich, but everything was gone, taken by the children. Nothing left there. And that's what happened to my aunts. Not an aunt but auntS! Nauzubillahi min zalik...Ya Allah, don't you ever let this thing to happend in my family...

Throughout the Aidilfitri, I have learned...nothing more precious than your family, not even your wealth. Coz once you're elder, you only hope to be with your family, with your children who you raised, and with those who you love..As a daughter, I just want to make my parents to be happy , till the end of the day..

Bibliotheraphy

The first time I saw this word, I keep thinking ,”is bibliotheraphy the combination of bibliography and theraphy?” and then, I started to search from the books given earlier by Dr Edwin. Once I started the reading, I began to to discover that literature involves a lot more things than just reading. In my own words, I would say it is efforts that teacher put to teach literature by using literature as a medium of counseling.
From the internet, I found that actually, bibliotheraphy came from two Greek words ; ‘biblion’ which means book and ‘oepatteid’ which means healing. Many teachers and educators claimed that it helps students to deal with emotional problems they encounter.
As time goes by, the term had been defined again and again as the attitude toward the process began to change.

“…a process of dynamic interaction between the personality of the reader and literature-interaction which may be utilized for personality assessment, adjustment, and growth.” (Russell and Shrodes,1950).

“…help(ing) a pupil find a book that might help the pupil solve a personal problem, develop skills needed for living, and/or bolster self-image.” (Shepherd and Iles, 1976).

“…getting the right book to the right child at the right time about the right problem.” (Lundsteen, 1972).

“Psychology through literature-reading that is used to help solve or prevent problems.” (Stadel, 1964).

I also found out that there are specific techniques a teacher can used during bibliotheraphy session. Bibliotherapy can be used for a variety of reasons to help student to overcome problems or situations they are facing or may face. Students have many needs that should be addressed to help them develop a positive self-concept. Physiological needs are the most basic needs that must be met. Students also must feel safe, loved, and the need to belong in a group (family, school, peer, or other). If these needs are met through the use of bibliotherapy, the student will be able to develop a more positive sense of themselves, learn about the world, cope with stress, provide insight into problems and affirm thoughts and feelings It also encourages them to stimulate discussions about their problems, create an awareness of others that have similar problems, provide solutions to the problems, communicate new values and attitudes and find meaning in their life.

Responding through writing

“To find meaning and purpose in learning, students must be encouraged to think about what they are learning- and therein lies the power of writing.” (Vacca & Linek,1992)

Initially students can begin by writing informally, for example jot down their first impressions and expectations before they started reading the selection. It also can be writing brief notes of things they want to explore and remember while they are reading or write about their reflections after reading. This informal writing will be as their preparation before they started to discuss it in the classroom. During the discussion the students can takes notes and write a longer reflection to extend their feelings and ideas. They may extend this discussion with their Learning Partner or the member of the S3Group through the dialogue journals. This is very helpful because the journal functioned as a vehicle for students to interact with their reading.

What are the teacher roles in order to encourage students to write in the journal? First, teacher needs to identify that there are some students who are really good and do not need any assistance from teacher because they can respond freely in their journal. But there are also some students who really need assistance and guidance from teacher in order to help them writing their journal. Teacher response is very importance to these students, especially in the beginning of their journal writing. A teacher should not only provide affective responses but also an in depth responses to these students. Teacher may use some prompts such as “This story makes me feel………”This prompt, even though it is short, but will be a powerful motivation to the student because they feel happy to have someone to read and response to his journal.

On the other hand, formal writing also may help in responding to literature where it focused on analytical papers that are designed to demonstrate students understanding and interpretation toward the theory they had been taught. This will also helps students to explore their responses toward the literature.

Improving classroom interaction through discussions

Discussion is important because it may help students to develop their high order thinking skills. Students need to be encouraged to participate in a meaningful discussion. By bringing them in that initial response might help them to see others’ response, reactions, insight in that whole class or small group discussions. Eventually, it may provide opportunities for new understandings.

For class discussion, teachers can follow these three steps – setting the stage, creating a dialogue and extending the learning activities. Teachers have to ensure that students can focus to the discussions because if they fail to do so, students will not be ready to move to any other responding that requires high-order thinking skills. How a teacher can make sure the students will focus? A teacher can direct the class so that the students can respond by giving general reactions to their reading. Teachers may use certain statement or questions to attract and gain students focus. The statement and questions should be general enough so that students can express their reactions freely than just try to find out the right answers. This of course will help students to understand their feelings and clarify their thinking about their selection of reading.

Enhancing the understanding an perception of literature

To enhance understanding and perception of literature, there are some recommendations on how the instructional framework in a literature classroom should be. Samway et al. (1991) found that students emphasize on four things: the importance of reading complete books, talking about books, being given some choice over which books they would read and having plenty of time to read. Besides that, Au (1993) recommends the concept of community of learners with varying group arrangements for multicultural classrooms. Meanwhile, Brown and Stephen include ways to involve students in whole-class, small group, and paired and individual activities. The approaches include classroom learning community (CLC) student sharing and study groups, learning partners and individual learning.

In the CLC, everyone including the teacher is a learner. It is also a vehicle that can enables teachers and students to share with each other what they are reading. This approach also gives opportunity to students to take leadership role in establishing sharing community. When students and teachers share their experience with the literature, they are actually clarify and articulate their reactions, ideas and beliefs about what they have read. On the other hand, in study group, students will have the opportunity to encourage and support the effort of each other. They also explore ideas, concepts and experiences of their reading.

In learning partners that involve students to work in pair is a significant example of the social interaction that provide supportive learning environment for students. By doing this activity, students may respond to each other in their dialogue journals, share their writings, discuss what they have read and recommend books to each other. All these approaches may be helpful in order to enhance the understanding and perception towards literature.