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Dan Pentaksiran (DSKP) For Year 1 Primary School, One of The Objectives For Writing Skills Is

1. The document discusses approaches to teaching writing skills, with a focus on spelling. It identifies copying activities and using flashcards as effective approaches. 2. Assessment of writing includes formative assessment to guide instruction, summative assessment to evaluate performance, and self-assessment to develop lifelong learning skills. 3. Choosing appropriate teaching materials is important, such as making personalized flashcards to engage students and support different learning styles. The document emphasizes the role of spelling in developing strong writing abilities.

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49 views

Dan Pentaksiran (DSKP) For Year 1 Primary School, One of The Objectives For Writing Skills Is

1. The document discusses approaches to teaching writing skills, with a focus on spelling. It identifies copying activities and using flashcards as effective approaches. 2. Assessment of writing includes formative assessment to guide instruction, summative assessment to evaluate performance, and self-assessment to develop lifelong learning skills. 3. Choosing appropriate teaching materials is important, such as making personalized flashcards to engage students and support different learning styles. The document emphasizes the role of spelling in developing strong writing abilities.

Uploaded by

yannn
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1.

0 Introduction
When it comes to language, obviously it can be divided into four skills and one of them is
writing. Writing is a system for interpersonal communication using visible signs or graphic
symbols on a flat surface such as paper, cloth or even stone slabs (Chitravelu N., 2005) In
terms of standardization, writing is a single written norm, codified by governmental,
educational and literary institutions. This written language undergoes slower and less
sweeping changes compared to spoken language. For instance, the spelling of English has
changed much less than its pronunciation. In addition, Betty (2012) stated that if we go back
a couple more centuries, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are very tough sledding, and if we
went back another 500 years to try to read Beowulf, it would be like reading a different
language. So, it is proven that writing shows less sweeping changes.

Teaching writing is very important in students’ learning process. It is because writing


skills is needed in every phase of our life. Good writing skills allow us to deliver the message
in a way that we want it to be delivered. It also an important way in expressing our thoughts,
and communicating views to others. From written activities, teacher can make it as a record
of what has been learnt orally, and also help the teacher to evaluate the students’
performance in terms of vocabulary and sentence structures. However, writing is the skills
that most students are least proficient in because they find that writing is difficult. So,
teacher plays a very important role to change that kind of mindset.

2.0 Approaches to Teach Writing


The inconsistencies in English phonetics create serious spelling problems for students. So, it
is important to teach spelling in the early age. According to Dokumen Standard Kurikulum
dan Pentaksiran (DSKP) for year 1 Primary School, one of the objectives for writing skills is
pupils are able to spell familiar high frequency words accurately. It is in order to let the pupils
communicate with appropriate language form and style for a range of purposes. Under the
stages of learning to write, spelling is the third stage which called developmental writing.
One of the best approach in teaching spelling is teacher focus on teaching the most
common words. This is supported by Chitravelu N. (2005) who claimed that it has been
found that about 100 words account for about 50 per cent of the words that a normal person
would need for his day-to-day writing needs. Teachers would teach these 100 words and the
words that their pupils would need for the things they would want to write about. The 100
words that the studies identified as the most useful are the words that use by native
speakers.
However, teachers have their own freedom of choice to filter some of the words (e.g.
Christmas) and adding others which are more useful in our context such as father, mother
and eat.

Other than focusing on the most common words, there are another alternative
approach/method in teaching writing and one of them is through copying activities. Copying
activities is very useful for the early stages pupils to master the mechanics of writing. In
order to teach spelling, teacher can make the copying activities in a way that is more
interesting and meaningful. In teaching Year 1, it can be in the form of puzzle, games and
missing letters to increase their interest in learning the skill. For instance, teacher puts up an
unfamiliar words and writes it as many times as there are letters in the word. Each time the
word is listed, one additional letter is omitted, leaving a blank for the students to fill in
(Chitravelu N., 2005). Once pupils are able to fill in all the blanks, teacher will give them
some rewards. This way of teaching will increase their excitement to spell the words
correctly. This is in-line with behaviourism theory where psychologists like Pavlov, Watson
and Thorndike claim that stimulus—response reinforcement theory is related to humans
acquire language (Brown. H. D., 2007). In this case, the stimulus is when the teacher asks
to fill in the missing letters then when pupils able to fill in the blanks with a correct words, it is
called response and when teacher gives something like stars, appraisal or some kind of
chocolates, it is called reinforcement. That reinforcement makes pupils want to take part in
the activity and do it in a correct way.

3.0 Principles of Material Selection and Adaptation in Writing


Material is the thing that teachers are going to use to assist the teaching. In order to choose
a right material, it is crucial for teachers to think about the purpose of the lesson, the target
language, students’ level and abilities and so forth. In the context of teaching spelling for
Year 1 students, teacher can use flash cards. According to Budden J. (2004), flash cards
are a simple, versatile, yet often underexploited resource. Using flash cards meet the
principles of material selection and adaptation as it is very suitable for every stages of the
class. Flash cards are a really handy resource to have. Teacher can ask the students to
make their own flash cards using pictures from magazines, clip art or they can draw by their
own. In teaching spelling in writing skills, teacher may ask the students to make the flash
cards that is easy to spell or high frequency word. This is to make sure that it never exceed
the students’ level and abilities.
In terms of adaptation, instead of using pictorial cards, pupils may prepare the word
cards. How to create a word cards? First, write the letters on cards and make sure they are
all in the same size. Then, make them wear it. After that, ask them to arrange it to produce a
meaningful word. To make it more fun, teacher can make it in a colourful way or differentiate
vowels and consonants using a different colours. Other than the fact that the pupils love
colours, it also easier for them spell the words as the vowels and consonants are in a
different colours. This material also meets the principles of materials and adaptation in terms
of personality. In terms of personality, the materials used need to affect the personality of
pupils as some of them might be introverted or extroverted. This word cards can affect the
students’ personality because everyone is compulsory to join the activity and each one of
them wears a letter that is needed to form a meaningful word. So, this material encourage
every pupil even a shy one in the classroom to take part in the activity.

4.0 Assessment in Learning


In order to improve the students’ skills, teacher needs to know their performance by doing
any kind of assessment. By assessing the students, teacher will know either the learning
objective has achieved or not. There are three types of assessment which are assessment
for learning, assessment of learning and assessment as learning. Assessment for learning,
which also known as formative assessment is an ongoing assessment that allows teachers
to monitor students on a day-to-day basis and modify their teaching based on what the
students need. An ongoing assessment is conducted almost continuously throughout the
year (Sue C. W., 2008). This type of assessment is designed to assist teachers and
students in improving their learning. In writing skills, teacher can give the students a
worksheet regarding the objective that the student need to achieve after the lesson on that
particular day. Compared to assessment for learning, assessment of learning is the
snapshot in time that lets the teacher, students and their parents know how well each
student is completed the learning tasks and activities (Alberta Assessment Consortium,
2008). Another term for this assessment is summative assessment. This assessment is
reported as part of an achievement grade while formative assessment not. As for
assessment as learning, it is to develop and support students’ metacognitive skills. This
form of assessment will help students to become a lifelong learners as they use teacher,
peer and self-assessment feedback to make adjustments and improvements to what they
understand.

To look at the differences between these three assessments clearly, we can look at the time
when these assessment will be held. For formative assessment, it can be done right after the
class like quizzes and tutorials while summative assessment will be held monthly or big
examination like final examination and Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia. It is to evaluate the students’
performance. Based on Sue C. W. (2008), at the end of a period of several weeks, teachers are
asked to evaluate child’s progress and accomplishments and record the child’s progress. For
assessment as learning, it can be done whenever the student wants to make adjustment or
improvement to what they understand. This kind of assessment need the students’ intrinsic
motivation to improve the skills.

5.0 CONCLUSION
Spelling plays an important role in mastering the writing skills. Correct spelling is as
important as legible handwriting in effective written communication (Chitravelu N., 2005). So,
teaching spelling will help pupils with early age develop their writing. When the teachers are
able to select the best approach and choose the suitable materials, the learning objective
will surely be achieved.
References

Alberta Assessment Consortium (2008). Types of classroom assessment. Retrieved on 1st

March 2019, from http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/mewa/html/assessment/types.html

Betty B. 2012. Is English Changing?. Retrieved on 27th February 2019, from

https://linguisticsociety.org/content/english-changing

Budden J.. (2004). Using flash cards with young learners. Retrieved on 2 nd March 2019, from

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/using-flash-cards-young-learners

Brown. H. D. (2007). Teaching by principles, an interactive approach to language pedagogy (3 rd

edition). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.

Chitravelu N., Sithamparam S., Teh Soo Choo (2005). ELT Methodology. Principles and

Practice. 2nd edition. Oxford Fajar Sdn.Bhd. Malaysia.

Nurul Aqmahani (2013). Principles of material adaptation. Retrieved on 1st March 2019, from

https://www.scribd.com/document/154421687/Principles-in-Materials-Adaptation

Sue C. W. (2008). Assessment in early childhood education. New Jersey: Pearson Education

Inc.

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