We have chosen a “Fun and Magic English” VCD volume 1 where the contents of the book and the complimentary VCD are similar. This VCD was published by Wholesale Mart Business Point (WMBP) Sdn.Bhd. There are six items contained within this VCD which are happy magic ABC, happy ABC song, happy basic English, Review, happy bedtime story, and vocabulary. This VCD is presenting children’s interactive educational software. Also, this VCD is for general viewing where suitable for all levels of society.
At first, each letter is pronounced first, followed by the examples for each. There are three examples for the alphabets. For example, the letter G is given examples with the words of glasses, goat, and guitar. VCD will spelling the words together with pictures so that children are easy to understand the usage for each alphabet. They teach each letter is used for what. For example, A is used for apple.
From our point of view, these learning activities are good since it is not too fast. Children can follow with clear explanation and instruction. Also there were provided with clear features and graphics so that children are hard to get bored. The music is played continuously but not interrupts the process of learning.
However, there is weaknesses about this VCD where sometimes gives the long and hard word such as jelly-fish, mushroom, and xylophone. For level 1, it will gives the students difficulties to learn and hard to spell and understand. Lack of understanding will cause them lost their attention and interest to continue with their learning. Producers should encounter this problem where they can give simpler and easier words for this level. This section is end with letter M.
We found that the setting for part two is different from the previous where stage is used as a set. They continue with letter N until Z. This setting gives different view so that children can keep learning with fun and enjoy. For this part, VCD shows the usage of the word or the situation of the things where students will get more understanding and can imagine for certain things that they have learnt. For example, letter R is for rope. VCD shows the pictures where rope is used to tie a stick. This is good for children improve their capability to remember all about what they have been shown.
This VCD put an interesting song for part three. This song is repetition of the alphabets and there are children’s voice follow the song. This kind of instruction is quite interesting because they are entertaining while they are learning. Besides, it is easy to remember about the song because there are easy to follow that song since the song is repeated for several times so that they can follow after the song.
Section two which is happy basic English where story telling about “friends”. The story tells that there many types of friends such as friendship school, friendship of neighbourhood, and friendship with internet. There are five characters in this story which are James (the tortoise), Peter (the rabbit), Henry (the squirrel), Paul (the bear), and John (the dear). They are all friends. Since they are friends, they have a lot of activities. They also do activities together such as running, playing, and dancing. They also go to school together. After the story, VCD is considered asked the children to tell about their friend. Here, children may use their creativity how they want to introduce from one to others.
There is preview in this content where the VCD is shows what activities are done by those best friends. Such as the characters are given like James, John, Peter, Henry, and Paul. Here, there are descriptions of each character and what are they doing together with their friends.
For happy bedtime story is about the monkey and the fisherman. It can be used for children as entertainment after learning as well as can improve their literature in English and take a lesson from this story.
The last section or part is about vocabulary. As an example, village brings the mean small town in area. Means, this VCD gives meaning of the words and show the right position of the words. Like village, it was said that there are two monkeys live happily each other in the village. So, the children know and understand the usage of the words. Besides it is provided with illustrations and graphics so that can interact the children to keep learning until the end of the activities.
However, this program does not provide an activity such as game after completing each activity. It is hard to know whether they reached the understanding or not for the activity. Also, this program does not provide and maintain appropriate levels of challenge. So it won’t increase levels of difficulty with progress.
In conclusion this VCD is suitable for children to learn at the beginning of their ages. It gives interaction for them to continuously working with this VCD. This VCD is produced just for learning, without provide any exercise for them, means they just have to follow all things that provided in the VCD.
31 October 2008
EVALUATION ON TEXTBOOK (PENDIDIKAN JASMANI DAN KESIHATAN, SEKOLAH KEBANGSAAN TAHUN 4)
This Pendidikan Jasmani dan Kesihatan, Sekolah Kebangsaan (Tahun 4) textbook is written in Bahasa Melayu by Dulkifli Bin Ismail, Jamaliyah Binti Ahmad and Yahya Bin Abdul Jalil in the year of 2005. This textbook is under Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Rendah (KBSR).
ORGANIZATION
This PJK textbook does not provide both either of Glossary or Index’s part. Glossary means a list of technical or special word. Since there is no technical or special word used, the Glossary’s part does not have to be included. Same goes to the Index which carries the meaning of a list of (alphabetical) of names, subject and so on with references. However this textbook does provide a very useful, appropriate and interesting table of contents. Students can easily refer to any topics and its subtopics by going through the table of contents. The table also indicates a logical arrangement and development of subjects. It begins with Physical Fitness then Skills and ended with Environment Safeness and Hygiene. Appearance and layout of its content is presenting in a uniform and standardization form throughout the book as well as each chapter. For example, the usage of colour of font, symbols of subtopics and also for the symbols that represent something.
This textbook does not provide bibliographies at all. In my opinion, this is because the target reader is for students in Standard 4, they does not know what is bibliography about and yet how to use it. Nevertheless, it does provide the references and resources. It tells where are the facts of the contents are refer to. For example, in Chapter 4: Kesihatan Diri dan Keluarga (Akil Baligh dan Perubahan Fizikal), it does state the source where the facts are collected which are Modul Pendidikan Kesihatan Keluarga, Pusat Perkembangan Kurikulum, Kementerian Pelajaran Malaysia. It also stated websites where students can get more information about the topics discussed such as http://www.nutritrus.org.my/, http://wwwphyssportsmed.com/, etc. introduction’s part is quite confusing me while evaluating this book. This is because there is no introduction for every major topic. However, there is one topic such as Unit 2: Kemahiran that provides introduction for each subtopic. For example, Introduction to Hockey, Introduction to Netball and so on and yet still clear and comprehensive. Summaries are provided for each subtopic. In addition, all the pages numbered by symbols of a television with two feet. This is quite interesting for the target reader.
CONTENT
The content is surely meet with our local and national standards since this is a textbook for students in this country. It is standardize for all school whether in a rural or urban area. The content discussed in this book is accurate and also up-to-date since it discuss topics about Physical Fitness, Skills, Sports, Family and Self Hygiene, Healthy Lifestyle and last but least Environment Safeness. So they do not need to renew the content o make follow-up from time to time. Next, in my opinion, students who do not really understand about some terms used in this book will have to use or refer to other textbook. For example, terms like gluteus maksimus, deltoid, hamstring, quadriceps, triceps, and coleus and so on. These are the Science terms, so students need to refer to Science Textbook. In other word, this book textbook will be supported by other textbook. It is also based on age appropriate level since it is for in Standard 4 aged in 10 years old.
From my evaluation, this textbook does not contain either end-of-lesson questions or quizzes. This is maybe because this is a practical textbook and not a theory-based. So there is no suitable question to test the students. As I mentioned earlier, students will need to refer to other textbook to get the information of what they do not understand. Therefore, the lessons thought in this book are linked to other subjects’ areas. Since it is a practical lesson, students will surely do activities that engaged them in an active learning. They are also will appealing to a wide range of abilities and interests as they need to do activities outside their classroom such as skills of sports, recreation (camping), work together to clean their school’s areas in preventing infectious disease which included in this book. In my opinion, the lessons do much encourage higher level thinking as it is not based on the KBKK (Kemahiran Berfikir secara Kritis dan Kreatif). Last but not least, this textbook could be used for another several years.
ORGANIZATION
This PJK textbook does not provide both either of Glossary or Index’s part. Glossary means a list of technical or special word. Since there is no technical or special word used, the Glossary’s part does not have to be included. Same goes to the Index which carries the meaning of a list of (alphabetical) of names, subject and so on with references. However this textbook does provide a very useful, appropriate and interesting table of contents. Students can easily refer to any topics and its subtopics by going through the table of contents. The table also indicates a logical arrangement and development of subjects. It begins with Physical Fitness then Skills and ended with Environment Safeness and Hygiene. Appearance and layout of its content is presenting in a uniform and standardization form throughout the book as well as each chapter. For example, the usage of colour of font, symbols of subtopics and also for the symbols that represent something.
This textbook does not provide bibliographies at all. In my opinion, this is because the target reader is for students in Standard 4, they does not know what is bibliography about and yet how to use it. Nevertheless, it does provide the references and resources. It tells where are the facts of the contents are refer to. For example, in Chapter 4: Kesihatan Diri dan Keluarga (Akil Baligh dan Perubahan Fizikal), it does state the source where the facts are collected which are Modul Pendidikan Kesihatan Keluarga, Pusat Perkembangan Kurikulum, Kementerian Pelajaran Malaysia. It also stated websites where students can get more information about the topics discussed such as http://www.nutritrus.org.my/, http://wwwphyssportsmed.com/, etc. introduction’s part is quite confusing me while evaluating this book. This is because there is no introduction for every major topic. However, there is one topic such as Unit 2: Kemahiran that provides introduction for each subtopic. For example, Introduction to Hockey, Introduction to Netball and so on and yet still clear and comprehensive. Summaries are provided for each subtopic. In addition, all the pages numbered by symbols of a television with two feet. This is quite interesting for the target reader.
CONTENT
The content is surely meet with our local and national standards since this is a textbook for students in this country. It is standardize for all school whether in a rural or urban area. The content discussed in this book is accurate and also up-to-date since it discuss topics about Physical Fitness, Skills, Sports, Family and Self Hygiene, Healthy Lifestyle and last but least Environment Safeness. So they do not need to renew the content o make follow-up from time to time. Next, in my opinion, students who do not really understand about some terms used in this book will have to use or refer to other textbook. For example, terms like gluteus maksimus, deltoid, hamstring, quadriceps, triceps, and coleus and so on. These are the Science terms, so students need to refer to Science Textbook. In other word, this book textbook will be supported by other textbook. It is also based on age appropriate level since it is for in Standard 4 aged in 10 years old.
From my evaluation, this textbook does not contain either end-of-lesson questions or quizzes. This is maybe because this is a practical textbook and not a theory-based. So there is no suitable question to test the students. As I mentioned earlier, students will need to refer to other textbook to get the information of what they do not understand. Therefore, the lessons thought in this book are linked to other subjects’ areas. Since it is a practical lesson, students will surely do activities that engaged them in an active learning. They are also will appealing to a wide range of abilities and interests as they need to do activities outside their classroom such as skills of sports, recreation (camping), work together to clean their school’s areas in preventing infectious disease which included in this book. In my opinion, the lessons do much encourage higher level thinking as it is not based on the KBKK (Kemahiran Berfikir secara Kritis dan Kreatif). Last but not least, this textbook could be used for another several years.
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