Making Classroom Resources ...

... and then, making the resource do all the work!

At a recent series of school-based workshops, teachers discussed the cost / benefit ratio for teacher-made resources. During our discussion we came up with the following points:

Materials development - costs:

• Time - on top of other professional duties, it takes time to make a good resource (between 15 minutes and 3 hours).
• Creativity - it can be difficult to come up with new ideas, and handicraft skills may not be some teachers' strong point.
• Money - stationery and craft supplies cost money; schools won't always refund costs.

Materials development - benefits:

• Time - 15 minutes spent making a sock puppet is worth tens of hours of classroom time; strangely, pupils will listen to a talking sock much more attentively than they will listen to a teacher. Even though the sock isn't even really talking.
• Creativity - our target audience is 6-9 year-old children. These children are easily impressed with the teacher's efforts. A balloon on a stick is a wonder to many children in this age group. They will not criticise our handiwork or creative effort; they will enjoy it! Children learn best through play and enjoyment.
• Money - re-usable materials (tin cans, plastic bottles, recycled paper from the photostat, cardboard boxes and general packaging) are easy to find. Some basic supplies can be bought quite cheaply, and schools will provide some tools and raw materials for teachers to use. The money investment can easily be recouped over many repeat activities with the teacher-made resource. Sharing resources with other teachers also adds more value to the initial money cost. And besides, love of learning is greater than ringgit and sen (within reason!).

To kick off the discussion, I shared my feeble efforts in materials development with the teachers. I used paper plates to make a memory game that integrates numeracy and literacy skills. The orange plates have a numeral drawn on the reverse, and the purple plates have the number written as a word (E.g. 0 / zero). It's very simple, but also very adaptable. Teachers at the workshops were able to suggest lots of ways to use the plates in different games and activities.

Even basic skills can be used to create cheap
and quick materials that can be used over
and over again in a variety of different ways.

The Challenge ...

I gave teachers from each school a pile of paper plates and asked them to cooperate with each other to make a resource that focuses on a particular language point from the curriculum. I also asked the teachers to make a another resource in a different medium (IT, write the rules of a game, a work sheet or handout) that uses the same language as the paper plate activity.

A few teachers have already accepted the challenge and made some fantastic resources for their English classrooms. I't's been a great week for school visits, and I'm looking forward to more of the same during March visits.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)