My reflection

My wildlife activities

Thank Maggie, Esther, Yuki and Jessie for their feedback. The negative feedback from them made me reconsider whether my design in the wildlife activities were appropriate.

Given the fact that EFL students seldom read English articles or newpapers outside the classroom, I intended to build students' reading abilities and increase their reading comprehension. Thus, choosing its scientific name of each animal and matching the population to each animal were created to foster students' scanning ability, that is, to increase their ability to extract specific information. Students need to do so - speed reading in their real life (Hamer, 1991). However, Maggi's feedback that students need to read six articles to answer the six questions made me think about the possibility that students would be demotivated if they have to read so many articles. Probably it is better to put links at the end of each question rather than putting all of them in the instruction.

Maggie also said that the instruction in the crossword puzzle was not clear. Students have to read the text to complete the crossword puzzle.The aim here is to ask students to read the article first in order to receive additional input and guess the meanings of new words through the context because new words were also included in the puzzle. This crossword puzzle is to focus on vocabulary learning because vocabulary is significant for successful reading (Nation 2001). I think this activity is quite useful. However, the crossword puzzle was quite difficult, just as Maggi and Yuki mentioned. I should have added more hints to help them and made the instruction clearer and easier to follow.

Jessie advised me to put more pictures. She was quite right. Pictures help to attract students' attention and increase their motivation. I have to admit that these wildlife activities were quite simple and students need to do a lot of reading which makes it look a bit dull. I should have introduced some videos or film clips not only to increase students' motivation but also to satisfy the needs of different learning styles (Dorney 2001). Thus, students with different learning preferences will find what they like and will become active in participating. They will have fun when they learn.

I think that these wildlife activities are suitable to be an implement. Given more time, I could do better.