Lesson 2 : The whiteboard : The Dos and Don'ts

 If you are using word cards or sentence strips , and you want to paste them on the whiteboard , please use BluTac ( sometimes they're NOT blue ). Some trainees used binding tape and some even resort to double sided tape !! You're ruining the board .

Please consider the length of your sentence strips . If your strips or word cards are quite lengthy, please put BluTac on BOTH sides of the strips and not only in the middle so that it would not fold in during lesson as in the picture above . Pupils who sit at the sides would have a hard time reading the words that're written on the strips once the strips fold in .

 This photo shows how  pupils at the back of the class see the whiteboard . Notice how the words written on the coloured papers , pasted on the whiteboard look like ? The words on the white coloured card can be read easily and so does the pink coloured paper . However , the words on the green paper proved quite a challenge to read but the blue paper.... a total lost !! We have to choose the correct colour combination when preparing teaching aids to be pasted on the whiteboard . We have to cater for ALL the pupils and not all of them have 20/20 vision . Even the teachers themselves will have a hard time reading the words from afar .

This photo was taken in the middle of a lesson. I highlighted 3 usual items that should be there but they're not.
1. The teacher writes something on the board but doesn't label them . If someone were to pass by the classroom and looked at the board , he/she could never guess what the lesson was about . so LABEL WHAT YOU DRAW ( in this case question mark and exclamation mark )
2. The teacher should write the TOPIC OF THE LESSON TAUGHT . What is it that the teacher wishes to teach so that the pupils can relate whatever being taught to them to the topic of the day . This can help pupils to understand better and quicker .
3. We have to write the date in such a way that it could contribute to the pupils' knowledge . In this case , the date was written as 16 April 2014 . It is better if the teacher writes it as 16th April 2014. The 'th' can
strengthen the pupils' knowledge in ordinal numbers besides the SPELLING of the month ( April ). Worse still if the teacher were to write 16-4-2014...What can the pupils gain besides the date of the day ?