EFL Best Practice: Using Media Infinity Cube in Teaching Procedure Text
Hallo Fellow Teachers.
In this post, I would like to share my experience in teaching Procedure Text using Origami Infinity Cube as the media. There several information covered in this post, they are: (1) what kind of media used, (2) to to use the media, (3) what are the impacts felt by the students and many others relevant information that may help you as teacher to design your teaching and learning process.
To give the perspective to everyone about the classroom, here are the detail of the classroom and the students' characterization where I taught. There are two classrooms that I covered, one of the classroom consist of 30 students and the other classroom consist of 12 students. the significant differences between each class in quantity is unequivocal, it is to understand the impact of the teaching to big and small classrooms. and, the characterization of the students is also vary. one class that consist of 12 students has a higher capability in English Subject while the other students are categorized as beginner level. It was identified through their academic performance especially in English subject in the previous year.
Ok. Now, let's talk about the infinity cube. what is infinity cube and what are the tools that need to be prepared by the teachers before the beginning of the class. Infinity Cube are playing cubes that is connected to one another. This picture probably can show you on what is the infinity cubes looks like.
To show you how to play ad create this boxes you may watch this video to ease you as the teacher to prepare all the tools required in your teaching and learning process.
The activity in EFL classroom are consist of three main activities. they are:
1. Reading Activity and Comprehension.
2. Following the Procedure.
3. Writing Activity
4. Speaking Activity.
A. Preparation.
In this part, I prepared a procedure text (without picture) informing on how to create an infinity cubes, and, I also provided some colorful papers for them to create and infinity cubes through the assistance of the procedure text provided, Lastly, I provided some pair of scissors for students to cut the paper with.
The activity starts from dividing teams, I divided them into three to four members in one group. I choose random sampling through Randomizer application https://www.randomlists.com/team-generator the reasons behind using random grouping is to grow the sense of fairness because in most case when I divide the team's member, some students complain about the fairness. They think that some teams get more benefit than other since it consist of many qualified members.
However, using random team member division brought some benefit to the quality of the activity. in some case, when the team consist of one students who are considered able in English will work individually without collaboration. It leave other members doing nothing during the activity. Since it random. most of the members in all groups work together to make do the activity.
B. Reading Activity.
This is the first activity it may takes in about 1 hour or even more. First of all I handed colorful papers and a text to each group. the procedure text consist of the steps on how to create an infinity cubes from origami paper. then I specifically state what is the purpose and what the students need to do during the activity.
For the text they read, you may download it here.
The text for the teacher that equipped with pictures to ease the teacher in assisting students is downloadable in the below button.
C. Reading Comprehension Activity.
After reading the procedure text to the students, they were assigned to create an infinity cube from the papers given and by following the procedure text they have. in this section, the help of the teacher was really essential to direct students to the right path whenever they get a dead end. This process could take hours of activity since it really challenge their reading comprehension during the making of the origami.
D. Experimenting
Once they have completed the procedure and they got the product of the infinity cube already. than they were told that the infinity cubes can be transformed into many shapes based on the Tetris game form. like this following pictures.
Then, they were given sometimes to enjoy and experiencing on how to create each form of the Tetris shape. This process is fun, since they will individually tried imagining how Tetris form could be formed from the infinity cube.
E. Writing The Text
Once, they were finish with this experiment, they were then told to create a manual book on how to turn one shape into another shape. the manual books should be form in procedure text type by focusing to the generic structure and language feature. One team get one text to finish that shows how to form a certain form of Tetris shape to another certain of Tetris shape.
You may download the task in this section here.
F. Reading the text.
After finishing the creation of the text, each group of the students were told to read the manual instruction they wrote to the other team and aske the other team to follow the instruction only by listening to the reading of the team that create the manual book. in this part, the assessment could be seen on how detail that they write their instruction. if it is detail enough, then the other team will easily follow the procedure text and create the designated shape.
