The importance and the benefits of using teaching aids and puppets

Teaching aids are materials that teachers use in the classroom to help students to understand the concepts he or she introduces during the lesson and it assists students in learning. (Crepeau & Richards, 2003) Teaching aids can be as basic as a blackboard or a just blank paper. These aids consist of video, audio and hands-on tools to help involve the students and enhance the learning experience. Teachers begin using visual, audio, and hands-on aids as early as preschool. Audio and visual equipment, such as DVD players and video projectors, are commonly used as tools for learning with a very effective output. Puppets is also a highly effective too that can be used in a classroom.

Students tend to get more involved when learning if teaching aids are implemented into the curriculum. Hands-on aids, such as computers, maps, puppets and other tools that require some sort of interaction from the students, have the highest levels of effectiveness. The tools are designed to involve the students, promote interaction, and promote faster learning and better comprehension. Being able to see, hear or get involved in a topic creates a much better method for learning. How a teacher chooses to use learning aids in a classroom can vary dramatically. The main factor in the effective use of teaching aids is the talent that the teacher practices with the tool.

Most of teachers know that puppets are a wonderful tool for eliciting student attention and motivation. It plays an important role to improve students speaking skills, interpretation skill and performing skills. Thus, puppets can be an ideal tool that can be used in primary class for active performance or active involvement of students. Learning through play is fundamental to our children's education, helping them to develop the necessary skills in life. Puppets can stimulate children's imagination, encourage creative play and discovery and are a wonderful interactive way to introduce narrative to even the most reluctant reader. They can be a powerful way of bringing story time to life; puppets can provide a focus for role-play, encouraging the child's imagination and involvement in activities and can play a fundamental part in the recitation of stories and verse. In addition, hand puppets with workable mouths and tongues are an excellent motivational resource to inspire the teaching of phonics within literacy. Therefore, puppets play a vital role to motivate students and it also helps the teachers to get students attention easier in the lesson. Moreover, it helps the students to think in many different angles. As a result, students build their confidents and thinking skill in a creative way.

“ I Teach Better with the Puppet” reported Ronit Remer, David Tzuriel “Use of Puppet as a Mediating Tool in Kindergarten Education- an Evaluation” (2015). So, it means the puppet can encourage the idle students to start talking. In this regard, children would love to listen and talk to puppets. Puppets can break down barriers and provide an effective means to initiate communication. The child trusts the puppet and doesn't feel threatened by it, making it a perfect neutral medium through which they can discuss sensitive issues. The child can express thoughts, fears and feelings through the puppet that they might otherwise find difficult to voice to an adult.

A puppet as a teaching tool provides teachers with one of the most inexpensive aids in the classroom but the benefits from puppets are many. They allow children to escape into an imaginary world. They are able to use puppets to work out their own emotional problems. The puppet acts as a mask behind which the child is able to hide. Children learn to co-operate when working in a small group to produce their own puppet play. There are many opportunities for sequencing, organizing, verbalizing, sorting information and gaining self-confidence (Zuljevic,2005).

Another benefit is that puppets can uphold students’ interest in the reading, generating ideas and selecting or topic. “Students (who are) typically resistant to lecturing and representing diverse learning styles and personalities are freed to process and articulate concepts and explore the who-what-when-where- and why of the curriculum physically, interactively, and experientially.” (Peyton, 2002). Therefore, puppets help a lot to improve students’ speaking skill and as well as students get chances to think freely. Research published in the Journal of Child Neurology and the Pediatric Academy Societies (Cited in: Sandra 2008) showed, “using sophisticated imaging technology, that the use of puppets in play dramatically boosted blood and oxygen levels to the brain. The use of puppets prepares the brain for learning and is a powerful motivator in learning.” So, if teachers use puppets in the classroom as a teaching aid, student gets opportunities thinking critically and creatively.

Students can benefit from puppets through oral and language skills development. When a puppet speaks, children can listen, identify, and understand different words and phrases emphatically performed by their teacher who stresses proper enunciation and pronunciation. Similarly, the act of speaking out loud is much different than thinking the thoughts in head. So when children are required to make short presentations or simply answer questions in class, the pressures from their peers or evaluation from their teachers can be intimidating. When puppets are provided however, shy students can speak via the puppet, shifting the attention of the audience’s away from them and onto the puppet. With a crutch in their hand, students can gradually grow more confident with public speaking. Therefore, puppets helps to create a good learning environment and the teacher will get chance to deliver the lesson very smoothly. Students’ co-operation will help the teacher to achieve the objectives of the lesson. Puppets are also a wonderful visual aid for children, retaining their attention and encouraging them to participate in class. Student’s imaginations can run wild, and without knowing it, they are developing essential skills needed for everyday life.