Heloo Yeh

The authors seeks to prove the importance of actively engaging students and how easily this can be done using puppets as well as providing a brief summary of evidences for puppets as effective teaching tools. The main idea is the emphasis of puppets as a teaching tool for enhancing child interest and engagement.

Material Reliability Dr. Diane M. Sainato is an Associate Professor at The Ohio State University, holds her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in special education, and is a member of the Special Education faculty at the Ohio State University where she teaches courses in early childhood special education and applied behaviour analysis. Mary D. Salmon is a Special Education Coordinator at Columbus City Schools and holds a Ph.D. in applied behaviour analysis; special education from the Ohio State University. Both authors are therefore experienced in the child behavioural and education field, thus lending credibility to the article.

The journal article is published in 2005, providing a holistic assessment by mentioning both past and present information. Furthermore, the concepts of engaging children's interest, its importance and the use of puppets as teaching tools are comparatively unchanged over the years and hence the arguments are applicable and cogent today.

Also, the journal article is part of Young Exceptional Children (YEC) - a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by DEC which is in turn maintained by SAGE Publications, a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. The journal entry must have been systematically reviewed before its publication on the website, signifying that it is greatly reliable.

As our project aims to inculcate good moral values and behaviour of Singapore's heroes to children, this article not only provides us with tips for developing specific strategies for using puppets within our project, it also gives tips for selecting and adapting puppets to enhance our successful implementation. Furthermore, the article explains that the use of puppets can be very beneficial in working with students across many different learning styles and diverse needs - wide spectrum indicates that the puppetry is somewhat popular and pertinent, and hints at possible effectiveness.

The article argues that 'introducing new concepts and skills to young children while reinforcing previously learned material requires upbeat, appropriate paced and highly interactive instruction.' This claim is true to a certain extent. Though having an upbeat, appropriate paced play is vital to catch the children's attention, it does not necessarily mean that the children have effectively internalize the moral lesson of the play. In an interview and survey by PiE , while 94% of students interviewed who saw the performance said that they had gotten new ideas of what they could do the next time they were bullied, only 46% of school personnel interviewed observed that students had tried anti-bullying strategies suggested by the puppets . The pilot evaluation shows that though the puppet show had effectively transmitted knowledge of the subject in focus to the children, a significantly large number of children do not internalize and act out on the knowledge that they have learnt. Thus, to curb this problem - immediately after the puppet show, we would carry out hands-on activities as a yardstick regarding how much has been absorbed by drawing children's interest and enhance the learning process for children. Two games, the first game adapted from charades and taboo to amalgamate kinesthetic and verbal learning for children and the second game which is a picture card memory game, both require students to state facts pertaining to the local heroes to ensure that students are repeatedly engaged in attempting to recall the content in the puppet show. Prizes such as bookmarks and puppets would also be given out after the game in order to reinforce already ingrained information as they serve as