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Hari Raya Celebrations in Jerantut.

It has been a festive few weeks in Jerantut with Hari Raya marking the end of Ramadan.
Jinks, Josh and I would like to say thank you to all of our schools and teachers who have invited us to join in celebrating Hari Raya.  It has been incredibly special to share these events with you.

Here are a few photos of the celebrations.

Salamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri to you all and we thank you.

Melissa - ELP Jerantut

When do we eat?

So much food to cook!

Where do we start?

They BBQ'd 2000 satay!

Nor Aini's delicious Tapai.

Amazing to see how Nasi Lamang is made.

So colourful.

All the colours add to the festivities.

Josh celebrating at SK Kampung Baharu

Celebrating at SK Pulau Mansok

Mel celebrating at SK Durian Hijau..

Mel celebrating at SK Perian.

Breaking fast at Sk Bukit Nikmat

Pre-school Phonics Success!

ABC phonics - teacher feedback

The mentors chatted to teachers during the coffee breaks to find out how useful the workshop was for them. All of the teachers we spoke to said that it was very helpful to have gone through each of the phonic sounds. Tara, the lead presenter, and her team spent a lot of time showing us how to make the sounds of English as well as strategies for making it fun for young learners. The teachers really appreciated the time spent on modeling each of the sounds of English, as well as the instruction on the mechanics of making the individual sounds.

Tara leading the way

Farhah BT Yunus, a pre-school teacher at SK Jerantut said that English was difficult for her pupils because it was not a part of their daily lives, and as well as this, they also have problems pronouncing English words. The pre-school phonics workshop was very helpful for teacher Fahrah, because it introduced her to a lot of new ideas and techniques for teaching English. She couldn’t decide which of the techniques she would use first in her classes, but sooner or later, she said, she would use all of them!

Noor Mardiana BT Mat Omar is a Year 1 teacher from SK Batu Balai. Teacher Mardiana already knew about some of the techniques for teaching segmenting and blending English sounds, but she thought that using personalized whiteboards (using laminated sheets of white A4 paper) was a good way for children to practise their writing, and that the pass the pencil case game was a lot of fun for young learners. Like other teachers, teacher Mardiana’s biggest problem is teaching pupils how to make the correct phonic sounds.

Wanie Fazlinda BT Inche Zakman also finds it very difficult to teach the children at SK Sungai Kiol the correct sounds of English. Teacher Wanie Fazlinda already knows about the importance of segmenting and blending, and although she had seen a lot of the activities before, the workshop reminded her of the importance of using lots of short, fun activities to keep young learners busy. She said she would definitely be playing the pass the pencil case phonics game with her classes at school in the week after the workshop.

Tan Kooi Yong from SJKC Damak also enjoyed the opportunity to review the letter sounds during the workshop activities. One of the problems teacher Tan has with her pre-school classes is separating dolch words (sight words) from phonic words. The sight words cannot be sounded out (n-i-gh-t) like phonic words (c-a-t), and this is confusing for the pupils. Teaching children the letter names and the letter sounds is sometimes too much for the very young learners to remember. Teacher Tan says she is looking forward to playing pass the pencil case with her classes, and she also really liked the clothes pins with vowels written on them that can be used to make different CVC words like ‘cat.’, ‘cot’ and ‘cut’.

Teachers working together

Pass the pencil case was very popular with all the teachers we spoke with; probably because it is easy to prepare and fun for the children to play (it is like poison box / pass the parcel, but when the music stops, the child holding the pencil case has to identify or make the target phonic sounds).

For me, the best activities were ‘blending on one breath’ – it was fun and it really does get the pupils to make continuous sounds from different phonics, and the Red and Black Readers. If you attended the pre-school ABC phonics workshop and you haven’t yet used activities from your media pack – please make an effort to try some out in your class this week. It will be worth it, I promise you, and your pupils will love it! If you didn’t attend the workshop, please talk to your colleagues and find out who did. Ask them if you can get a copy of the media pack. There are all sorts of activities there, and you will enjoy using them in your classes.

Meryl demonstrating unvoiced consonants

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Giving Learner Feedback

Three Top Tips

to improve learning

Check it out HERE

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Pre-school English Workshop

From the attendees' point of view!

Where's Mel?

As mentors, we enjoyed the event enormously. First of all, even though we are all experienced in English language education for young learners, it is always possible to learn more in your chosen field, and I definitely felt as though this workshop increased my knowledge of teaching and learning foundation phonics. Secondly, it was wonderful to have someone else doing all the hard work! Especially when the 'someone else' is a well prepared group of experts who are also your friends. So, thank you to the Bera cluster for bringing this event to Jerantut.

But how about the participating teachers? How did they feel about the workshop? The workshop organisers have published their before and after survey results on the Bera cluster blog, and you can see the feedback results for yourself HERE 

During the morning and afternoon tea breaks, I spoke to two participating teachers about the event; Mme Subathira A/P Chelempah from SJKT Jerantut and Mme Norhidayah Bt Baharum from SK Tekam Utara. Both participants are pre-school teachers.

Participating pre-school teachers
Norhidayah Bt Baharum (l) and Subathira A/P Chelempah (r)

Teacher Norhidayah said that she had often used alphabet songs to teach her classes English phonics, but she had not used the accompanying gestures which Tara demonstrated. Norhidayah said that she usually used flash cards to accompany the sounds, but in future she would try the gestures as well. She also acknowledged that it is difficult to teach children how to make the sounds of English and she said that the techniques we had learnt during the morning sessions would definitely help her pupils' pronunciation. One of the activities that Norhidayah will definitely be taking back to her pre-school classes was the listen and write activity for vowels that Tara demonstrated with post it stickers. We each had five stickers and as the 'teacher' made the phonic sound we wrote down the corresponding letter on a post it note. This makes it very clear to the teacher which of the English vowel sounds are still problematic for her pupils.

Another teacher, Subathira, was also familiar with a variety of alphabet songs. As well as using gestures to accompany each phonic sound in future classes, she will also try and avoid using direct translations in the classroom, as it is not good for pupils to rely on teacher translation all the time, Suba said that another important thing she had learned from the workshop was the system of focusing on vowels first (rather than just running through the whole 'abc'), and then segmenting the learning into different consonant sets, paying special attention to the importance of separating visually similar letters like 'p' and 'b' which can be confusing for very young learners. Suba also complemented the presenters for their thoroughness; not rushing through the material and taking teachers through early learner phonics strategies step-by-step.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Fun Phonics Workshop

Bera Mentors Bring a Pre-school English Workshop to Jerantut PPD

The TELL2 mentors from Bera, Meryl Thomas with Tom and Tara White show-cased Tara's extensive pre-school English workshop at the PPD on the 27th of August. The whole day was spent exploring young learner phonic words, sight words and the materials and activities we can use to help children learn how to read in English. As well as taking part in hands-on activities, the participants also got a huge media pack to take away that is full of games, songs, worksheets, videos, advice and tips, descriptions and ideas.

The Jerantut mentors have already seen teachers using the materials from the workshop the VERY NEXT DAY in school. Mission accomplished!

If you have a media pack from the pre-school English workshop, please share it with your colleagues. If you don't, it's worth burning a copy if you know someone from your school who went to the workshop - ask around!

Tom sharing ideas for teaching voiced consonants.

CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant) in a fun way.

Plate sliders: effective and EASY to make.

Trying out the laminated worksheets.
All these materials are available in the media pack.

Laminated board game template:
It is being used here as a snakes and ladders game for phonic words
Also available in the media pack.

Figuring out new activities.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Click here for more pictures and participating teacher interviews!

Classroom Mismanagement

Check out these classic classroom management fails!

Six of the Worst - read them HERE!

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)