Using your mentor ...

How do you take advantage of the TELL2 mentor's visit to your school?

At SK Teh the teachers tell the TELL2 mentor what they would like him to do for them during the school visit.

More than just colouring in.
Everyone loves colouring pictures, and
Year 1 pupils are no exception!
The colouring in was just one of many
activities around the food card

Reading assessment for LINUS.
The other pupils are engaged with a
variety of  activities in English, while
the teacher focuses on individual
pupils' needs. 

This week Mr N (Teacher Naeiman) is busy with a LINUS assessment programme for Year 1 pupils, and Teacher Shantini is teaching her Year 3 class a tricky grammar point (possessive pronouns). When the mentor came bearing games for reinforcing the vocabulary around healthy and unhealthy food, neither teacher was very impressed. Instead of patiently listening to the mentor and wishing he were talking about something more useful, both of the teachers found ways to use the mentor and his materials to improve on the classroom plans they had already developed. Mr N asked the mentor to take lots of photocopies of the labelled pictures of common foods into the class. Mr N explained the procedure with the class and worked with individual children on their reading while the mentor and other pupils coloured the pictures, copied the labels and generally chatted about food and colours.

Some pupils needed more coaching and
support than others, but generally everyone
was happy to yell out the answers (right or wrong).

Everybody owned some food.
Whose apple is it? the teacher would ask.
It's 'hers!' or 'theirs!' would come the reply.

Pn Shantini used the food cards (and the mentor) differently. She wanted to teach possessive pronouns to her Year 3 class. English possessive pronouns work quite differently from the children's L1; it is quite a tricky topic to teach, because the children are learning new concepts as well as new vocabulary. The teacher wanted to create a visualisation of the concept to help the children decode the information in their text books and then to help them complete the extra worksheet that she had provided. Teacher Shantini took the mentor's vocabulary cards and gave them to pupils who then 'owned' those food items. The pupils all had to call out which foods were 'his', 'hers' or 'theirs'. This gave the pupils plenty of opportunities to meet the new vocabulary, as well as visualise the concepts 'his', 'hers' and 'theirs'.

Teacher Sim was on a course that day, which was probably just as well, otherwise it would have been a very busy day at work.
Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)