Fun Fairs and Peer Learning

Junior Mentors

All of the schools in the SK Pulau Mansok sub-cluster have seen the fun fair come through in some form or another, and I'd like to thank all of the teachers who have given up class time (and free time!) to help me make this happen. At SK Pulau Mansok, the fun fair idea coincided with the school's English Carnival so it worked very well; at other schools in the sub-cluster the fun fair has been run as a training event to prepare for the 'Big One'. SK Durian Hijau jumped straight in to the Big One, and the three TELL2 mentors will soon be bringing the fun fair around to other TELL2 participating schools across the Jerantut cluster. 

Behind the fun and games there is some serious learning going on.

The girls' team

"Strip the  Willow' is a British  folk dance
that children learn at school. I have adapted
it to a memory game using two rows of
paper plates. Pupils dance or march up and
down the rows until the music  stops, and then
they must try and pick two matching plates (the
items to match are pasted at the bottom ot the plates).

...and up and down we go

While the younger pupils were having fun at SKs Jerantut Jaya and Durian Hijau, the Year 5 pupils were setting up games and helping younger pupils to play them. A part of their task was to elicit English language responses from other pupils once they had had their turn on any particular game. With so many teachers and Year 5 pupils helping out at the two different funfair events, I was able to move around and listen to the Year 5 boys and girls encouraging their younger peers and eliciting lots of spoken English. It was really great.

Thanks to the teachers at SKs Jerantut Jaya and Durian Hijau, the two TELL2 mentors were able to spend time showing the Year 5 pupils how to play the games, and also let them know how we wanted to encourage the younger pupils to use lots of English. It is fair to say that the Year 5 boys and girls did a very good job and exceeded all our expectations. I'm very impressed with their skills!

Y5 pupil and teacher from SK Jerntut Jaya
playing Ping-Pong Cups

Y5 girls from SK Durian Hijau repairing
part of the photo booth

The team of Y5 junior mentors at SK Jerantut Jaya

The Learning Pyramid

As we know, different people have different learning styles. Some people like to play around with their phone in order to figure out how to use it.  Other people will just read the manual. A lot of people prefer to have a friend or relative show them how to use it. We all learn differently, but almost everyone learns better, faster and more efficiently (and they retain more, too) if they have to show someone else how to do something. This hierarchy of knowledge retention is illustrated in the learning pyramid.

Bringing these junior mentors on in the fun fair has been the first step. The next step is to introduce our Year 5 pupils to their Level 1 or even LINUS peers in the PAL (peer assisted learning) reading programme that a lot of TELL2 mentors are introducing across Pahang, Kelantan, Terengganu and beyond ...

As the mentors visit schools in the coming weeks, we will be talking to teachers about the benefits of the PAL scheme. Everybody benefits from a peer-to-peer reading programme. The Level 1 children get individual attention from a more advanced learner, the Year 5 pupils consolidate their exisitng knowledge and develop leadership skills and the teachers get to spend hands-off time in the library as they watch their pupils working together.

I've got lots of ideas for the PAL reading programme, and I'm really looking forward to working with teachers and pupils toward making this happen.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)