Tell it Again

A BC resource for story-telling in the primary school classroom

A free book to download in PDF form. Here is a tiny extract:

"Each child is a unique learner and there has been a
growing awareness of the need to take into account
the different types of ‘intelligences’ (Gardner 1993),
including emotional intelligence, that manifest themselves
in different ways in each child. Consequently, teaching
approaches and materials need to cater for a range of
intelligences. The richness of storybooks in terms of
their content and illustrations and the variety of activities
suggested in the story notes, allow the teacher to cater
for all learner types and intelligences and to make
learning experiences meaningful for each child."

You can get the free book with lots of classroom activities, resources and song sheets HERE

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Here's a Handy Tip

From a TELL2 teacher in the Bentong cluster

Click on the link here to find out a useful teacher tip for dealing with over enthusiastic pupils when the teacher calls for volunteers.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Sentence Monster

A resource from the Bentong cluster comes to Jerantut.

When the teachers at SK Kuala Tembeling were busy with a PPD course, the mentor and a TESOL visitor from Korea entertained the children with the Sentence Monster. This was the second visit to SK Kuala Tembeling by special request of the Year 2 pupils who missed out on a previous visit.

No one is scared of the Sentence Monster, but the TESOL
visitor from Korea made everyone a bit shy at first.

If the word order is not correct, the Sentence Monster
will shout and push the word cards back out - look at
the apprehension on those faces!

Not everyone was busy on the course, and teacher Zul
came into the hall to help the boys' team make
their sentences.

Let's feed these words to the
Sentence Monster!

Previously, when the Sentence Monster visited the school, the pupils from Years 1 and 3 came with their teachers Akma and Khairi. The SK Kuala Tembeling teachers adapted the tasks and games to suit the children's English abilities and a lot of emphasis was placed on phonics. On that day, the Sentence Monster became the Word Monster as well. We used some Year 5 students to help us, and they did a great job as junior mentors working with the younger pupils.

This Year 5 pupil did a FANTASTIC job as the voice of
the Sentence Monster.

Older pupils helping younger ones to make sentences.

We have a sentence! Next, we need to feed it to the Sentence
Monster to see if it is correct.

Year 5 girls looking on as word cards are fed to the
Sentence Monster - it is quite tense!

The voice of the Sentence Monster.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Free Phonics Books!

Helping beginner readers

Here are some FREE downloadable phonics books

Please check out this site and let me know how these books are working for you at our next school visit. Thanks to Ellie, the mentor in Kuantan, for finding this great online resource!

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC, Jerantut)

Reading Activities

Teacher tips for teaching reading.

Check out this interesting BC web site for some tips on teaching reading. Raja Maheran at SK Pulau Mansok will be talking about one of these activities during August's TPD at SK Jerantut Jaya.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC, Jerantut)

Teachers Who Read

With Tan Yit Peng at SJK(C) Sungai Jan

Tan Yet Pen and Stephen-Peter Jinks in the access room
 at SJK(C) Sungai Jan, talking about books and reading.

TYP: Do you like reading?

SPJ: Yes, I like reading. I read a lot.

TYP: Me too, but I read Chinese books.

SPJ: But, you borrow a lot of books from the travelling library.

TYP: I just read a few to encourage my son and daughter to read. English is important, but I don't know how to encourage my son and daughter to read in English. My children like to read in Chinese, but not in English.

SPJ: If you enjoy reading, it is a good thing. No matter what language you read in.

TYP: I borrow books from the traveling library. I read some myself to set an example, and I also borrow story books for my children to read, too.

SPJ: Reading is interesting.

TYP: I also read to improve my English.

SPJ: What kind of books do you like?

TYP: I like to read Buddhist books and books about historical heroes. I liked the book I found in the traveling library about Confucius*.

SPJ: Did the book about Confucius give you new information about the man or his philosophy? Or was it information you already knew?

TYP: Confucius' philosophy is good for teachers and good for families; it is about duty and caring. I did learn some new information about Confucius from the traveling library, even though I have read a lot about him in Chinese.

SPJ: How did you find the English in that book?

TYP: Some words I didn't know, but I already knew a lot about the topic, so it wasn't so bad.

*

The book about Conficius.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC, Jerantut)

Peer Assisted Learning (PAL)

Reading Programme at SK Teh

"Let's have a peer assisted reading programme here at SK Teh" I said to the TELL2 participating teachers. "Great" said the head of English panel, "Let's start it tomorrow morning at seven o'clock".

So we did!

Setting out the mats as the sun rises.

Teacher Sim explaining the
way we read together.

Level 1 students are each given a reading book.

Each level 1 reader is paired up with a level 2 friend
who will listen and help with difficult words.

It's fun!

Early morning mentoring.

Fast readers get more books.

Reading together.

Head of panel keeps everything on track

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

The Sentence Monster

Coming to a school near you ...

The sentence monster is an interactive way to expose the children to the word order of simple English sentences. The children feed word cards into the monster's mouth, if the words are in the correct order the monster will say the sentence (in a monster voice!). There are lots of other ways we can use the monster in English language learning; we could use him for phonics, question and answer routines, colour recognition, vocabulary - anything we want really.

How will you use the sentence monster when he comes to your school?

THE SENTENCE MONSTER
On display at the May 2014 teacher-led TELL2
workshop in Bentong.

The Sentence Monster was made by Charlotte and Evan, 

the TELL2 mentors in Bentong.

Evan taking a photo of their handiwork.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)