P/PAL at SJK(C) Sungai Jan

Parent / Pupil Assisted Learning

Teacher Chin and the mentor at SJK(C) Sungai Jan were both keen to explore different assisted learning strategies with the Level 1 pupils. The assisted reading project in the library (see Brighton's PAL Blog) was not a huge success at this school, but that didn't mean that we gave up on the idea of helping pupils to learn through an assisted learning programme of some kind. This was a good opportunity for the mentor to extend the PAL (peer assisted learning) reading project (see earlier blog posts), reach out to parents AND involve teacher expertise. The expert teacher in this case was Mme Chin at SJK(C) Sungai Jan.

The mentor and teacher worked on a series of games and activities that would encourage more parental involvement in their children's learning. The focus for parental involvement was on fun, non-confrontational ways to help the children with their school work / homework in effective and fun ways. We also wanted to look at ways parents can talk to their children about their experiences at school. we focused on turning the topic away from the product (their children's scores) by talking about the learning process (their children's experience at school) instead.

The activities involved parent / pupil pair work with personal whiteboards. Some activities were based on a non-competitive version of the Korean educational Golden Bell TV game show, and others on the popular 'categories' game where parents competed in teams against children. In order to create a more balanced peer-based environment, the pupils were able to take charge and be the experts when the native English-speaking mentor asked questions they were familiar with from their English lessons and the mentor's visits to their classes. On other occasions, the parents were more familiar with some of the arithmetic and general knowledge questions. The parents and pupils worked cooperatively to find answers.

Another way of introducing fun into parents and pupils working together was by playing a series of 'circle games'. These games involve everyone getting into a circle of some sort; in some versions the blindfolded parents are put inside the circle and they need to find their own chirping child, another version involves passing objects around the circle, secretly, behind our backs while a couple of parent / pupil teams inside the circle try to guess who is holding the objects (in this case, limes) and a final version where parents and pupils face each other in inner and outer circles as they rotate in opposite directions, when the music stops the adult and child practice the questions, and possible answers, that we might exchange when we talk about the pupil's day at school. The teacher and mentor worked on producing a laminated bilingual list of positive questions that parents can ask their children about their learning.

The purpose of these activities is to model the necessity of mistakes in the learning process. No one got mad if it was difficult to guess who was holding a lime behind her back; likewise, it is not necessary to get angry if it is difficult to remember all the words in a spelling test - we just have to try a different approach. We also wanted to model the fun that we can have when we make learning enjoyable. On Mme Chin's recommendation, we made sure the parents understood our learning purpose before and after each activity.

The P/PAL programme at SJK(C) Sungai Jan ran for three 90-minute+ sessions over three weeks, the same parent / pupil pairs attended each session. The teachers chose 25 pairs of participating parent / pupil teams from a variety of Year 1 classes and for a variety of reasons. Some parents were already very involved in their children's learning, and appreciated the involvement, others needed mentoring into the role, others still were involved, but their children's learning was still lacking and it was felt that they could benefit from a change of focus. The programme will be repeated with other groups in the 2015 school year.