Phonics Workshop at Jerantut PPD - Our 1st work as a Cluster

There is a new cluster in town and to get things off to a good start, before the school year came to an end, we did our first bit of teamwork, a Phonics Workshop.  It was a week long workshop run by the Jerantut PPD.  They asked us if we would kindly volunteer to do a section on phonics.  There were teachers from all of the primary schools in the area.  Jinks, Josh and I had some of our TELL2 teachers present but there were also lots of other teachers that joined the workshop.

When some teachers hear the word phonics it can bring up a sense of concern.   Our goal for the workshop was to ease this concern and show the teachers’ phonics is not the scary monster it seems to be.  We wanted teachers to walk away from the workshop with useful and practical information that they can use with their students in the classroom and also for themselves.  Another valuable point we wanted teachers to gain was the realisation of how beneficial group work and activities can be to the process of learning.  We did this by doing a lot of group work and activities with them.  This led to a practical workshop that everyone seemed to enjoy.   

Our key focus areas were:

• The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)
• Practical teaching methods
• Phonics activities for the classroom.

Teachers discussing the IPA

The IPA is a useful tool for teachers to use outside of the classroom.  It can give teachers clarity as to how words are pronounced.  We wanted teachers to familiarise themselves with the IPA and for them to see its usefulness in any language.

Having fun with the mouth diagrams.

A practical teaching method we showed the teachers was drawing mouth diagrams to represent the sounds.  These simple diagrams show where the tongue is situated in relation to the teeth and what shapes the lips are in for each sound.  Teachers were then given a chance to draw their own creative diagrams in groups.  They then had to swap with other groups and guess what sound had been drawn.  It was a practical activity for the teachers as it got them thinking how similar sounds are different eg. P and B or F and V.  We all enjoyed drawing hilarious diagrams and trying to guess what sound had been drawn.

Another fun activity we did with the teachers just before we broke for lunch was phonics bingo. Instead of having numbers on the bingo sheet students should write the phonics sounds.  Its a good way to get students to listen carefully as to what sounds are being said plus everybody loves bingo and winning prizes.  As a modification students can even be selected to read out the sound themselves.

To demonstrate phonics activities in the classroom we divided the teachers into groups and gave each group a ball and a container full of phonics sound cards. We then asked them to think of and create fun activities themselves.  The groups then had a chance to share their ideas with everyone. The teachers were extremely creative and almost every group came up with a unique and useful English activity.  We then shared some activities that we had prepared with the teachers. We also showed teachers numerous catchy phonics songs and chants teachers can use for classroom warm ups.  The songs were certainly stuck in my head for a good few days!

By the end of the workshop teachers were no longer is neat classroom rows but scattered in groups.

For Josh and I it was a great opportunity to get to work with Jinks before the year's end and to meet more teachers in the area.  Thank you to all the teachers who attended and participated, we had an incredibly enjoyable and fun day with you and hope we will get to work with you all again next year.  What a good note to end the year off on and we are looking forward to 2015!

Melissa Simon (ELP Jerantut)