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Hari Raya Celebrations in Jerantut.

It has been a festive few weeks in Jerantut with Hari Raya marking the end of Ramadan.
Jinks, Josh and I would like to say thank you to all of our schools and teachers who have invited us to join in celebrating Hari Raya.  It has been incredibly special to share these events with you.

Here are a few photos of the celebrations.

Salamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri to you all and we thank you.

Melissa - ELP Jerantut

When do we eat?

So much food to cook!

Where do we start?

They BBQ'd 2000 satay!

Nor Aini's delicious Tapai.

Amazing to see how Nasi Lamang is made.

So colourful.

All the colours add to the festivities.

Josh celebrating at SK Kampung Baharu

Celebrating at SK Pulau Mansok

Mel celebrating at SK Durian Hijau..

Mel celebrating at SK Perian.

Breaking fast at Sk Bukit Nikmat

Pre-school Phonics Success!

ABC phonics - teacher feedback

The mentors chatted to teachers during the coffee breaks to find out how useful the workshop was for them. All of the teachers we spoke to said that it was very helpful to have gone through each of the phonic sounds. Tara, the lead presenter, and her team spent a lot of time showing us how to make the sounds of English as well as strategies for making it fun for young learners. The teachers really appreciated the time spent on modeling each of the sounds of English, as well as the instruction on the mechanics of making the individual sounds.

Tara leading the way

Farhah BT Yunus, a pre-school teacher at SK Jerantut said that English was difficult for her pupils because it was not a part of their daily lives, and as well as this, they also have problems pronouncing English words. The pre-school phonics workshop was very helpful for teacher Fahrah, because it introduced her to a lot of new ideas and techniques for teaching English. She couldn’t decide which of the techniques she would use first in her classes, but sooner or later, she said, she would use all of them!

Noor Mardiana BT Mat Omar is a Year 1 teacher from SK Batu Balai. Teacher Mardiana already knew about some of the techniques for teaching segmenting and blending English sounds, but she thought that using personalized whiteboards (using laminated sheets of white A4 paper) was a good way for children to practise their writing, and that the pass the pencil case game was a lot of fun for young learners. Like other teachers, teacher Mardiana’s biggest problem is teaching pupils how to make the correct phonic sounds.

Wanie Fazlinda BT Inche Zakman also finds it very difficult to teach the children at SK Sungai Kiol the correct sounds of English. Teacher Wanie Fazlinda already knows about the importance of segmenting and blending, and although she had seen a lot of the activities before, the workshop reminded her of the importance of using lots of short, fun activities to keep young learners busy. She said she would definitely be playing the pass the pencil case phonics game with her classes at school in the week after the workshop.

Tan Kooi Yong from SJKC Damak also enjoyed the opportunity to review the letter sounds during the workshop activities. One of the problems teacher Tan has with her pre-school classes is separating dolch words (sight words) from phonic words. The sight words cannot be sounded out (n-i-gh-t) like phonic words (c-a-t), and this is confusing for the pupils. Teaching children the letter names and the letter sounds is sometimes too much for the very young learners to remember. Teacher Tan says she is looking forward to playing pass the pencil case with her classes, and she also really liked the clothes pins with vowels written on them that can be used to make different CVC words like ‘cat.’, ‘cot’ and ‘cut’.

Teachers working together

Pass the pencil case was very popular with all the teachers we spoke with; probably because it is easy to prepare and fun for the children to play (it is like poison box / pass the parcel, but when the music stops, the child holding the pencil case has to identify or make the target phonic sounds).

For me, the best activities were ‘blending on one breath’ – it was fun and it really does get the pupils to make continuous sounds from different phonics, and the Red and Black Readers. If you attended the pre-school ABC phonics workshop and you haven’t yet used activities from your media pack – please make an effort to try some out in your class this week. It will be worth it, I promise you, and your pupils will love it! If you didn’t attend the workshop, please talk to your colleagues and find out who did. Ask them if you can get a copy of the media pack. There are all sorts of activities there, and you will enjoy using them in your classes.

Meryl demonstrating unvoiced consonants

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Giving Learner Feedback

Three Top Tips

to improve learning

Check it out HERE

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Pre-school English Workshop

From the attendees' point of view!

Where's Mel?

As mentors, we enjoyed the event enormously. First of all, even though we are all experienced in English language education for young learners, it is always possible to learn more in your chosen field, and I definitely felt as though this workshop increased my knowledge of teaching and learning foundation phonics. Secondly, it was wonderful to have someone else doing all the hard work! Especially when the 'someone else' is a well prepared group of experts who are also your friends. So, thank you to the Bera cluster for bringing this event to Jerantut.

But how about the participating teachers? How did they feel about the workshop? The workshop organisers have published their before and after survey results on the Bera cluster blog, and you can see the feedback results for yourself HERE 

During the morning and afternoon tea breaks, I spoke to two participating teachers about the event; Mme Subathira A/P Chelempah from SJKT Jerantut and Mme Norhidayah Bt Baharum from SK Tekam Utara. Both participants are pre-school teachers.

Participating pre-school teachers
Norhidayah Bt Baharum (l) and Subathira A/P Chelempah (r)

Teacher Norhidayah said that she had often used alphabet songs to teach her classes English phonics, but she had not used the accompanying gestures which Tara demonstrated. Norhidayah said that she usually used flash cards to accompany the sounds, but in future she would try the gestures as well. She also acknowledged that it is difficult to teach children how to make the sounds of English and she said that the techniques we had learnt during the morning sessions would definitely help her pupils' pronunciation. One of the activities that Norhidayah will definitely be taking back to her pre-school classes was the listen and write activity for vowels that Tara demonstrated with post it stickers. We each had five stickers and as the 'teacher' made the phonic sound we wrote down the corresponding letter on a post it note. This makes it very clear to the teacher which of the English vowel sounds are still problematic for her pupils.

Another teacher, Subathira, was also familiar with a variety of alphabet songs. As well as using gestures to accompany each phonic sound in future classes, she will also try and avoid using direct translations in the classroom, as it is not good for pupils to rely on teacher translation all the time, Suba said that another important thing she had learned from the workshop was the system of focusing on vowels first (rather than just running through the whole 'abc'), and then segmenting the learning into different consonant sets, paying special attention to the importance of separating visually similar letters like 'p' and 'b' which can be confusing for very young learners. Suba also complemented the presenters for their thoroughness; not rushing through the material and taking teachers through early learner phonics strategies step-by-step.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Fun Phonics Workshop

Bera Mentors Bring a Pre-school English Workshop to Jerantut PPD

The TELL2 mentors from Bera, Meryl Thomas with Tom and Tara White show-cased Tara's extensive pre-school English workshop at the PPD on the 27th of August. The whole day was spent exploring young learner phonic words, sight words and the materials and activities we can use to help children learn how to read in English. As well as taking part in hands-on activities, the participants also got a huge media pack to take away that is full of games, songs, worksheets, videos, advice and tips, descriptions and ideas.

The Jerantut mentors have already seen teachers using the materials from the workshop the VERY NEXT DAY in school. Mission accomplished!

If you have a media pack from the pre-school English workshop, please share it with your colleagues. If you don't, it's worth burning a copy if you know someone from your school who went to the workshop - ask around!

Tom sharing ideas for teaching voiced consonants.

CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant) in a fun way.

Plate sliders: effective and EASY to make.

Trying out the laminated worksheets.
All these materials are available in the media pack.

Laminated board game template:
It is being used here as a snakes and ladders game for phonic words
Also available in the media pack.

Figuring out new activities.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Click here for more pictures and participating teacher interviews!

Classroom Mismanagement

Check out these classic classroom management fails!

Six of the Worst - read them HERE!

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Penmanship Awards

Congratulations to the winning pupils at SJKC Sungai Jan!

The whole school assembled to applaud the winning penmanship competition entrants at SJKC Sungai Jan last Monday morning. Well done everybody!

Everything was well organised.

Well done everyone!

Getting ready to sing the school song.

Awarding the Year 1 prizes.

Even the judges got a prize!

The next step is the 'Best of the Best' district final on 

Saturday August 22nd

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Classroom Management Checklist

Check out the effective classroom manager's checklist here

How Many of the Boxes Can You Tick?

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Peer Assisted Penmanship

Letting the big girls do the work (PAL)

Recent penmanship heats at SK Teh came at a particularly awkward time and everyone was a bit too busy to give it their full attention. So we asked the Year 5 teacher if he would send three of the best pupils to the Year 2 classroom with Teacher Simantakar and the mentor. We asked the Year 5 pupils to make sure that all the Year 2 pupils filled in their name correctly and understood they had to copy the original version with exactly the same spacing, capital letters and punctuation.while the teacher and the mentor made sure that everyone understood all the words in the text so they could draw pictures to match.

The Year 5 pupils did a really good job, and the year 2 pupils responded well to the guidance of their older peers.

Year 5 helpers - Thank You!

Making a good start

Peer Assisted Learning in Action

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

What is the point of all this assessment?

An interesting interview with an American education expert

Children in poor communities are still failing at school, so what can we do?

Listen to what Professor Pedro Noguera has to say about assessment, and how we can learn from it.

CHECK IT OUT HERE

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Spelling and Vocabulary

How spelling tests can make pupils interested in learning vocabulary

Knowing how to spell a word is not the same as knowing a word and understanding how to use it, but decoding and remembering the sounds of new words (a spelling skill) is a good foundation for learning vocabulary.

At SK Kuala Tembeling, teacher Khairizani Bt Jantan has made a vocabulary board for her year 3 English class. The words pinned to the board are made up from a combination of teacher-made, pupil-made and commercially produced cards. Read about the word board  at SK Kuala Tembeling and the thinking behind it here. 

Decoding the sounds of new words is all good, but there must also be plenty of follow-up opportunities for the pupils to 'meet' the words in subsequent lessons. Pinning cards on a board is only a part of the process. If teacher Khairi uses flash cards to introduce new vocabulary or grammar to the class, she will spend time at the end of the lesson asking pupils to pin the cards onto the board. Khairi and I have also devised a series of spelling tests that will require the pupils to continually engage with the vocabulary on the board from lesson to lesson.

The vocabulary board is a work in
progress; new cards are added regularly.

The four things we want to achieve with the vocabulary board and associated activities are:

• Easy progress review
• Frequent use of target vocabulary
• Meaningful vocabulary use
• More pupil involvement and talk time

Progress Review: We have made a chart for pupils to fill in and check their own progress. The pupils colour in their score (E.g. 4 out of 5, 3 out of 5 etc.) and create a bar chart that shows their progress. This is a fun way for pupils to make a progress chart, and it can also encourage them to do better next time. The more correct answers you have, the more colouring in you can do!

______________________________________________________________________________

My name ____________________________________________ My class _____________

How many correct answers did you get in the spelling test? Colour the chart.

5 correct
4 correct
3 correct
2 correct
1 correct
	Test 1	Test 2	Test 3	Test 4	Test 5	Test 6	Test 7	Test 8	Test 9	Test 10

______________________________________________________________________________

Frequent Use: We don't want the spelling tests to be an isolated classroom activity. In order to avoid this teacher Khairy is using the target vocabulary from each lesson to use in the spelling tests. We are also making sure that some words will appear on more than one test, so the pupils will not feel like they can forget about the words once they have come up on the test - because they are likely to come up again (and again!).

Meaningful Use: In order to check understanding and create meaning around the spelling test words, the teacher will not just read out the list for the pupils to copy into their notebooks. Some words from the vocabulary board will be said in Bahasa Malaysia, and the pupils will have to write the English word of the same meaning that was on the word card. In other instances, the teacher will test the pupils' grammar knowledge as well their spelling. For example, to test the pupils' knowledge of the word 'cried', the teacher will make a 'crying' action and ask the pupils 'What am I doing?' they will call out 'cry' or 'crying', but the teacher will ask them to write the past tense word on their test.

Pupil Involvement: The problem with things like spelling tests is the lopsided nature of communication. teacher talks and pupils listen (and write). Teacher Khairi and the mentor are trying to correct this imbalance. One way to correct it is by turning the test into a question and answer routine, like we did with the meaningful use example, So, like the 'cried' example (above), the teacher can open a conversation with the pupils about the spelling test word.
E.g.
T: What animal is this?  It's a bird.
P: Parrot!
T: No it's a farm animal.
P: Goose!
T: Goose is a farm animal, right, but this bird lays eggs, and we eat them.
P: Chicken!
T; Yes, but 'chicken' is not one of our spelling words.
P: Hen!
T: That's right, but I want you to write the PLURAL form, like on the vocabulary board.
(Pupils write)

Further ways to increase pupil involvement is to allow pupils to exchange books after the test and grade each other's work. Pupils who scored 5/5 in their last spelling test may be rewarded by being allowed to choose a word, or words, for that day's test. Choosing test words could also be shared among less well performing pupils as well, or sometimes just randomly. It shouldn't just be the teacher choosing the words for that day's test.

The next job is to make a set of word cards to match those on the vocabulary board, that can be kept in a large envelope and used for choosing test words, and other classroom vocabulary building activities.

What activities would you suggest we think about for our envelope of matching word cards?

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Board Games

We often encourage teachers to create new ways for students to learn through play.  This idea is so much more than just "games."  There should always be a clear learning objective for each activity.  The game itself is just a framework for students to follow that defines the rules and objectives while holding their attention.  In doing so, the students stay excited while they practice new skills and engage in fluency and repetition activities.  It also allows the students to learn on their own, which frees up the teacher to focus on LINUS or remedial students without taking away time or learning opportunities from the more advanced learners.

Materials

I find that cheap and simple are the best kinds of materials.  Most important to me is that the materials are reusable and will not break or fall apart easily.  Usually, printed and laminated boards and cards are all that you need.  The nice thing about laminated boards is that students can also write on them with white board markers, and erase with a tissue or eraser.  This gives them a chance to practice their spelling skills as well as their speaking skills.  I also like to use coloured paperclips as tokens or game pieces.  They are very cheap and just the right size.  Game pieces are always getting lost, so having a cheap and abundant set of pieces will make sure that your activities last a long time.

Dice:  Earlier this year we learned how to make paper cubes at our TPD.  Making small paper dice is a great way to add fun to your activity.  You can also add difficulty to an activity by combining letter dice to your number dice.  

Rules

Get creative with your games!  There are an unlimited number of ways that you can use your game boards, flashcards, and accessories to make meaningful and fun learning activities.  Spelling, Question & Answer, Making Sentences, Opposites, and Describing, are all ways students can use flashcards and game boards to practice speaking English.

Remember that the rules have to be simple enough that the students will remember them right away.  The focus should be the language objective... not trying to remember the rules. We want the students to be able to learn and practice on their own with only teacher oversight.

I know you will have fun learning and growing with your students!  Please let your mentor know about the success of your activities.


Joshua Simon (ELP, Jerantut)

Language Arts (again)

Looking for opportunities to chat with the pupils

Language arts classes are a lot of fun for the pupils, and they should also be a lot of fun for the teachers (and mentors) as well. This week Teacher Rohaida got her Year 3 class at SK Jerantut Jaya to make animal masks after they had studied the 'safari' unit. The plan was for everyone to make an animal mask of their choice, and then to get into their animal group (pack? herd?) and make the appropriate animal noises.

It was lots of fun and everyone was relaxed and enjoying drawing, colouring and cutting. The teacher and mentor also joined in and made masks as well. There are lots of opportunities  to speak to pupils during this kind of activity. There is the language of instruction, of course, but that is rather one-way (teacher output, pupil input) and although it's important, it's not much fun. Chatting is a lot more fun, and there are a lot more opportunities for pupil 'output'. Just by chatting, we are talking back and forth in a meaningful way. Whether we're talking about colours and animals or likes and dislikes, we are expressing ourselves and sharing real information, no matter how simple or basic.

Showing pupils my elephant mask and asking them to admire my frog mask is a sure way to get the conversation going. Another guaranteed way to get a response is to look at someone's tiger mask and admire their 'hamster picture'. It never gets old.

Making animal masks

I'm a frog
No, you're not.

Definitely a bear

Roaring lions

Tigers (and hamsters?)

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Taking Learning Outside the Classroom

Using the textbook as a starting point for learning

Teacher Noor Aziatul Akma Bt Zabidin at SK Kuala Tembeling really got her Year 2 class interested in the new textbook topic (Growing Plants) by taking them outside and showing them how to plant cuttings in real life. Many teachers do this, of course, but do we do it enough? What other topics in the textbook can we use as a starting point for the children's learning as we move away from book study, and toward language learning through language using?

Year 2 Textbook

Realia

Making it real

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)