Shared Reading

Peer Assisted Learning 

PAL 2015 Jerantut - PAL is Back!

Almost half of Mohd Hanafisah bin Jusoh's Year 3 English class at SK Jerantut Jaya are LINUS pupils. Today we took the 3I class to the library and practised 'shared reading'. Teacher Hanafisah paired a LINUS pupil with a non-LINUS friend and gave them English books to read together. The teacher and mentor moved around different pairs of readers keeping them on-task and helping out with difficult words, but mostly, the pupils were focused on the task and enjoying reading together.

Reading Together at SK Jerantut Jaya

Peer Assisted Learning

In this case it was peer assisted reading. Both teacher Hanafisah and the mentor kept the children at their reading tables by carrying a pile of books as we moved from pair to pair. Whenever a particular pair finished reading, we just took their book from them and replaced it with one we had in our pile. I have learnt from previous PAL reading projects that if they are given the chance to replace their own books from the shelves, after only ten or fifteen minutes or so a lot of the children will spend more time running back and forth to the shelves than actually sitting down and reading!

We allowed the children around 35-40 minutes of reading time, and the last fifteen minutes or so were spent writing their NILAM reports. For a full-on reading programme at school, we would need a lot more English books than most school libraries could provide, but reading is just one aspect of Peer Assisted Learning; other opportunities for shared learning can be found in shared writing, junior mentoring at school events (like funfairs or English days), team-building and parental involvement.

The Jerantut cluster mentors are very keen to do more PAL work in more schools in 2015, so please let us know if you have any ideas for other shared learning projects we can help you with. Have a look through this blog, as well as the Brighton PAL blog to see if there are any ideas that particularly appeal to YOU.

You can find Brighton's PAL blog HERE

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Happy Lunar New Year Everyone

This is going to be a great year for the TELL2 teachers and mentors in Jerantut!

Flooding in Jerantut and the Surrounds.

Lending a helping hand to schools.

One of the many classrooms damaged at SK Tanah Rom.

It was a tough start to 2015 for many people in Malaysia with the immense flooding.  Just over a month has gone by and some people are still getting their lives back together.  I had never experienced such vast destruction before.  It was a humbling experience and quite surreal knowing that just 20 minutes away from our houses people were suffering and recovering from the destruction.  In the morning we would drive to a school, try to clean up the damage as much as possible and then in the afternoon return to the safety and comfort of our house, which was fortunately not damaged by the flood. 

Jinks, Josh and myself donated goods and helped clean various schools in the week leading up to the start of the new school year.  One of my schools, SK Perian, was badly damaged and they are still recovering and slowly getting the school back to normality.  It is amazing to see the spirit of the teachers and students and how they continue to learn and study despite the tough time they have had. We also helped at SMK Pulau Tawar where the water mark was 2m high on the first floor!  The amount of mud on the school property and in the classrooms was incredible. 

Pictures undoubtedly say more than words so here are some photos of the areas surrounding Jerantut.

Clearing out rooms at SK Perian.

The water mark at SK Perian.

Sweeping out mud at SK Perian.

Donating goods.

Sweeping out mud at SK Tanah Rom

The water mark at SMK Pulau Tawar.

Is that a boat in the road?

A thick layer of mud in the road outside SMK Pulau Tawar.

~Melissa Simon
     ELP, Jerantut Cluster