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)