Traveling Library

Learning to Like Reading in English

Many people love reading, but when they try to read in another language they find it is not very much fun. According to Paul Nation, a leading researcher in vocabulary acquisition, people reading in another language must know around 98% of the words in the text in order for their reading experience to be enjoyable.

Ninety-eight percent!

But it's true. Imagine reading a book or an article in your own language; if the topic or setting is one that you are not familiar with (E.g. life on the planet Urras and its habitable moon Anarres) you may find a few words that you have never seen before, but there won't be that many, and you can usually skip over them and still understand the writer's intention. L1 (first language) readers in unfamiliar topics (engineering, antique furniture etc.) can usually figure out what these new words mean, and they don't really interrupt the reading experience.

Ninety-eight percent of known words means that there will be two percent of unknown words, right?

Say there are usually ten words to a line of text, then two percent means that out of every hundred words (around ten lines) there will be two unknown words, which means that there is one unknown word every five lines. Assuming an average page has thirty-five lines, this means that there will be seven unknown words on EVERY page.

Does ninety-eight percent still sound too high?

What do you like reading?

These readers include classic

novels, biographies, sport,

romance, adventure, etc. ...

Graded Readers!

I am bringing a big box of graded readers with me as I visit schools. There are over a hundred titles in my 'traveling library', and these titles cover a wide range of topics. Do you like sport? Do you like history? Do you like romance? Do you like horror? Do you like biographies? Do you like classic novels? Do you like adventure? Do you like comedy? Whatever you like, I'm sure you'll find something to read that is both easy AND enjoyable.

Graded readers are books written in plain, ordinary English. The kind of English that makes up the major part of almost all written English (reports, newspapers, stories, magazines, emails, letters etc.). Although the English language has a freakishly HUGE vocabulary, we find the same two to three thousand words cropping up all the time - and these are the words that are used in graded readers. If you read widely from the traveling library you will be exposed to the most frequent words of English popping up and describing lots of interesting topics. There are lots of books to borrow, and I encourage you to take a few home with you (or keep them at your desk at work) and spend a little bit of time every day reading something interesting (or funny, or sad, or exciting) in English. If you read frequently and widely from the 'traveling library' you will be making a huge step in improving your own English reading and writing skills at the same time as relaxing with a book and having fun!

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC, Jerantut)

Fun with English

At SK Pulau Mansok
Fun in Learning
Thanks to Raja Maheran for this blog post.

The teachers and TELL2 mentor collaborated in making the learning fun with Level 1 students.

One of the posters.

Teachers and mentors working together.

50 pupils from Year 1 until year 3 were having fun in learning. The objective of the programme was the pupils learnt in a fun way. The pupils were put into 4 groups and they had to create their own cheer for the group.

Story time

English Races - following instructions.

The programme started at 2.30 pm with Mr Jinks. Firstly, they had difficulties to understand, but slowly they managed and enjoyed it. They did the action based on the topic 'food'. Then they had English Race where the focus was on simple instructions. Who ever made a mistake had to move backward to start again. The winner will get a token. Next, they had a Ring Race where Mr Jinks asked for some food by making a story and the pupils race to find the correct pictures around the hall. Finally, they had a funfair station where in different stations they had to finish the activities individually. there were matching games, food family, skittles and prize stations.

Raja Maheran Binti Raja Ramli (Teacher SKPM)

Simple skittles game with target vocabulary printed on coloured paper.

Children enjoy playing the matching game with words and pictures pasted onto the bottom of some paper plates.

Using your mentor ...

How do you take advantage of the TELL2 mentor's visit to your school?

At SK Teh the teachers tell the TELL2 mentor what they would like him to do for them during the school visit.

More than just colouring in.
Everyone loves colouring pictures, and
Year 1 pupils are no exception!
The colouring in was just one of many
activities around the food card

Reading assessment for LINUS.
The other pupils are engaged with a
variety of  activities in English, while
the teacher focuses on individual
pupils' needs. 

This week Mr N (Teacher Naeiman) is busy with a LINUS assessment programme for Year 1 pupils, and Teacher Shantini is teaching her Year 3 class a tricky grammar point (possessive pronouns). When the mentor came bearing games for reinforcing the vocabulary around healthy and unhealthy food, neither teacher was very impressed. Instead of patiently listening to the mentor and wishing he were talking about something more useful, both of the teachers found ways to use the mentor and his materials to improve on the classroom plans they had already developed. Mr N asked the mentor to take lots of photocopies of the labelled pictures of common foods into the class. Mr N explained the procedure with the class and worked with individual children on their reading while the mentor and other pupils coloured the pictures, copied the labels and generally chatted about food and colours.

Some pupils needed more coaching and
support than others, but generally everyone
was happy to yell out the answers (right or wrong).

Everybody owned some food.
Whose apple is it? the teacher would ask.
It's 'hers!' or 'theirs!' would come the reply.

Pn Shantini used the food cards (and the mentor) differently. She wanted to teach possessive pronouns to her Year 3 class. English possessive pronouns work quite differently from the children's L1; it is quite a tricky topic to teach, because the children are learning new concepts as well as new vocabulary. The teacher wanted to create a visualisation of the concept to help the children decode the information in their text books and then to help them complete the extra worksheet that she had provided. Teacher Shantini took the mentor's vocabulary cards and gave them to pupils who then 'owned' those food items. The pupils all had to call out which foods were 'his', 'hers' or 'theirs'. This gave the pupils plenty of opportunities to meet the new vocabulary, as well as visualise the concepts 'his', 'hers' and 'theirs'.

Teacher Sim was on a course that day, which was probably just as well, otherwise it would have been a very busy day at work.
Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Andy Ant - like you've never imagined!

Kids having fun in SK Jerantut Jaya. Thanks Fara, for a fun class!

TPR (total physical response); Teacher Fara got the pupils to come to the front in small groups in order to act out the ant who sat on a mat from the Year 1 text book.

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Teachers Rising to the Paper Plate Challenge

... at SK Teh

The Year 2 class at SKT are halfway through Unit 3 Where Am I? The teacher used the paper plates as a warmer to review phonics and vocabulary from earlier in the Unit. Teacher Sim also used the vocabulary review to prepare the students for the story the children would read later.The paper plate warm-up was a real life version of the activity shown on page 20. The phonic sounds represented by 'oa' and 'igh' were pasted on the plates along with other sounds that made up the targeted words in the Unit (boat, goat, high, right etc.). The teacher used both sides of the plates and colour coded the target language according to the phonic. The children took it in turns to move the plates around the whiteboard to make and say the words.

Everyone say 'oa'

Make and say the words

Sounds and vocabulary

The story

Reading together

Just like any resource the teacher makes, the paper plates can be re-used in future lessons as review, or as a familiar vehicle for introducing new vocab and phonic sounds.

After the warm-up, the children were ready to read the story. Everyone read together, and after we all read, the teacher split the class into KSSR and LINUS groups (roughly the same size). Teacher Sim sent the KSSR pupils to the mentor for a re-telling of the story without the book while she worked on literacy with the LINUS pupils.
Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Triceratops Vs. Tyrannosaurus Rex

At SJK(C) Sungai Jan

The Year 2 teacher engaged the children with a story about a naughty dinosaur who wandered from home and got into trouble. The story is pitched well at the children's interest levels, but in order to draw them in more, teacher Tan made simple masks to depict the characters in the story (the naughty young triceratops, the triceratops parent and the scary tyrannosaurus rex). The children used the masks to role play the story, and everyone enjoyed themselves.
Language Arts are meant to be fun and creative, and the children's creativity will often take them outside the lesson plan. This is a good thing! In Tan's class, the children cut out the story board in the activity book and folded the paper into a xylophone-shaped book; she also asked them to make a book cover. Most children were happy doing this, but some got distracted by the hole left on the page of their activity book and used the space to frame their own faces. On a very submerged level, the children are putting themselves inside books (the unit topic is story time); isn't this what we want in the language arts section of the unit? On the surface, these boys seem distracted and off topic, but deep down they are totally involved in the lesson. Teacher Tan did a good job letting these boys have the freedom to explore the topic for a few minutes in a way that interested them.
Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)

Filling the gaps.

The T, Rex was very fierce.

Very Creative

Seeing this made my day!

Do you know what school this is?