English carnival with SK Zainab 1 and SK Desa Pahlawan

The English carnivals were kicked off with awesome performances by primary school students representing 10 schools from the Kota Bharu area. 

The first event was action songs, with performances by year 3 students and the competition was fierce; with songs ranging from Malaysian pop artists to "Roar" by Katy Perry. Many of the pupils had been rehearsing for months in preparation for the event and it really showed.

Not only did the pupils do a great job with song and action routines, but their outfits were just fabulous!

The 2nd event of the day was paired poetry recital; many of the poems were original and written by students and teachers working together. Poem topics ranged from the attributes of the sun, to the merits of friendship and trust.

It was clear that each pair had worked very hard together to get perfect timing and rhythm.

The final competition of the event was choral speaking. Students were given specific topics to speak on in unison, with topics ranging from natural disasters to over usage of technology. 

The mood in the room was tense and attentive as the choral speaking conductor led the group through the various phases of their speech; few mistakes were made here and it was obvious that the stakes were high. Although the parents and teachers looked tense, the students seemed to glide through the speech bars seamlessly. 

   

                                      

It was an awesome experience and a great honor to join the show.

Language development activities.

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to take a moment to give my teachers a round of applause and acknowledge their hard work and consistency.

Many of these teachers have quite a heavy workload, handling in class lessons, administrative duties, co-curricular duties, lab management and other, all while participating in the TELL2 project as well as the PRO-ELT project . 

Some teachers are even taking after hours courses to further their studies, but in spite of all that, these ladies make time to meet with me wearing smiles and maintaining a light-hearted disposition. They have been working quite hard with me to make our time together fruitful and to continue honing and developing their skills as English teachers.

Bravo ladies, bravo. 

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

New English SAL room at SK Kedai Piah!

Hey!

Students and teachers have been hard at work producing materials and decorations for the new English self access learning room. Teachers have been really enthusiastic about getting the SAL room up and running and ready for students.

The year 2 and 3 pupils were super excited when we asked them to help with decorations, and many of them produced very beautiful hobby apples for the "apple tree of knowledge".

Great work SKKP, cant wait to get back to it with you all!

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

Pintar Mobile Learning Unit

Hi all!

Last week I was graced with a tour of an absolutely awesome and imaginative learning center, the Pintar Mobile Learning Unit!

                     

This charter bus turned education tool comes equipped  with five interactive learning station. There are two role playing stations where students assume the roles of a customer care agent and a customer, or a shop cashier and customer.

In the music station pupils have the opportunity to experience and interact with a cello and a xylophone.

 In one of the more challenging stations, students are tasked with building a functional rocket on a computer; they are given limited time to complete the task and prepare the rocket for launch. This activity helps to develop critical thinking skills as well as hand eye coordination.

The Pintar MLU set out from Bangsar, Malaysia and is scheduled to visit a few more primary schools in Kelantan before moving onto to schools in another state. Thanks Pintar group, this was quite the awesome experience!

PS. Dear Pintar group, can you raise the ceiling a little??? I'm 6'2 tall and had to crouch the whole time!!! lol :) still enjoyed it though.

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

Interactive learning with Cikgu Rosmiha

Hey All!

Just a few days ago I had the opportunity to join a pre-school class with one of the English teachers at SK Dewan Beta.

Cikgu Rosmiha displayed a great working knowledge of how to use Realia and technology in class, in her lesson she employed a technique she developed and termed "D'bes Lcd" method of instruction. She used an Lcd display to keep the pupil's attention, dice to assist them with calculations and cute tokens to interest the young learners. 

The objective of her interactions with the pupil's was to improve their skills in the context of numeracy and mathematics. Students showed an increase in interest during lessons and improved greatly in the context of independent calculation and basic numeracy skills. 

After seeing this kind of technique in action, it is quite clear that many other students would benefit greatly from such integrated lesson activities in class; especially young learners from pre-school age up to year 3 and beyond.  

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

Fun Fair Bachok!

The first Kelantan "Fun Fair" of 2015 kicked off at Bachok PPD in February, the event was planned and executed very nicely by Niamh Dunne and many local supporting teachers and staff from Bachok city primary schools.

 Students and staff enjoyed action songs sung and performed by Scott Varga and Philip Clark, a very intriguing performance indeed!

There were many English language based games and activities related to phonics; there were about 6 stations set up for rotating groups of pupils to come around and engage. Students were given tokens for right answers and successful completion of tasks; these tokens were then used by students to purchase prizes from the prize station.  

There are about 6 more "Fun Fairs" planned for this year, one coming to each cluster in the TELL2 project in Kelantan; so stay tuned for the next "Fun Fair" coming to an area near you!

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

Poster making at SK Kedai Piah!

Students in Mrs. Julie Rolina's year 2 English class had quite an interesting time designing and creating rule posters for the classroom; pupils were free to create any rules that they thought were needed in the classroom.

Some of the rules were quite precise, such as: Do not sleep through the entire class, Do not sit on your friends chair, Always listen to the teacher, Do not throw rubbish on the floor or Do not stand on the tables. 

All in all these little youngsters did a great job working together to create these posters in English.

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

Dynamic teaching at it's finest!

Just a few days ago I once again had the great pleasure of joining and co-teaching an English class with Puan Rosmiha at SK Dewan Beta.

As always her class was very vibrant and the students were quite interested in the short story and writing lesson that followed. Puan Rosmiha is one of the most versatile and enthusiastic teachers I have had the pleasure of working with here in Malaysia, she is constantly looking for new ways to make the English lessons contextually relevant to her students.

In many of her lessons she uses an array of Realia, most of which is original materials which she creates herself or with students, as well as technology in the classroom such as audio & video, power point presentations, virtual games and activities to create as comprehensive an English environment as possible for her pupils. In so doing, Puan Rosmiha greatly increases the opportunities for students to use English in context as well as retain the new information that they learn.  

During classes pupils are transformed into astronauts, pilots, bus & taxi drivers, chefs, gardeners and many other interesting characters during role play learning activities. This teacher's approach to communication based learning is dynamic, engaging and all around fun for students. I can always feel the excitement of pupils when they enter the class.  

Bravo Puan Rosmiha, I look forward to joining you in the coming weeks and seeing what great experiences unfold next!

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

TPD 6 @ SK Kedai Piah

Teachers in the PasirMas-KB cluster got a chance to show what they know at our recent and final teacher professional development (TPD) session of the year.

Teachers were split into small groups of four and had to work together as a group to complete various teacher challenges, each group was competing against the others, fighting to see who would come out on top. 

                           

Challenges included phonics instruction, where teachers were given random vocabulary words and had to create a lesson plan on the fly to teach the new words to year two "mock" students (me, Dontaye and Philip among others were the "mock" students....lol); other challenges included phonetic transcription, vocabulary word forms and a sound recognition basket ball game.

After each activity the mentees reflected and thought of ways to adapt each activity to their English classrooms. Teachers were undoubtedly caught off guard by the unorthodox challenges, but they definitely held their own and impressed me quite a few times! Awesome job ladies and gentlemen!

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

English Day @ SK Perupok

Niamh of the Bachok-PasirPutih cluster thew and awesome English day bash at SK Perupok, complete with phonics games, action songs, spelling bees, story telling and even the exclusive Brighton mascots.

All the teachers did a wonderful job of coordinating, executing and managing each activity during the 3 day event. The children seemed eager and constantly engaged and involved in the fun and educational activities.

Bravo team Niamh, bravo!

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

Sports day @ SK Mulong 2

Sports Day at SK Mulong 2 was an absolute blast!

The event was kicked off with a dazzling display of colors and theatricality, there were four teams competing and each was represented by a bright culturally significant color. The teams represented themselves as the green house, blue house, yellow house and red  house. 

After the opening ceremony, each house's band marched across the field displaying an array of colorful outfits and costumes, flags and band designs, all created by the teachers and students of that particular house. Green house took it a step further and gave us a wonderful Tai Kwondo martial arts demonstration, inclusive of poses, kata and self defense techniques. 

                     

After very grueling competition and relentless support from teachers, blue house came out on top, followed by red house in second place and green house coming in third. All of the teams did very well and worked so hard, I'm curious to find out who will take home the championship next year.

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

Orang Asli intensive English camp!

Hey all!

The members of the PasirMas-KB team had the great privilege of joining Jeli's Orang Asli "Original People" or aborigine English camp last month. The  English camp was held at a gorgeous Orang Asli school in the rural area of Jeli, Kelantan.

The Orang Asli community was so warm and welcoming to all of the mentors that had the opportunity to join, they were very excited to share traditional crafts such as basket weaving, blow gun hunting and Orang Asli traditional song and dance. 

The children were exceptionally enthusiastic while they worked with mentors in phonics, listening and speaking skills development and reading and writing activities. They were so curious about us, especially since it was the first time for many of them to encounter foreigners; Mentors and students got to share ideas, information and most importantly, friendship. The Orang Asli camp really was a unique and amazing experience.

                           

We cant wait to join the next one in Gua Musang next year!

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

Mobile English space @ SK Mulong 2

Year 3 students at SK Mulong 2 had so much fun helping to create their very own mobile English space.

Pupils had the opportunity to meet Brighton the lion and Torch for the first time, and they were quite excited to see them. The  mobile English space was designed to serve as a visual cue for students, indicating on sight, that the room has been changed from a "non-English" or "multi-language" environment, to an English dominant one.

The mobile English space has the added flexibility of being deployed anywhere it's needed, since it's not stationary, teachers can effectively use it to convert any room or space into an English room for however long they need to. Students were very receptive to this concept and eager to try out all the English they have been learning. I was quite impressed by their level of motivation, and cikgu Bibi Hayati has done such a good job of building their language bank and confidence.

I can't wait to work with these youngsters again, no telling what great things they'll produce.

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

Making materials with SK Dewan Beta

The teachers at SK Dewan Beta are such hard working professionals.

These ladies are always so dedicated and positive, no matter what activity they're challenged with, they always put their best feet forward and get it done. On this particular day, the ladies were hard at work producing materials. These teachers produced 8 sets of flashcards, four sets of picture flashcards and 4 sets of text flashcards, all within two periods. 

                               

Meanwhile the year 2 students were hard at work producing a material of their own, they were working on "Hobby Hands!". "Hobby Hands!" is a listening, speaking and writing activity, which ends in the production of short paragraphs within the imprint of student's hands. The students began by telling us about common hobbies, then they were grouped in pairs and task with interviewing each other. After learning about their partner's hobbies, they wrote a short paragraph about their own hobbies and why they enjoy them.

I was also super impressed by the initiative and enthusiasm of cikgu Rosmiha, who took up the task of creating textbook related power points, which correlate with unit topics. She designed these in order to make her student's lessons more interactive, involving and relative to the pupils. 

I applaud SK Dewan Beta for the hard work, and look forward to our next in class project with the little guys.

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

Phonics with year 1 @ Sk Perol

The little guys in year 1 at SK Perol really enjoyed their phonics activity. 

                                

After they got the hang of it, they did a great job of matching the phonemes and graphemes with the correct colors. In this activity, the little ones were challenged to identify the initial short vowel sounds of vocabulary words provided as pictures.

The objective was to hear the word, identify the initial short vowel sound of the word and then color it the corresponding color. The pupils were so excited and involved, that they didn't even mind sharing their color pencils and chairs with their friends from a neighboring class! 

Way to go year 1, way to go!

~Yusuf S.D.J.L~

Safari posters with SK Dato Hamid 2

Pupils at SK Dato Hamid 2 had a great time making safari posters.

Students were challenged to research various animals from the KSSR year 3 text book, then they had to work together in small groups to design and produce informational posters for their chosen animals.

Students had lots of fun, while at the same time working to develop their reading and writing skills.

Bravo guys!

Welcome ~~

Hello, my name is Philip and I'm a new mentor with Brighton Education. I'm very excited to be working with some students and teachers in the Pasir Mas primary school system. Here I am enjoying a delicious and colourful Hari Raya celebration at SK Rantau Panjang.

Today at SK Rantau Panjang, some Year One students put on a fashion show under the skilled direction of Ms. Norhayati. It was an excellent opportunity to show off some dress sense and vocabulary skills while strutting their stuff in the school hall.