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~