Pontian Bandar cluster has been all about the skill of Inquiry Based Learning methods in teaching. All the teachers attended a Writing Skills workshop which seems to have inspired them in their teaching methods.

They have started using the stations method of teaching; dividing up their lesson plans to fit into different stations inside the classroom. This use of the space in the classroom is an excellent way to inspire the children to get involved in their own learning because in order to learn, they have to get up, move and actually physically inquire in order to learn.

In addition to this, we are trying to start using posters as a method of teaching. The purpose is 4-fold: a poster is a piece of visual evidence for anyone to see what is being studied, it is a method of teaching quite different to what the students are used to, and therefore novel, displaying posters on classroom wall aids long term memory of students, & posters are fun!

Here are some of the ideas teachers shared:

What a fun way to teach the rooms in a house, than to make a real house?

A fun idea for a behaviour chart!

Class management is not only fun but also important for effective a teaching-learning environment.

Creating a poster of the colours is alot of fun. .

Prepositions are so important!

Question words are some of the most important and basic knowledge of using English. Teachers should all have this on their walls and always refer to it when speaking. Hearing a word and having a visual reference of that same word aids long term memory and comprehension.

Making and displaying 2 letter sounds for students is a a MUST in the English classroom. Helping them to remember, and having a display to use as reference when teaching any lexis groups, will strengthen phonics, reading, spelling & pronunciation.

A zoo inside the classroom! How fun is this?!

Assuming that the clocks are working in the classrooms (because often they are not), this is a fun way to draw attention to "telling the time" as well as humour using English.

Repeating "What day is it today?" every lesson is dull and monotonous. Asking what day it was yesterday and what it will be tomorrow, encourages higher order thinking skills, and touches on verb tenses.

Benefits of posters:

• Visual references for teachers to refer their usual lessons to
• Visual references to prompt students to speak, write, listen, understand, use
• Aids long term memory, constant reminders of the previous lessons learned
• Evidence of teaching-learning being done
• Head Teachers will think highly of classrooms full of evidence
• Students will never have the excuse that they cannot speak & use English if all the English words necessary are hanging on their classroom walls.

Happy teaching & learning everyone! Remember, if it's not fun, it's easily forgotten! 

April Kukup English Carnival

This month, the English Carnival highlighted competition of the best students from the schools of each area. Competitions included Storytelling, Poetry, Public Speaking and Scrabble. The costumes of the participants were very colorful and elaborate and added to the presentations. The student’s English language skills were remarkably impressive and the stories were quite interesting. 

Pekan Nanas April

 Pekan Nanas April

April was  a nice month in Pekan Nanas.  We had our area English Carnival and the TELL2 students did quite well.  We placed in almost every competition.

Here is the opening ceremony.  SK Seri Bukit Panjang did a great job of hosting the event.

Teacher Natasha with SK Melayu Raya entrant for story tell phase 1

This one got 3rd place in story telling for phase 1 students.  Great job!!!!

The next event was Public Speaking.  SK Melayu Raya also had a top 3 placement for phase 2.

Public Speaking is very difficult in a second language

Great job done by all the students who tried!

SK Parit Selangor Teachers and students

Sk Pengkalan Raja took in Many awards and SK Parit Selangor also had a couple of placements.  Wonderful work by all the teachers and students involved.

In the schools for regular classes, April was a fun and educational month.  Many activities were tried in class.

Paste the picture and write a sentence

write the word you hear activity.  fun for all!

matching the word to the picture, a favorite activity

April was another successful month with many of the teachers progressing further along towards the 21st Century Classroom lesson plan.

Here's to hoping the progress continues into May.

April Writing CPD in Pontian Cluster

Writing CPD

In Pontian we had another CPD in April.  The main topic was writing.  In an effort to assist our mentee's we decided to show them some theory on writing and include a few game/activity ideas that they could use in the classroom.

Here is Robynne showing the group what we were planning on doing.  We feel that telling the group what is expected of them is very beneficial to accomplishing the goals of the CPD and will help the mentee's understand where we are going with everything.


 Here is a sentence building exercise that the teachers enjoyed very much.  Hopefully they will be able to use this to assist the students with learning how to build proper sentences.

 At station one they had to pull out a paper from the envelope of their color and that would be the start of their sentence

 Once they knew the subject they had to go to station two and get a verb to use in their sentence

 Station three was a little more difficult.  They had to come up with a finish to their sentence but it had to be more than just a noun.  They had to finish with the answer to one of the 5W1H questions

 All the groups came up with some very good sentences and they all had fun doing the activity.

Jason did an activity where the groups had to add punctuation and spaces to a paragraph that had none.  The time limit was short so they had to work as a team to get it done on time.  They all managed to do it and only a few mistakes were made.

Jason's second game was called "Silly Sentences".  Each group was given a set of color coded word cards.  Each color fit a place on a proper sentence.  All they had to do for the first two rounds was build a grammatically correct sentence.  Round three required them to make their own words for each section of the sentence.  It was a great exercise that they will all be able to use in the classroom.

John gave a twenty minute lecture on how to make story writing easier to teach and easier for the students to do.  He had some great visual aides and all the teachers were able to take home a copy of the aides.  Unfortunately John didn't have enough time to get to his second activity, but the first one was beneficial so all was well.

All in all, Robynne ran a really nice writing CPD and feedback from some of the teachers was very positive.  

Next month John will be running a speaking CPD and I'm sure it will be a rewarding experience for everyone involved.