Giving Back To The Community

I'm grateful towards Brighton Education Group and Jabatan Pendidikan Malaysia for giving me an opportunity to be a mentor in the TELL2 programme in the great state of Kelantan.  Even though, I'm responsible for 5 schools, there have been numerous occasions for me to interact with non- TELL2 schools, teachers and students.  The UPSR is fast approaching next month and English is one of the more challenging section for students. I was given a golden opportunity by the good people at Masjid Kampong Pulau to host a free UPSR clinic on Saturdays throughout the month of August for local students from the village I live in near Kubang Kerian. Students from as far away as SK Jeram Pasir Puteh have been regular participants as well students from SK Kubang Kerian 2 and Sk Kubang Kerian 3.

It has been a real 'gotong royong' effort. BEG has provided the projector, while the masjid the space and worksheets. Due to the gracious contributions of the above mentioned, I have been able to donate my time to provide a FREE UPSR clinic for local non-TELL2 students. The first Saturday (2/8) was a modest 15 students and last Saturday (9/8) we swelled to 29 students. Furthermore, my mentor and boss Toby Walrod also lent a helping hand this last week.

The First week's focus was an overview of Paper 1 & 2 and test taking strategies. We spent the bulk of our time on Paper 2 Section 2 Information Transfer.  The Second week was focused on vocabulary of occupations and places. We spent some time on reviewing simple present and present continuos tenses. We discussed sentence variety: simple, compound and complex sentences. We learned FANBOYS and AAAWUBIS, acronyms for the most common conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions.  We did many exercises on Paper 2 Section 1, 5 sentences. We also played a vocabulary game, which brought lots of smiles from even the shyest of students.

A special thanks to Cikgu Halim who has been my liaison with the masjid. Have a gander at couple of the snapshots.  Remember, "English is as easy as 1,2,3."