AIIS, Fun With Phonics, Day 3

AIIS is conveniently located one block away from a new LRT station named Wawasan, USJ 19. When I taught at AIIS, I witnessed the construction of the elevated tracks of the new Putra Heights line. It was reshaping the landscape of Subang Jaya. The station was no way near complete then; moreover, it was not recognizable. After a few years with effort and progress, I was enjoying the fruits of that labor by riding the new LRT line daily. The teachers development was similar. The first two days we spent laying the track, today was the day when we were going to build those stations. Our target was to get the Phonics line operational for passengers by Friday.

It just so happen that this day (21/12), 20 years ago, Malaysia opened its first LRT line. The Ampang line was debuted for public use. They continued to develop the system by adding new lines and expanding existing ones. Till 20 years later, the new USJ line interconnected the Ampang line with the Kelana Jaya line. Nowadays, the LRT extensively covers KL and the Klang valley. This analogy can be applied to teacher's professional development. 

Through continuos professional development, teachers can acquire new methods and expand existing ones. They can become a developed system, instead of a meager line. Students are like passengers, with their mixed abilities they get on at different stations. They all want to be transported to their goal. The goal of the students is: accuracy, comprehension, fluency and expanding vocabularies. With continuos development, teachers will be able to shuttle thousands of students onto the destination of academic success regardless of their mixed abilities starting points.

The teachers began the morning with a quick round of feedback. There were lots of positive comments on the training. A couple of the teachers EBI turned into a discussion about the possibility of this methodology being applied to learning other languages. By the start of Day 3, the teachers were fully recruited into the Phonics family. The effectiveness and appeal of this approach was glaringly apparent.

We started this morning with a toon and a message from Kid President. Before we listened to the presidential address, teachers had to select one word to describe what kind of teacher they wanted to be. They came up with many good answers like: effective, skillful, inspirational and others. After the fireside chat with Kid President, we all agreed we want to be 'awesome'. Hail to the Chief for the inspirational message.

Next, we couldn't avoid an interruption by bossy 'r'. He had postponed his activity from the day before. We played NCAA inspired hoops game called March Madness R - Controlled Vowels. It is a board game. This is a game with 5 game mats for R-Controlled Vowels AR, OR, IR, ER, and UR. Each mat has a spinner. The goal is to spin the spinner and read the words you land on. If you can’t read the word, you have to go back to the space you were on. It was a delightful and surprisingly challenging way to review r-controlled vowels.

We reviewed blending digraphs and diphthongs with Stretchy Snakes. The teachers proficiency in long vowels continued to increase so the Magic 'e' phase began. Magic 'e' is also known as Silent 'e'. The letter 'e' is the most occurring vowel in the English language. Magic 'e' appears as the last letter in word preceded by a single vowel and consonant construction. Magic 'e' is never pronounced, it impacts the single vowel by making it go long. Here are a few samples of Magic 'e' in action: rake, ride and wrote. 

We used a few Hooked on Phonics Videos as a demo to practice the concept. We also had a visit from the cheerful Alphablocks to reinforce the idea. Teachers were given a activity to sort words according long and short vowels. The recognition of long and short vowels is vital to phonics. The Phonics line was almost complete, soon the train will leave the station.