AE Webinar Series 7 Concludes

The awesome gang of educators completed American English Webinar on the evening 15/11. Class started at 9 pm, an hour later than normal to adjust for time change in Washington D.C. A humongous thanks to USEKL, UniTAR KB, Intan, Tn Hj Ramlan Awang, Aswari and the Teachers. It was through cooperation and mutuality mindsets at all levels that made the programme a success.

The final episode was based on Business English. It was an interesting topic and focused mostly on the importance of cultural awareness in teaching business people English. Unfortunately, we had some technical difficulties with the visuals till about midway; however, the audio was fine throughout the webinar. This particular webinar (7.6) was less applicable to the classrooms in Kelantan than previous ones.

Based on feedback of the group, the most popular webinars in AE Series 7 were:

To correct or not correct? Ideas for Subtle Correction During Speaking Tasks
Wednesday, September 20, 2017

click here to view

Empowering Your Students with Media Literacy
Wednesday, October 4, 2017

click here to view
Nonetheless, we had another batch of certificate accomplishers this round. Fantastic job squad!

VIPKID and Me

I embarked on adventure in January to upskill and gain new experience. I have a penchant for IT in the classroom; therefore, I wanted to explore online teaching. VIPKID is an online company that employs native speakers from USA and Canada to teach students in China. The students in China range in age form 5 - 15 years old. Most are enthusiastic learners and many of them are monitored by their parents during class, off-screen. Classes are videotaped and accessible to the student after class. The bulk of the student population is 7 - 9 years old. This is like the Uber of teaching.

Teachers open their schedule one week in advance and students are free to book any teacher or time based on availability, it is free scheduling in essence. Classes are 25 - 27 minutes long. Students have an extensive support system. Before they reach their online class, they have an English teacher in China, a book, homework and an app. Students follow a module Level 1 (letter recognition) to Level 6 (advanced scientific English). Each level has 10 Units, each unit consists of 12 lessons. There are assessments on the sixth and twelfth  lesson.

After each class students get feedback, the feedback is archived an accessible to other teachers. Parents have the option to rate and leave comments on teacher's performance. They use a 5 star system, but they substitute apples with stars. All of the comments and ratings are archived for parent's view. Your rating is based on parent's feedback. The combination of your rating and comments is how you attract new students in the marketplace. VIPKID's approach is based on synthetic phonics and the communicative approach. Thus far, it has been effective. I have found it enjoyable.

What was started as an experiment, is now a full fledge passion. There are many skills that must be adapted for effective teaching in the online classroom. I'm continuing to hone and refine my skills. Like anything, there are some advantages and disadvantages to the online classroom. However, there are many perks with working from home. Commutes, traffic, tolls, parking, bad weather and office politics are gladly absent from working online.

In VIPKID classroom, 2/3 of the screen normally displays a powerpoint slide controlled by the teacher. The student controls a blue on-screen pen and the teacher a red on-screen pen. the pen is controlled by touchpad or mouse. 1/6 of the screen is a streaming video of the student and the other is streaming video of the teacher. Here is a compilation of the streaming video of the teacher portion, the student portion is omitted for legal reasons.


click on link to watch compilation video

Pbonics-Toons Release: My Fin Is Fine

Part of my creative expression is the Phonics-Toons series. It as an attempt to gap the digital generational divide. It's also a venture to create quality Phonics enhancement resources for teachers that can go beyond the classroom's whiteboard.

My Fin is Fine, is based on CVCe/ CVC vowel 'i' words. It is an opportunity for students to practice long and short vowel 'i' words. Students will get to see Magic 'e' in action. Click on the link, and read with a Smile!




Click here to view, My Fin is Fine

AE Webinar 7.1: Connecting Reading and Writing in Grammar Teaching: A Functional Approach

We kicked off a new AE Webinar season with series 7. It was a new group, but some true-blue participants like Teacher Masnizan and Sabu were on board for their third tour of duty.  Big thanks Tn Hj Ramlan Awang and Professor Aswari from UniTARKB for being gracious hosts.

AE Webinar 7.1: Connecting Reading and Writing in Grammar Teaching: A Functional Approach was moderated by Lottie Baker. The goals of the webinar were: 1. Define grammar from a functional perspective. 2. Identify 3 functions of grammar. 3. Explore classroom applications of functional grammar. Lottie defined the traditional approach as Grammar Translation when dissect text according to the parts of speech. Lottie suggested if you face national tests using grammar translation, by all means use that method. However, if you want a more communicative approach here is an alternative.

The Functional approach is shift from teaching to translate to teaching to communicate. The goal is not to know the stagnant rules of language, but to apply language to the dynamics of communication. So you are asking yourself what is a functional approach to teaching grammar? It consists of 3 big ideas: 1. Makes Meaning 2. Connect Ideas 3. Makes social relationship.

There are many advantages to this approach. It connects grammar to meaning, applies all 4 language skills and promotes critical thinking and discussion amongst other things. It useful method to teach in addition to the Translating Grammar approach required by many school systems. The functional approach is more flexible and suitable for the 21st Century Classroom.

How does language make meaning? It can be broken down int 3 main categories. The categories are Participants, Process and circumstance. Participants are the who or what performing an action (subject). The process is what are thinking, doing, feeling or being actions (verbs). Circumstances are the when, where and how process occurs.

The method's strength is the application towards speaking skills. It fosters more flexibility for students sentence create more sentence varieties. Another strength pf the method is its focus on connectors which will improve students complexity. Well enough of me talking about it, you can watch it yourself.


Click on link to watch AE Webinar 7.1

SJkC Jinjang 1 & 2 English-o-rama

It was a warm welcome back to the friendly confines of SJKC Jingjang. I was greeted by the dynamic duo Puan Lim (GB SJKCJ2) and Mr. Tiong (SED). The crack English teaching squad of SJKCJ2 and I got reacquainted. Note to mention Teacher AB who I hadn't seen in a year. That's right, you read correctly, there 2 ABs in the house for this English Event. The students, about 85 mixed ability Year 6 students, were charged.

After a brief intro, the game was afoot. We started with one of my fave questions, "Is easy English easy to learn?" I was able to elicit genuine responses and the majority felt English was difficult to learn. Since the crowd was diagnosed, it was time for so motivational English meds (non-pharma, of course). A quick survey determined the almost of the students knew how to play ping pong. Therefore, we watched Ibrahim Hamadtou inspires us by playing ping pong without any arms. The questioned was posed to the crowd, "Is it easier to learn English or play ping pong without arms?" They unanimously agreed learning English is easy. The entire crowd was tuned up with the  "Yes, I can" attitude.

Our object was to review grammar and make it fun. It is important to note, games are a tool of enrichment, not a substitute for teaching. The students watched Schoolhouse Rock videos on nouns, verbs, adjectives and verbs. After each parts of speech, the students were given 2 minutes to make a list of the nouns, verbs and adjectives.

Next, we shifted gears and learned how to write with sentence variety. Students reviewed terms: simple, compound and complex sentences. Students learned FANBOYS and successfully completed simple and compound sentence scramble tasks. Next, we played round of Judge Jody to discern complete from incomplete sentences. The group's grammar proficiency and confidence was growing.

In the afternoon session we quickly turned our focus on apostrophes. We reviewed terms of contractions and possessives. Students cheerfully played a round on of Cracking Down On Possession. In pairs, they completed a worksheet on apostrophes. Afterwards, students rotated in pairs around the room on 32 Apostrophe tasks cards stations.

The final session was amped up. The students had been primed with review from the day before. Students played a few rounds of living sentences to practice sentence structure. They were thrilled with Parts of Speech Uno. The teachers marveled over the enthusiasm of the crowd. They played in groups of 6 and had many opportunities to apply the parts of speech. It was going to be hard to top the last activity, but the finale was power packed. We went outside and played a few rounds of Parts of Speech Vocabulary Water Balloon Toss. It was big splash and a perfect end to some dynamic English days.

AB and AB