Access School Teacher Training 2.0 - Sabah

Access School Teacher Training 2.0 was sponsored by the US Embassy KL (thanks Intan) as a follow up to an Access School Teacher Training that occurred about 3 months earlier in Langkawi. It was organized byYanti, Hasilah, Rafek, and Iza Bakhtair of SMA Rompin. Currently they are the sole providers of an Access School in Malaysia. They have recently started with a new batch of students after successfully concluding the 2 year program with a different set of students. The goal was to inspire a select group of remarkable teachers to considering hosting an Access School in their states. Professional Development was an inevitable benefit of the training.

The site of the venue was a remote resort located on the coast outside of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. The environment was conducive to severing the on-site triggers of stress, promote team building and aide in thoughtful reflection. The trainers were: Alice, Madam Farah, Rose, Sirhajwan and AB. Every participant was a presenter of their own personal progress report of developments since the Langkawi training. The kindles this group generated here are going to spark educational forest fires throughout Malaysia and beyond. Not to mention that this event quickly turned into an educational Lollapalooza of Educational Rockstars.

Let's get down the nitty-gritty of the training. 


Alice presented an outstanding and groundwork laying session on:
1. Review of Phase 1 of Access Teacher Training in Langkawi

Madam Farah presented 3 excellently engaging sessions on:
1. The Word Whisperer’s Spell
2. Dazzlingly Digital Literacy Works (Part 1)
3. Mini Projects to Boost Language Arts 

Rose presented some fab sessions on:
1. American English Pronunciation 
2. Helping Students Enjoy Reading
3. Speaking Activities to Get Students Talking 

Sirhajawan presented some awesome sessions on:
1. Motivational Talk 
2. The Reinvention of Literacy

AB presented some amazeballs sessions on:
1. American English- Your One-stop Shop For Resources & Training 
2. Dazzlingly Digital Literacy Works (Part 2)
3. Knock Knock! Who’s There? Humour In The Classroom 

One of the highlights of Sabah 2.0 was each Educational Rockstar (participant) did a 15 minute presentation on How's It Going? They shared what skills they applied from Langkawi into their classrooms, including any adaptions to fit their specific needs. Not only did they give a progress report, they shared some of their experiences and aspirations since the Langkawi catalyst. Everyone was up to amazing things. A brief sample, Pravin and Shahida won a highly competitive (only 5 granted nationally)  YTL digital initiative grant. 

In keeping with the Access School's community service spirit, Team Rompin organised an English activity with a local orphanage. The youngsters were mixed boys and girls and ranged from 7 -15 years in age. Luckily the children humored us with their participation in our group rendition of BabyShark Dance (DooDooDoo). Afterwards all the Educational Rockstars worked their finesse on small groups students doing various fun level appropriate English activities. As with any grassroots community project, there is a synergy. We were rewarded with 2 performances by students. The farewell got a bit emotional on sides. 

All in all, Ralph Waldo Emerson summed it the best, 
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no pathand leave a trail."

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