The learning standards used for the week.

It took me ages to write this entry. I guess I was contemplating on it because I felt unsatisfied teaching this unit. This is the stage where the gap between the poor and the strong will widen. My 1 Perdana class is lagging behind. I anticipate it, however their verbal intelligent deluded me into believing that they are okay when they are not. It all started when I gave them extra writing and reading work.......

On the first day of the week, 1 Perdana had to go on some revision for the past week lesson. I did this to refresh their memory on things. It went well. Some showed signs of boredom but I still went on for the sake of the poor learners. 1 Sarjana sing a song from the text. They love it when I asked everybody in the class to take turn singing and substituting with their own names. Then, the intro and reintroduction of the phonics /s/, /a/, /t/, /p/.

I planned for 1 Sarjana to play hop scotch to reinforced their listening and speaking but there was not enough time. I did that with 1 Perdana on the second day and  about half were still confused on the phonics and grapheme. I always press this thought on my mind: I am teaching phonics, always. As far as TnL of the listening and speaking skills, this is my focus.

The flash cards are out again! So we revised the phonics /s/, /a/, /t/, /p/ and this time around, we associated the sound with the letters. I reminded them of the small letters and capital letters. As suggested in the text, I went on to introduce the words pat, sat, tap, sap. In the first place I taught them by blending the sound together. It didn't work!!! I'm just not expert enough to do this!

So I took a step back by sounding the letters one by one and at the end the whole sound of the words. Example: /s/, /a/, /t/ = sat. This way the pupils will able to relate what they have been learning and  they will be motivated to make the sound. Blending just make them feel weird. Or I did that? huh....

Check out some the pictures taken during the week

The longest lesson! For 1 Sarjana I spent 2 hours doing this, 4 periods for 2 days. As expected, 1 Perdana took 3 days or 6 periods for that matter. I'm not complaining, It was worth it. The writing class was rather a mixture of everything. After all writing skills is the highest skill regarded in learning a language. So you need all the resources available to make it work.

I started the writing lesson by doing identification activities of the letters. Next, they practice writing the letters both in the activity books and their exercise books. The second day exercises required them to listen carefully to the sound being made and write the first letter of the sound in the space provided. Example: apple, so the pupils need to write a.  

Associating words with sound and letters gave the pupils a little challenge to their cognitive function. It may seem easy for adults but it is i+1 to my young learners. This went for a quite a while and we finished the lesson by copying the words learned in the reading lesson. They need to get used to the lines when they write. I plan to get back on the words and check on their writing tomorrow.


I feel accountable to my pupils success. I need to brush up on my teaching strategies to get them hooked and to tackle my poor learners. I've indentified some of them. They just need extra coaching and lazy antidote. Hmm....where can I get that, for myself? :D