Jimmy Ma has been working on his PenPALsPahang program. This is the result. These letters are ones sent between students of different schools in Pahang. The positive response of the students when writing was only exceeded by the response of receiving a letter.

It is Jimmy's hope that this program can continue in the future to help students put their writing skills into practical use and to help students make friends.

Teachers are encouraged to give students the freedom to write about topics of their own choosing. However, this does not mean that teachers can't or shouldn't provide some guidance in order to help students focus their writing on any specific  grammar point or vocabulary words when appropriate to the curriculum.

This blog is maintained and updated by Jimmy Ma

One of the best ways to teach students is through hands-on education. Mentakab Mentor Martina was able to help her mentees in her TELL2 SJKC Mentakab 1 school with their lesson on fruits and vegetables.

How did they learn? The students brought in fruits and vegetables and they made a fruit salad together. The students had fun learning the different vocabulary words for the items in the salads and the words for the actions associated with making the salads. Best of all, they got to eat the fruit and vegetable salads!

Now that the students know the words and directions for making the salads, they can do it a home!

This blog is maintained and updated by Jimmy Ma

Mentakab Mentor Martina has been doing something really fun in her classes. It's a very simple activity that can be used over and over again. Do you know what it is?

It's spelling! Martina encourages her teachers to keep a set of letter and phoneme cut-outs to use in the class. With these letters and phonemes, students can come up to the board and make words. This can be done in a variety of ways. One way is to have two teams in the classroom and have students race to spell the word that matches the picture shown. Finally, they can say each letter or phoneme to sound out the word verbally.

Another way to use this resource is to have students get out of their desks and line up to spell different words. Even this simple activity that has students out of their seats is likely to make more of an impact than asking students to copy words over and over again.

This blog is updated and maintained by Jimmy Ma

At the start of the second semester of 2015, Mentakab Mentor Jimmy Ma continued to support reading and writing in his schools. This continued support came in the form of a new program envisioned by Jimmy. This program is called PenPALs Pahang.

What is a PenPAL? It's simple. A PenPAL is a term for students that help each other through writing. (We have previously had programs in which students helped each other in reading.) The program is simple. Students from one class will write simple letters to students from another class. The trick to making this fun is that the students are from two different schools, zones, and districts! This way, students get a chance to practice practical writing, reading, and make a new friend!

This program was created by Jimmy, but it needed a lot of help to get started. On board with the initial start of this program are: Maran Mentor Sarah Higgs and Bentong Mentor Charlotte Lewis. All three mentors have exchanged letters and the initial test stage of PenPALs Pahang is underway.

PenPALs from SK Bangau write and reply to letters from SK Jengka 3.

Letters can be fully guided, partially guided, or open to the students based on ability.

This blog is updated and maintained by Jimmy Ma