January and February 2015 in Kota Tinggi cluster and Sedilli Air tawar sub-cluster

Welcome to 2015 in Kota Tinggi cluster! After the new term was delayed a week, mentors and teachers quickly got into the swing of things in the schools and in the Continual Professional Development workshops that took place in January and February.

At the end of 2014 term, workshops for teachers were conducted by School Improvement Coaches in the area on '21st Century Classroom' teaching. These workshops were both informative for mentors and teachers and signaled the way that Kota Tinggi PPD and the JPN wish the cluster to develop.

Classrooms in the schools are (on the whole) not equipped with the equipment necessary to implement IT centred lessons. However, we have worked hard on communicative centred activities that give the students the opportunity to work together in groups and take charge of their own learning. Much has also been made of using questions in the classrooms and to make the students familiar with answering different question types and to form their own questions.

With this in mind, workshops in January were carried out at SK Datuk Ismail Saadon and SK Taman Kota Jaya on the topic of 'Critical Thinking Skills and using Questions in the Classroom.'

Mentors demonstrated a number of activities and ideas for learning to the teachers at the two venues including: memory games, kinesthetic question and answer matching, using critical thinking to correct the wrong word(s) in a statement, alphabet quizzes, Blockbuster and Taboo games.

Mentor Simon Bond prepares 'Blockbuster'

  Gratifyingly, in Sedilli Air Tawar, many of the activities were tried in the schools the following week.

(Teacher Norazah of SK Lok Heng Selatan and Blockbuster for Year 2)

In February, mentors conducted CPD workshops (at the same two venues) on 'Unit Planning'. Again the idea behind this was to focus on 21st Century classroom techniques in planning for a whole unit topic. In this workshop, mentors demonstrated unit plans for KSSR 1,2, and 3 and then groups of 3-4 teachers created unit plans and demonstrated them to the other teachers.  

SK Datuk Ismail Saadon CPD

SK Taman Kota Jaya CPD

Schools in Sedilli Air Tawar sub-cluster have made great efforts to use the classroom board as a central display wherever possible in an effort to augment the abscence of a LCD/screen of the 21st Century Classroom. This still focuses the pupils away from the textbook and gives the chance for student centred learning.

Teacher Nizam from SK Datuk Ismail Saadon uses his own drawings to create a family tree on the board for a year 3 class.

A student makes a match!

In our classrooms, we have introduced individual and group whiteboards/blackboards and laminated boards into activities. This has been especially effective in encouraging the students to work together and to take responsibility for each other. Here are some examples from year two classes in Sedilli Air Tawar schools:

SK Lok Heng Selatan

SK Pusat Bandar Lok Heng

SK Lok Heng Selatan

Teachers, mentors and students will continue to work together to implement 21st Century Classroom and make learning fun, effective and rewarding during the coming year. Watch this space!

A demonstrative pronoun controlled practice activity at SK Datuk Ismail Saadon

Teacher Latifah checks the domino train at SK Lok Heng Selatan