..the inspiring experiences @ ILHAM..

The Third(?) Beginning

2008-06-26T13:43:00.006+08:00

Someone has said it, it is time to update this blog. I guess I will start.

Last night was our second reading session for this year at Ilham. We all have to admit that we have not been showing our faces there for a long time, and I applause the person who arranged for the 'visit' three weeks ago. Was it Naz or Lie? Well, bravo for both of you. Now we know, it is the first step that is always so hard. And now, most of us cannot stop from going. Well, I sure hope so. :)

As usual, Lie was the first one to show up last night, me and Fahmi came a bit late. (Note to Fahmi: You prefer to be known as Fahmi here?) (In case you do not know, Fahmi is our latest addition to the Ilham English Programme group. We also have another friend, which is Lina, a friend of Naz's.) When we arrived, all the kids were already flocking around Lie with his laptop doing simple reading exercises from Starfall.com. Me and Fahmi quickly switched on our laptops and grabbed a few kids to flock around us.

I had Firdaus, Badrul and Sazrul reading with me. And I think that they were into the learning process making it easy to let them read and repeat the words on the screen. After that I told them that it is time to read books and I was quite surprised that Firdaus was actually quite eager to read. Last week we read a Malay novel for kids, and last night a story from the big fairytale book. I think his English reading was better than when he was reading Malay, but maybe he was just nervous or shy the first week.

Then Kak Zaza and Abang Akaz came, and Kak Zaza took over the macbook for another reading online session. Hasif came along and wanted to copy songs from my macbook to his mp3 but I made him joined the reading session. It is quite sad to see that Firdaus's reading is far better than his. I am sure that his attitude of not wanting to read or study comes from the disability to read itself. I personally think that he needs a very special extra attention every week that we go there, if he is willing to cope with us. And when it was almost time to go home, I told Firdaus that we are stopping to read, but he seems to want to read other books as well. Yeay.

The week before I lent Firdaus, Sazrul and Fikry each one book. Fikry has returned the book but the other two asked for more time. Well, as long as they are reading I have no problem with that. And this week Faqih also brought back a book to read. I hope this will catch on. I sure need to find more interesting books to bring for them to read. If any of you have books that are suitable for their reading, please bring them over. You do not have to leave it with them, they can just read it during the while that we are there.

And after the reading session, we went to Makbul for a quick drink and discussed on what we should do next. Everyone agreed that after another week of monitoring them, we will try to separate them according to their reading ability and each group will flock an assigned laptop for their level of reading ability, subtly without them realizing maybe.

Naz came for a quick sit, then after we all said our goodbyes, Fahmis's car ran out of battery and all of us except Naz (she had dashed to Bangi) stayed to accompany him to change battery. (He did all the work himself). A trail of bad luck had hit him, said Fahmi, when a bird's dropping fell on his shirt. Well, I hope that wouldn't dampen your spirit to join us again!

Akaz bought air battery for his car.

It is hard to take pictures using a macbook, Lie bring a camera next time k.
Was trying to capture the bird's dropping on Fahmi's shirt.

Powerpuff Girls saved the helpers from being hit.

To Make Them Read Well, What SHould We Do?

2007-08-24T11:45:00.000+08:00

And the end of the year is nearing us again, which means, we'll be a year older, and finals exams are almost here. For those in standard six, they'll be sitting for their UPSR, on the 3rd September (cou...mybirthday..gh). =)

I know that I haven't been able to visit them as often as I would like. To tell you the truth, exams scare me, because I know I won't be able to help as much. And every time I go there, going back home thinking that I did not in any way help them as much as they need, saddens me. Something is wrong some where, and I always ask, why most of these kids, still cannot read well, both in BM and in English.

Going to classes myself now, I've learned so much about our education system. I've also learned so much about how our brain functions, when it comes to learning, and most importantly, I've learned how we can actually overcome the problems of kids not being able to read.

We wouldn't want to accept the fact, that family background has a lot of effects on how good a student can be. But it does make a difference. A student with a background of an educated family, will be able to learn more compared to a student with a very poor educational background. The reason being that, when they are growing up, they are more expose to things and experiences compared to the latter.

Do you realize how we get a little bit excited when we meet someone who has gone to the same school with our dad, (please be honest). And we will go back and tell our dad that we've met so and so, who's doing this and this and bla and bla. Do you think we'd care to know about this person if there was nothing that we can relate with him in the first place? That's how our brain function. It keeps facts and information in a secret place, and bring it out when it thinks that you might need it, to relate with new things that you are now experiencing.

So when a six year old child goes to pre-school, and learn new words, it helps if the child has been exposed to such words before, or maybe anything at all that can help them relate in the words or anything that they are learning there. And when they do know how to read, they should start reading anything under the sun, to prepare them with the coming syllabus in their education, or life.

I want so badly for the kids in Ilham to adopt a healthy reading habit. If unhealthy, make it because they do not want to put a book down, even for a second. How do you think we should do this? Concentrate only on the younger kids?

If there's a will, there's a way. (Yeah, I know. Coming from someone who has not shown her face there for awhile. Just my two cents.)

IEP - How I see it...

2007-08-13T01:14:00.000+08:00

When I first started IEP @ Ilham, my goals were simple.

1) To inspire interest in learning English
2) To boost self-esteem and confidence
3) To encourage an avenue for expression of creativity
4) To improve the level of English

ps: in order of priority

What were my target areas?

1) Creative Thinking
2) Speaking and Pronunciation
3) Reading & Vocabulary

Why I wanted to do it?

I wanted the kids to be exposed to the English Language at an early age...

I wanted them to have an early introduction to public speaking even if it's just amongst those in the classroom, have the courage to present to others in English... have the initiative inside of them to step up and shine from the rest...

I wanted them to enjoy learning the English Language and enjoy learning in genereal... with the hope that they will want to improve their English and other subjects after what they've gone through during IEP Classes...

I wanted my friends and their friends and their friends of friends to join me in volunteering :)

I also wanted the kids to know that there are some of us out there, strangers in fact that care for them and want to see them grow...

I even had this big silly dream that one day, one of them would turn out a very successful man and he'd remember me and the rest of the volunteers as those who taught him that LEARNING IS FUN... hehe...

You see, all this was what I had in mind for IEP... I believe that this was even communicated to the Ilham's Management even before we started IEP in 2004... And whenever there were new volunteers who were interested to join us, the first thing I would say to them is that - "IEP is not like normal classroom teaching, the kids get that in school anyway! IEP is about exposure and confidence building... We learn more when we have a bit of fun along with it"...

You have to remember, that we are not teachers, we are facilitators... For example, I have a degree in Computer Science, not in teaching... So I don't think I'm qualified to be called a teacher :) But like me, the volunteers like to share their knowledge with the kids... and I think they're great at it too!!

Yes, I have to admit that along the way there were some frustrations on my part especially when I was asked to justify why the kids' results/grades were not improving. Yes, it was also a bit frustrating sometimes to see the kids giggling away when you have something important for them to learn and yes, it was very frustrating when there were times you feel your efforts in getting people to come together to be there with the kids were not appreciated by some...

But at the end of the day, I'm not doing it for myself. I'm not doing it to be praised on how wonderful I organised the classes with the other volunteers, I'm not doing it to be known... I'm just doing it because I want to... because I know in some way or another, it is helping the kids grow...

To me, grade isn't everything... I got good grades when I was in school but I didn't get enough exposure in public speaking until I got to Uni... and to me, it would have been a lot easier handling presentations if I had that early exposure... It would have come to me naturally if I was trained since young, I guess...

For the sake of sharing, we did have a list of activities structured out for the IEP kids developed from research based on the school syllabus, on best methods of teaching school kids etc.. done by myself and another friend. The plan was so that we had an inventory of activities: the what, the how, the materials needed etc so that anyone who could make it for class that night can just grab it and run it... but at some point last year when there were consistent change in volunteers, also the lack of time to prepare (do understand that most of us are working people) it was difficult to sustain the plan... Most of the activities became adhoc with little preparations yet they still achieved the objectives set!! That's all that matters...

You must be wondering why I'm writing this?

Well, I'm just writing this to answer some of your questions out there? For example:

How long have you conducted IEP? Have their grades improved? What are you guys doing about it? Do you have modules to teach them? Do you follow school syllabus? Is it difficult to teach? Are you qualified to teach? Do you have plans to continue and the list goes on...

Well, unfortunately a lot of people look at grades for an instant measure of success. I can't deny it is a measure but it is definitely not the only measure of success.

It has come yet to another end of IEP for the year. I'm not sure of the plans for the future but I would very much love to know if anyone would like to volunteer to carry on with what some of us have started here and take up the challenge to make it better... It can be a great opportunity to enhance your facilitation skills especially around kids... and of course there will be some coordination work needed between Ilham's Management and the Volunteers... Anyone up for it?

Revise or ...

2007-07-20T01:40:00.000+08:00

Last week when we came for the usual English Program activity, we were half shocked. There wasn't any activity. We were not to conduct any Ha-Ha classes anymore. Things have gotten a bit serious around Rumah Ilham.

Why?

The 1st semester result is in, and it's not very good.

Everyone at Rumah Ilham have to start taking their studies seriously. All the students facing major exam this year (UPSR & PMR) are to be isolated from the rest. We, were invited (more like invited ourselves) to help them with their prep classes. Maybe 3-4 of us with the ones taking UPSR/PMR and the others with those not doing any major exams this year.

This week, starting last Tuesday there were some of us who came by during prep to help with any problems they might encounter with their revisions. It was the same for Wednesday night and Thursday night. Hopefully it will be the same thing for the coming weeks. Their exam is not that far away.

Be prepared for some tough questions from the ones getting ready for PMR. Hehe...

The program is like: Every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. 8.45 - 10.15 pm. Until they finished their exams. UPSR starts 3rd September 2007 and PMR is sometime in October 2007

Listen... Listen!

2007-07-04T23:21:00.000+08:00

Abang Bigg and Abang Jeri came up with the lesson plan for tonight. We played the "Whispering Game". Two groups were formed - the Autobots and Decepticons (yeah - Transformers Fever going around at the moment kan :))

Each group had to stand in a straight line. The first group member were given specific sentence to pass to their friends in a whispering mode. One group member at a time, the first to the second person, second to third and so on. At the end of the line, the last group member will have to come to the front and write down what the message or sentence is. The group with the right sentence or the closest to the original sentence collects points.

First sentence

Original: "I'm a Hero, are you?"
Autobots: "Macha, how are you?"
Decepticons: "I'm a Zero"

Second Sentence

Original: "Today, we celebrate our Independence Day"
Autobots: "Today, Nizam celebrated"
Decepticons: "Today is a Saturday"

Third Sentence

Original: "Here I come, there you go"
Autobots: "Hey, I come alone"
Decepticons: "Here I come, .........." oops, sorry I can't remember what was their answer - someone help me out here please

I think it's better that Abang Jeri or Abang Bigg update this entry, I was busy trying to get the message through to Alan that there are times when we need to keep quiet and listen (as he was very naughty tonight and was talking non-stop and not listening to instructions at all!) I wasn't really paying attention and keeping score. (Abang Jeri/Bigg, please help me out here :))

Well, funny thing tonight was that at 9.45pm all the kids disappeared... Getting them to go is usually very difficult, but tonight it was the opposite! You want to know why? They had DURIANs for supper. So at the ring of the bell, all of them rushed to the canteen to get their share of DURIANs!! It was so funny, as Abang Jeri was explaining something, he turned back and the kids were GONE!

They came back 10 minutes later with their durian smelling hands and sat with us to wrap up. Each of them smelled of DURIAN!!

We had Abang Acat with us again tonight - Cool! but he had to leave early. We also had Kak Nurina (Abang Jeri's colleague), Abang Jeri, Abang Bigg,Abang Akash, Kak Zaza and Abang Lie - All quite relunctant to salam with the durian smelling hands of the adik2.. hehe..

Hopefully, they learn a thing or two about paying attention and listening to others and the consequences of not doing so, especially little Mr Alan!!

We got help!

2007-06-20T22:44:00.000+08:00

So Naz reminded us earlier that we're doing reading class this week. And we were to bring help with us. What help? We have to bring our laptops along!

The idea was to use our laptops for reading class. There's this website, http://www.starfall.com. It's a cool website! A great website to help with teaching them young ones how to read. Activities includes spelling, knowing syllables by sounds, story telling and a lot of other things we don't have time to explore. Hehe

Efa paired with Kak Da, Rafie with Kak Naz, Syafiq with Abg Jeri and Akim with Abg Lie. They did their thing, and everyone seem to be having fun while learning. Happy times!

The others came too. Abg Bet and Abg Akaz hooked them up with a game of "Word Chain". Each student has to come up with a word to continue a story started by a word! Haih, seems complicated right? So they changed the game to the one we played last week, "Spelling Chain!" More happy times!

Spelling Chain

2007-06-13T22:46:00.000+08:00

apple >> elephant >> two >> orange and the list goes on!

Abang Bigg and Kak Da came up with the "Spelling Chain" Game... One person had to start with a word, for example apple and the other had to continue with a word starting with the last letter of the first word... get it? get it? :) So, the next word would be (for example) elephant!

The rule of the game - no repeating of words, minimum 3 letter word and everyone had to take turns! This was the list of words spelled by our boys (Roy, Baby, Fazreen, Azlan, Aizat, Shafiq and Aiman) with very minimum help from the Abang2 and Kakak2...

green

name
egg
ghost
teacher
root
tennis
sports
sand
deer
red
donkey
yoyo
orange
eat
tap
postman
not
tree
eagle
eye
eight
take
elephant
three
eighty
eighteen
nail
lamp
pilot
tiger
rope
end
dog
doll
lemon
nose
earth
horse
each
hand
dad
door
date
engineer
run
nest
thank you
umbrella
and
don
need
duck
king
grass
spirit
thirty
you
under
rock
kitchen
needle
eraser
rabbit
ten
newspaper

Not bad huh? Not bad at all!

At about 9.45pm, we started a "Spelling Chain" Competition between the two groups - Seven 11 vs Ocean's 11! Both groups did very well. It was a draw!!

the Seven 11 Group

the Ocean's 11 Group

***
***

Next week it'll be reading session.

See you... until then.... nightnight.. (get it? get it?) ;p

My Dream Horse...ooops, House

2007-05-23T22:54:00.000+08:00

What's your dream house going to be like? A Flying one? House on wheels? A house underwater with mermaids swimming around? A house with elongated legs?

Today we had another session before the boys break for a 2 weeks school holiday. The theme for today is My Dream House! Abang Bigg drew his dream house on a piece of paper and posted it on the white board. He then asked the kids to describe parts of the house, what materials were used and what are the usual objects we have in our houses.

After explaining about the house, the kids were asked to draw their own dream houses! They showed off their drawing skills after seeing the abangs and kakaks also drawing their house. Oh yeah, there were Kak Naz, Kak Farah, Abg Lie, Abg Lan, Kak Alia, Abg Bet, Abg Byn and Abg Jeri tonight. Kak Da came a little bit later with her friend, Kak Edd.

After the kids finished drawing their dream house, they have to come in front, post their drawings up and then explained about their dream house. Baby volunteered to be first to explain about his house. His house looks like a cross over of a rocket and a clock tower!!

Effa came next. He got a house, with a swimming pool, a football field (oh wow just imagine the size), a big dog to guard his beloved dream house (well some abangs and kakaks thought it was a big cat, hehe) and a mosque nearby!! Alhamdulillah, hopefully the mosque will be filled with jamaah eh Effa. Oh yeah, he also drew a spaceship.

Then Fikry came out and guess what, he drew a flying house with a pair of wings! A pair of eyes as well and also wheels to make the landing part become much easier!

All the first 3 volunteer get a pack of biscuit each for their courage to come to the front and share the ideas of their dream houses.

The last volunteer was Shafik who designed a green house with colourful windows. His Dream House is a 2 storey bungalow, 3 rooms, but still he opted to sleep downstairs. Shafik got a special gift from Kak Edd, a pink poodle. Talk about saving the best for last. Anyways, the others got their poodle treats afterwards.

Finally, we asked them about what had they learned tonight. Baby answered something about creativity! Yeah, that was it, the purpose of this activity was to encourage the kids to think creatively. There were lots of different ideas generated when they were coming up with their respective Dream House! Well done boys!

******************
Here's some candid (hmmm.. and some not so candid) shots during the class!!

R is for READING

2007-05-16T22:43:00.000+08:00

It's reading time!

We had new faces joining tonight. Abg Byn, Abg Lan and Kak Elle. As usual we started off with intros by our new abg and kakak. Rafie, Efa, Shafiq and Hakim did their thing asking all the 'personal' questions.

Reading exercise started where they were left off last two weeks. Abg Acat couldn't make it, so Kak Naz took his place managing the class.

L for love, look ma it's superman!

M for moon, mug

N for nose, no, ninjas

Q for queen, quick

R for rag, rabbit, rafie

S for sun, soup, smiley, shafiq

Kak Alia picked 4 books for them, they picked their favorite abg and kakak to practice their reading with. We had to finish the reading practice early because we were running out of time. We then revised the lesson quickly. We'll definitely continue the reading. Well, at least until we finish all the books.

Owh I forgot about the other abangs (if such word exist). They did a special game for the other kids who came by to help (yeah right). They played Text Twist! Sure did sound like they had lots of fun.

That's it, til later.

mcD drive thru

2007-05-09T22:18:00.000+08:00

"Welcome to McDonald's, how can I help you?"

"I'd like to have McChicken Value Meal, please."

Oh, yummy! You can guess that everyone here wished that we were really ordering at McDonald's. Only 8 kids in the class tonight. 4 abangs and 4 kakaks. I thought that we were going to do "My Dream House" exercise, but somehow somebody changed it the last minute. And the preparations were great! All the posters, were just like the ones in McDonalds! Seriously.

Ana and Ronald Nizam McDonald :)

The McDonald Siblings... :p

Abg Bigg, Rafie and Abg Jeri...

Abg Lie...

Efa and Kak Da...

They were partnered up, where one acted as the customer and the other the cashier =D... Some of them got way creative and started ordering like 10 Mc Chickens and all the desserts and the silly facilitators were layaning their perangai in like "kelantan english"..... but it was fun... it cracked all of us up...

Next week, it'll be more relax...reading time.......

hang me if i win lose or draw the wheel of fortune..

2007-04-25T22:55:00.000+08:00

So today we had another "fun" session at rumah ilham. what we did was having fun. we had fun. yes, fun we had..a lot of them. fun was all we had tonite..all we had tonite was fun fun fun (at least thats what we thought)

what is the answer...

Well....we played a game..it was called hang me if i win lose or draw the wheel of fortune..the kids were divided into 3 groups namely; bionicles, fantastic boyz and mechanical star team. well it was actually a hang man, wheel of fortune sort of thing where the kids were asked to guess words, phrases, and actions.. clues were given accordingly and the kids showed a great competitive spirit!! well, kids being kids ;)

lets discuss the answer again..

Whenever games like this were conducted, where competitions involved, all of them shows great enthusiasts... pretty much to the point the got pretty overexcited. too excited that one of the teams even got their points deducted for showing unprofessional behaviour.

but i thought the answer was hanky..

We had 8 rounds including one final bonus round which carried 500 POINTS! Team fantastic boyz lead the game but stumble at the very last round due to miscommunication between the members. that fumble caused them the game and bionicles won the game gracefully right at the end. at the end, bionicles came on top, fantastic boyz at second and last but not least mechanical star team. They got the message across (which was great). It was teamwork, patience and everything in between!!!

That's all folks!!

come read with me..

2007-04-23T15:51:00.000+08:00

it was another session of the extra reading class for the 'not so tere' kids. i found this website which has some good materials on teaching kids how to read through phonics. it has a simple and nice layout which was most pleasing and enticing for the kids. so i brought a laptop and went through some of the lesson plans with the kids.

i noticed that rafie was having some trouble with the simplest of words and upon further probing i found out that he mixes up some of the letters. b and d. p and q. a sign of dyslexia. need to be a little bit more patient with him.

well i really need to familiarize myself with some of the techniques to teach kids with special needs. would really appreciate any suggestions that ya'll got to offer.

fun with paper planes..

2007-04-14T01:50:00.000+08:00

so we had another english session on wednesday. this time round we wanted to do something fun which involves us going out of the class room. so we came up with this whole teaching the kids a little bit about physics (yeah hehe fun physics) and a little bit of maths (hehe very little) and seeing if the kids can observe and recall and also to follow instructions.

first of all we started with me telling the kids a little bit about the history of flight. some characteristics of things that can fly and also i asked the kids what other things that they can think off which displayed those characteristics.

then we asked the kids to design their own paper planes. each group must come up with a plane that can fly the furthest and also glide the longest in the air. for this we went to the hall. there were 4 groups in all. all with names having something to do with flying.

so the kids were trying out their designs and all. some of them were trying out their airplanes and others were asking the abang kakak for some help. after each throw, the kids calculated the average distance and the average time. we had a winner for each category.

afterwards, we all had a sit down and i showed the kids how to make some complicated paper planes from this big book of paper airplanes which i bought at borders. hehe it was fun. i think i had more fun than the kids did. hehe still a little kid at heart eh..

the lion, the mouse and the narrator..

2007-03-22T11:53:00.000+08:00

well yesterday we introduced the kids to some acting. bet and alia got the kids a script. we divided them into groups of threes and we had them practice their lines and then act it out in front of the class. given the short time, we didn't expect them to memorize their lines la but they did give a good attempt at it.

the play was supposed to be done via puppets but we modified it a bit. its that timeless tale of the mouse and the lion. i think everyone knows the story right? little mouse caught by lion. lion lets him go because the mouse was funny. the mouse returned the favour when the lion was caught in a trap. moral of the story, being little doesn't stop u from doing big things.. hehe well that was my take on it.

we did a quick round of voting to see who played the fiercest lion, the most timid of mices and the most serious narrator. hehe the kids were hilarious.

for the session, we also introduced a smile points system (not at all associated with esso or mobil). where for every time the kids speak in english, we will give them a smiley face. at the end of the class the kid with the most smilies will get a prize. well that got them excited. fikry was the one with the most smilies in the end. 21 smilies!!

letter from batu gajah..

2007-03-07T14:10:00.000+08:00

the activity for the night was on letters and correspondence. we all got aidah to write a letter to the kids telling about what she has been up to down(or is it up?) there in Batu Gajah. so we pretty much wanted the kids to answer a few question that kak aidah posed in her letter.

i started the class by being a bit strict. we all really wanted the kids to pay attention and i guess the 'abg garang' version of myself did the trick la. we divided the kids into groups and each abg/kakak had a group to help with the letter writing.

i guess being garang did have an impact la coz some of the kids even wrote in the letter that today abg acat is soo strict. hehe. well at least they did listen la kan.

occupational hazards..

2007-02-14T14:17:00.000+08:00

Okay yesterday we planned to have a session on letters and correspondence however due to the change in schedule the std 6 kids were having their BM tuition therefore we felt that it would be best to save that activity for later.

so for the night we had 4 std kids and 5 std 5 kids. having not prepared much of a back up plan we decided to the a simple activity on occupations. we had the kids tell us of the numerous occupations out there. citing examples like teacher, lawyer, butcher, policeman and also ultraman - the last one was added as a joke. ultraman doesn't exist (ye bet ultraman tak wujud)

afterwards we ask where do they all work. a teacher - school. lawyer - courthouse. to recap everything we then proceeded to do a guessing game of sorts. the abang/kakaks had to act out a certain occupation whilst the kids try to guess what it is. hehe u guys shud have seen la some of the actions. hehe ooh and we have some of it on tape. hehe.

End of Part 1 - Acat

***

When I got there, everyone was busy discussing...

I missed the part where the Abang2 and Kakak2 had to act but hehe thanks to Abang Lie, I got to see all of them at the end hehe.. I also managed to see the kids trying really hard to act out the chosen occupation and getting the friends to guess them! hehe, funny!

Everyone seem to be concentrating...

Everyone's off their seats, excited guessing the acts...

After class, we had a makan-makan session. Some generous kind souls donated some money for us to celebrate with the kids at Rumah Ilham, May Allah bless them :) So, we had some satay, bee hoon, cakes and ice-cream too!!

the food and drinks!!

It was great... What's even greater was to see some old faces again. It was like a small reunion of Ilham Volunteers :) Also, we had the new ones present too!

Thanks all for coming and see you in the next sessions!

Here's a video of Past Activities @ Ilham, enjoy!!!

End of Part 2 - Naz

Mr How and His 5 Wives..

2007-02-01T13:41:00.000+08:00

Hello, hello!!

We had our 2nd IEP Session last night!! Great turn out from the Abang and Kakak :) Abang Bet brought his friend along, Kak Alia.. Kak Farra came and so did Kak Da. Abang Fazli was also there. Kak Syu and Kak Sheila came later (they come to Ilham every Tuesdays too and supervise during Prep time)... Abang Acat started off with a recap of the ground rules outlined 2 weeks ago...

Then Kak Naz continued with introducing Mr How and his 5 wives (Ms Who, Ms What, Ms Where, Ms When and Ms Why) to the kids. Basically, the idea we had was to help the kids in preparing for essay writings - doing a skeletal using the 1H and 5W questions but I think at the end it turned out to be more of a comprehension exercise than planning an essay.. hehehe....

The kids were split into 3 groups and each group were given a news article (source: CBBC Newsround and they each had to choose 1 question (either Mr How or any of his wives) to ask about the article, getting the answers from the article itself.

When time was up, each group had to read their story and present their questions/answers to the rest... Abang Acat used a lot of Mr How and his 5Wives to ask the kids further and test whether they understood the article.

IEP 07 First Class!

2007-01-18T22:30:00.000+08:00

Happy New Year Kak Da and everyone!!

18 kids and 6 volunteers were at Rumah Ilham yesterday evening for IEP's first 2007 class! We have about 5 or 6 new kids in the programme. All so tiny :) Hafiz 'kecik' has his brother Hakim (also 'kecik' :)) with him this year.

I got there a bit late after dropping by Jasema to get some art blocks and sweets. When I arrived, Abang Acat has started off the first part of the activity - "Know your friend!"... Each of the kids were given a piece of paper to write down their names and birth dates. Then they had to fold the pieces of papers and put them into a box. They then randomly picked out a piece each and had to do the following:

go to the front and read out the name on the paper and the person's birthday
get to know who the person is
plot the person's name and birthday on the board

After everyone has gone to the front and called out their friend's name, they were given a piece of artblock, some crayons and magic pens to transfer the drawing on the board onto the art block as creative as they can...

It got a bit exciting when we announced that the first 3 submissions will win prizes!! And the top 3 winners were:

1. Hafiz 'Kecik'

2. Fazreen (new)

3. Syed 'Macha'

We also gave out another 3 prizes for the most creative work and the winners were:

1. Azwan 'Boboy'

2. Royhan 'Roy'

3. Asyraf (new)

At the end, everyone got some sweets because they were all very well-behaved during class as well as being helpful towards one another during the 'birthday test' :)

We wrapped up the session with laying out 2007's ground rules, which are:

Speak English as much as possible (be it queen's english or broken english)
Listen and pay attention when someone is speaking
Raise hand to answer questions

We also told them that classes will be held on a fortnightly basis so that they will have time to prepare for homework given (if any) :) Also, Ilham now has wireless access (how cool is that huh?!) so Acat took the liberty to get connected and told the kids about this blog (the IEP Blog) and that all their activities can be read from here. He emphasized to the kids that the whole world will be able to view what they do during classes :)

Better start behaving now ya kids!!

happy new year!

2007-01-08T11:12:00.000+08:00

2007 is going to be great. i can just feel it. great for each of us, individually, and also for the kids of ilham. for when the teachers are great, so will the students, right?

okay, i'm actually quite new compared to the other tutors, but i've been asked to update this blog now and then when i have the time, sorry for the long delay. :)

it's been a while since i last saw the kids. some will already be in form one, learning all the new subjects, in english. i sincerely hope that they will be able to cope. and we might even have some new faces this year. looking forward to that, but i still do have to learn to match their names with their faces! i'm terrible at that. :P

i didn't go to the last meeting, i don't even know when our first class is. i cannot ask abg jeri, since i don't think he'll be very active after this. he'll be busy with his own studies. kak aidah, if i'm not mistaken will be away too. okay, call kak naz after this. [mental note, but bet i'll forget].

but looking at how eager they are with preparing the teaching materials, no doubt the classes will be more organized than before.

i'll have more to update once the class starts. i guess i just miss going there every tuesday.

Beware of Crocs..

2006-09-13T00:33:00.000+08:00

Hi! I finally got to go to IEP Session tonight after missing a couple the past weeks... and we FINALLY received the computer donations from PETRONAS :) Alhamdullillah, thank you PETRONAS!!

I think it was last year that we started requesting for used PCs and after a lot of ding-dong back and forth (I guess they were some procedures they had to go through that took a bit longer and also we were in a queue with some other schools/institutions that have also requested for used PCs) we finally received them today! Yippee!! hehe.. THANKS to all that made it happened :) The kids and Management of Rumah Ilham were very pleased with the PCs... THANK YOU...

After transferring the PCs to Ilham, we started our IEP session... We only had 4 of the kids tonight as the rest were involved in Nasyid practice for this Saturday night. FYI, the kids will be performing at Istana Budaya this Saturday night alongside other orphanages and also artist Mawi in a Concert organised by PEYATIM. We're all going to give them moral support!! Can't wait to see the kids perform!! :D

So with only 4 kids tonight, we had a video session - Crocodile Hunter!! The late Steve Irwin in action. We let the boys watch an episode of the Big Steve and his Aussie mates relocating 2 crocodiles in East Timur and from the video, we asked the kids some questions to test their understanding. The kids (well, even the facis me especially) were put in suspence in most of the scenes... That Steve guy is one brave dude!!

We ended the session about 10pm and all of us (the facis) headed to have supper together as usual...

what do u wanna be..

2006-09-07T15:28:00.000+08:00

listen to abg azri..

so last tuesday's session was a bit relaxed. the standard 6 kids were sitting for their upsr, so we had like 8 kids from std 4 and 5 for the class. we wanted to have some sorta of sharing sessions with the kids, asking what their ambitions are. whether or not they have an idea of what they wanna be when they grow up.

i started the session by just asking them what they wanna be. we have in the class, potential doctors, surgeon, an astronaut, a couple of engineers and a few who haven't got any clear ideas as yet. then i did a little demonstration with the kids. asking one of them to walk over to the book rack and pick a book which he can see what the title was. it was easy for him. then i asked him to close his eyes, and then asked if he could get another book on the rack. things were more difficult. from the exercise, the kids learnt that by having a clear goal, it would be easier to work at achieving it.

kak da and kak aida also wanna share..

later on when the rest of the faci's arrived, each of us did like a 'this is my life' sharing bit. telling the kids what were our ambitions when we were younger. how'd we ended up doing what we do now. it was very interesting to see how the kids were reacting to the whole bit.

we also did some q & a sessions afterward, checking if the kids were paying attention or not.

Reading & Comprehension

2006-08-02T00:34:00.000+08:00

We split the group to 2 last night.

Acat and Jeri some upstairs and did a game (Acat/Jeri - please update on this :))

we had fun yesterday. me and jeri took the traditional A.. B.. C game and gave a a little twist. we had with us fikry, syed, nizam, and aiman. so for every letter that their fingers decide, the kids have to come up with a country, an animal, an occupation and a thing (object). the twist is they only get marks for unique answers only.

so we had the boys running around in the library trying to figure out the words. the excitement was more down to them trying to get a different answer from their friends.

at the end of it all. the overall champion was fikry. hehe, at the last minute he managed to answer the last bonus 10 point question so he stretched his lead inextensibly. wei hei.. <- acat

Aidah, Da, Ezanee, Oza and myself took Hasif, Roy, Alan, Boboy, Nastain and Rasid downstairs for a reading and comprehension exercise. Aidah and Da brought a set of Peter and Jane books. We each took one or two of them and read together.

I had Roy with me. In previous classes, I noticed that Roy is always excited to participate but most of the time he's just too shy to say things in English - not because he doesn't know how to but more because he lack the confidence.

So my approach was to let him read through the book without me stopping and correcting him. Of course, a few words here and there pronounced incorrectly but because I didn't stop him everytime he made a mistake, he continued with full confidence!! He can read!!!

Only in the second round, I started correcting mainly on his pronunciation. Then I tried asking him questions to check whether he understood what he was reading. He did very well! :) I also made him write down selected sentences and keywords (specified from the book) and asked him to write down the meaning of the keywords in Malay.

Hopefully, with lots more session and practice like just now, Roy will improve his reading, writing and comprehension skills :) Insya'allah.

Exams are here!

2006-07-26T23:37:00.000+08:00

We had a few things going on last night!

It's exam time for the kids. Instead of teaching them how to answer the questions - we guided them on how to read and understand the questions especially when the exams are in English! I was there for the first 10 minutes or so, and had to leave the class to attend to some other matter. Acat, Jeri, Da, Aidah, Azam, Ezanee and Oza continued in preparing them for the exams. I missed most of it and came back only at the end. (maybe you guys wanna update what we did last night in more detail)

Anyway, whilst the others were busy preparing for exams, Kak Da had other plans for Hasif :) She took him to the side and gave him a one-to-one reading lesson! Her vision is to get Hasif to improve his reading skills. I'm glad we have the same vision... Da, keep it up k! :) My aim when we started IEP session this year is to get Hasif to feel confident in reading out aloud in front of the class... I see it materialising bit by bit through your efforts! Again, keep it up girl!

I just have to share my pleased feeling in seeing the enthusiasm and energy that the new abang2 and kakak2 (ie Jeri, Da and Zaza) have! Well done, guys! I salute you!! :)

That's all from me... please feel free to add in more on yesterday's activities or any other IEP nights for that matter, which may have not been updated.

Sorry folks, no pictures (my camera is broken)

football mad ilham..

2006-06-21T12:37:00.000+08:00

okay it is the world cup season and we just can't resist doing something footie related. granted planning was minimal and preparation was kinda adhoc, but i think we managed to impart some knowledge of the game to the kids.

started off with me and jeri all decked up in holland's home and away kit. we gave a quick rundown of recent world cup history. how many teams were playing (32) when the world cup is held (every 4 years), what do we call the people from some of the countries (england=english, german=germish???)

then we went thru the basic rules, the different positions, the referees, the cards and we topped it all off by doing a maths quiz from a league table.

maths and footie?

well its basically simple algebra. u have ur 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw and zilch for a lost. we asked the kids to calculate the total points scored. what combination of win, lose or draw was needed to get a certain points total. it was kinda complicated at first, the kids didn't want to think much just wanting to shoot aje. hehe tembak. but we got them to do some calculations and they soon got the hang of it.

in the end everyone got some football chocolates for their trouble and the whole class, including the abang kakak facis were educated on the ways of footie.. hehe

Can you please help me?

2006-05-17T23:51:00.000+08:00

As the saying goes, "malu bertanya, sesat jalan", our objective for the day's lesson was to encourage the boys to ask for help. And to make it more fun we had a game of scrabble.

For clarification;

What's scrabble?
It's a word game where you have to arrange letters taken out of a sack to create meaningful words as listed inside a dictionary. Care should be taken to not insert a new entry particularly into an electronic dictionary, specifically for this purpose.

What else?
After you have successfully placed the tiles on the board, you are required to form a sentence or create an action sequence to portray the usage of the word. In case you feel a need for help, please use the magic words i.e. "Can you please help me?"

Since most of the boys were having nasyid practice, only a few were there to participate. But, it went surprisingly well and we all had fun. The boys continued to be interested in finishing the game and put the given escape-clause to good use. There were moments when it seemed that even the big bros and sis were having a tough time in giving assistance.

It's amazing when some kids surprised us all by constructing quite complex words on their own(the writer personally thinks that words with 5 letters or more are difficult enough to conspire in the game of scrabble), such as bandit, retire and postman. Even more fascinating was to hear the sentences that they can come up with, given the right push.

As the game reached its end more kids came filtering in to join the rest. Too bad they couldn't take part in the game earlier, but we took note of the fact that they were equally as interested on the game being played as the players themselves. Perhaps we can use scrabble again in the future.

After the points were tallied up and the winner of the scrabble game was announced, we concluded the lesson by distributing chocolates(courtesy of Kak Naz) and muffins(courtesy of Kak Da) to the kids.

In conclusion, although not everybody got the chance to play but those that did, clearly had fun, fun in a way that every scrabble enthusiasts know of and none players can never pin point unless they try. So take out the old board game, sweep off the dust and lets get cracking.