Jolly Phonics Training in Malaysia, 2014 Jolly Phonics professional learning in Malaysia has always been a successful and rewarding experience. This year was no exception as the

Jolly Phonics Training in Malaysia, 2014

Jolly Phonics professional learning in Malaysia has always been a successful and rewarding experience. This year was no exception as the interest about Jolly Phonics has continued to build momentum throughout schools, Kindergartens and Learning Centres. Cynthia Goh, director and owner of Extrazeal in Malaysia, has been responsible for organising workshops based on the Jolly Phonics program for over ten years. This year these workshops were conducted between 28^th June to 2^nd July by SantinaDiMauro from Jolly Education and Training. In the past Santina co-presented in Malaysia with a colleague and fellow Australian trainer, Celeste Musgrave.

The workshops included Jolly Phonics, Grammar and Spelling, Reading with Phonics, Comprehension and for the first time offered in Malaysia, Jolly Phonics for the Interactive Whiteboard. The interest in these workshops was very high with attendance levels reaching over 300 throughout the 5 days of professional learning. The workshops were held in a hotel venue which created a conducive atmosphere for teachers to not only relax but also have fun participating in the many hands-on activities.

During the Jolly Phonics workshop, all participants joined in with the number of planned activities demonstrating the fun and multi-sensory approach to phonics. The activities were also designed to show the Jolly Phonics skills in action. Over 100 teachers spent the day not only learning how to pronounce the 42 sounds of the English language but also practised the skills of blending and segmenting sounds. Teachers and parents demonstrated the effectiveness of ‘phoneme fingers’ as they determined the sounds in sequence in words. This was such a powerful activity especially for those new to synthetic phonics.

Teachers using ‘Phoneme Fingers’ to determine the number of sounds in words.

Learning how to pronounce the 42 sounds of the English language.

The Reading with Phonics workshop provided teachers with an important message: we must show children how to transfer all this wonderful knowledge of Jolly Phonics to reading and writing. The best part of this day was co-ordinating the rotation of over 100 teachers around phonics based activities. However, watching teachers attempt to play Hop Scotch with tricky words was fun too.

Teachers and parents who attended the Spelling and Grammar workshop continued learning about the next part of the program. They were challenged many times throughout the day through spelling rules and parsing sentences. This day was filled with plenty of activities. As one grade 2 student once said, “grammar is fun because we dance all the time!” This ‘dance’ mentioned by this student was performed by all participants throughout the grammar part of the workshop. How did we manage this? Quite simply, teachers and parents were parsing using the grammar actions for each part of speech found in sentences.

The Vowel Box activity

The Comprehension workshop enabled teachers to evaluate their ideas about developing comprehension skills amongst children. They spent the day reading children’s books and learning how to develop comprehension strategies so that children can become active life-long readers.

Barrier Activity: builds oral skills and vocabulary especially prepositions.

Combining the Jolly Readers with comprehension strategies.

The final day, while small in numbers, was informative and provided the teachers with a step by step guide through each of the three steps of Jolly Phonics for the Interactive Whiteboard. Each teacher brought their laptops and together we navigated through the steps.

Looking back at this year’s professional learning in Malaysia, I am in awe of all the teachers and parents who attended these workshops. Some did not tire of my voice and anecdotes as they attended the 5 workshops while many gave up their weekend to participate in professional learning to ultimately make a difference in the lives of the children they teach. It is wonderful that schools continue to support their teachers in their ongoing professional development, especially in the acquisition of reading and writing through Jolly Phonics. Thank you to Extrazeal, in particular Cynthia Goh for continuing to give me the opportunity to visit Malaysia and meet dedicated teachers and parents.

Various photos throughout the 5 day workshops

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