INNOVATIVE TEACHING and LEARNING STRATEGIES WORKSHOPS
PPD Klang / Klang District Education Office, Malaysia May 2008

Ms. Mary Thomas of SMK LaSalle Klang, Ms. Shanti Subramaniam of SMK ACS Klang, Dr. Andrew Poh Sui Hoi of HELP Graduate School, Kuala Lumpur, Mr. Zainuddin bin Othman of PPD Klang, Dr. Scott Beck of Georgia Southern University, Mr. Muhamed Radzi bin Abdullah of PPD Klang, Ms. Lily Lee of SMK LaSalle Klang, Ms. Ghajendri Selvaratnam of Multimedia University, and Ms. Rumuthamalar Rajaratnam of SMK Pinang Tunggal.	In May 2008, a series of workshops for teachers of Klang was planned, organized, and implemented by Ms. Shanti Subramaniam of SMK Methodist ACS Klang and the organizing committee headed by Mr. Muhamed Radzi bin Abdullah of PPD Klang (Klang Educational District) and Ms. Mary Thomas of SMK LaSalle Klang .	Ms. Shanti Subramaniam of SMK ACS Klang.
Funding for the workshops was provided by the U.S. State Department / IREX ILEP Small Grants Program through a grant written by Ms. Shanti Subramamian, Dr. Scott Beck, and Ms. Ghajendri Selvaratnam. Institutional support came from multiple sources including: Georgia Southern University, Malaysia American Commission on Educational Exchange (MACEE), Pengetua SMK Methodist ACS, and, most importantly, PPD Klang.

PHASE I of the workshops took place on the 14^th and 23^rd of May for approximately 20 teachers at SMK Methodist ACS Klang. A parallel workshop was conducted on the 15^th and 16^th of May at the HELP International College of Technology in Klang for 40 Language Panel Head Teachers from all the secondary schools in the Klang district.

The workshops were conducted by a team of presenters, including:

- Dr. Scott A. Beck, Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning. College of Education, Georgia Southern University, USA.

- Ms. Ghajendri Selvaratnam, Lecturer in Foundation Studies, Multimedia University, Malaysia.

- Ms. Rumuthamalar Rajaratnam, English Teacher, SMK Pinang Tunggal, Sungai Petani, Kedah Darul Aman, Malaysia.

- Dr. Andrew Poh Sui Hoi, Director, Centre for Teaching and Learning, HELP Graduate School, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The purpose of the workshops was to encourage Malaysian teachers, especially English language teachers, to incorporate student-centered, interactive methods of teaching into their classrooms. For this reason, the bulk of the workshop time was spent with the teachers actively participating in, rather than hearing about, innovative teaching strategies. A minimal amount of time was spent discussing the theories behind these strategies. Instead, the strategies were briefly explained and modeled and then the teachers engaged in the activities as if they themselves were students. In this way, the workshop structure itself served as a model of the interactive activity-based instructional approach advocated by the workshop’s organizers and presenters.

Dr. Beck’s presentations occupied the majority of the workshop time and focused on the following, interrelated instructional approaches: Writing Process, Writers’ Workshop, and Poetry Templates including: o An overview of the five-step Writing Process of Brainstorming, Drafting, Revising Content, Editing Mechanics, and Presenting / Publishing. o Brainstorming and Drafting of poems about childhood experiences using a Poetry Template § Poetry Templates based upon G.E. Lyons’ “Where I’m From” and Malaysian poet Shirley Geok-Lim’s “Riding into California.” o Implementation of the Revising and Editing steps in small, cooperative Writers’ Workshop groups. o Presentation of the poems to the entire group.

Workshop participants listen to and discuss each others’ “Where I’m From” poems about their memories of childhood.

Dr. Beck presented on Non-fiction Reading and Writing including: o GIST cooperative summarizing activity for difficult texts. o Role Playing as a means for increasing and evaluating student comprehension, particularly the “Brief the Prime Minister” activity. o Student Developed Rubrics as a means for increasing student “buy-in” to the grading process by using their input is selecting evaluation criteria and setting scoring values for these criteria. Other activities presented by Dr. Beck included: - Ice-breaker “3 Lies and 1 Truth” - Theoretical Braid of Chomsky, Vygotsky, and Neuroscience as a basis for evaluating teaching strategies for their appropriateness. - Using literature as a means to learn about the funds of knowledge of diverse students through the Read Book / Read Child approach. - Story Innovations and Variants as a means to enrich students’ understandings of stories. - Primary and Secondary sources and the difficulty of reconstructing the facts, ala a journalist, of an event after it has occurred. - Sentence Manipulation activities by Killgallon. Many of these activities were drawn and modified from Daniels and Steineke’s Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles. Dr. Beck’s presentations and activities were complemented by sessions led by the other presenters.

One participant plays the role of a Member of Parliament petitioning the Prime Minister to encourage Malaysians to diversify their diet by eating more potatoes.

Dr. Beck also presented on Reading Process, and Literature Circles including:

o An overview of the five-step Reading Process of Brainstorming, Reading, Responding, Exploring, and Project Creation / Presentation.

o An overview of Literature Circle roles such as Summarizer & Discussion Director, Passage Picker, Word & Phrase Wizard, Illustrator, Historian & Geography Guru, and Connector

o Application of these steps and roles to stories, including historical / geographic background information.

Ms. Selvaratnam introduced the use of computer-based Storyboards as a means to develop students’ technological skills while either summarizing a text that they have read or developing an outline for a project or yet-to-be-created story or text. The participants worked cooperatively to create illustrated PowerPoint storyboards summarizing commonly used Form 4 stories and poems. The participants were also challenged to take a generic storyboard and use it as a story skeleton to build a fully formed story in a specific setting.

A small group of participants uses a laptop and PowerPoint to create an electronic storyboard summarizing a novella taught in Form 2.

Ms. Rajaratnam presented to the Language Panel Head Teachers on how to incorporate Process Drama into the classroom. She introduced a wide variety of Process Drama methods and spoke of how they could be used in any content area. She then challenged the participants to implement these methods “on the fly,” using the large group as their students. The participants obliged by showing how impromptu songs and role play can enhance and enrich classroom instruction and engage the interest of students.

Ms. Rajaratnam helps a group create a drama activity for the other participants.

Dr. Poh lectured to the Language Panel Head Teachers on the process by which students can be taught to think abstractly and thereby make good decisions. His lecture presented a method for teaching thinking skills both independent of and incorporated throughout the curriculum. He asserted that his method is applicable to students at multiple levels and across multiple disciplines.

Thank you to everyone who made these workshops a great success.

PHASE II of the workshops will be conducted in June 2008 in all the secondary schools in the Klang district when the participants in Phase I will serve as trainers for their local teachers. In this way, the “Training the Trainers” structure will be completed.