..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.

Tongue Twisters

2006-05-09T22:41:00.000+08:00

Kak Da came up with this idea to help improve the kids' pronunciation skills and at the same time enrich their vocabulary - We had a 'Beat Abang Khalid' Tongue Twist Competition!!

The write-up will soon be available - for now, enjoy the videos!

Video 1: Abang Azri coaching Shamsu - "Red bulb, blue bulb, red bulb, blue bulb....."

Video 2: Shamsu at the front showing his stuff!! You go boy!! :)

Video 3: Kak Jannah showing A'ain how it's done - "Shrunk Sheet, Shrunk Sheet, Shrunk Sheet......"

Video 4: Kak Da & Kak Zaza helping Hasif out with the pronunciation and meaning of the words - "Witch watch, witch watch, witch watch......."

Video 5: Kak Aidah and Aiman trying to say "Dracula drinks, dracula drinks, dracula drinks......" fast but properly :)

And the champ they were competing against: Abang Khalid - "A tree toad loved a she-toad, who lived up in a tree, he was a two-toed tree toad, but a three-toed toad was she"

Cool Stuff!

2006-04-11T01:50:00.000+08:00

I just discovered that Photobucket.com allows you to upload videos that is less than 60 secs... Cool eh! :) This is my first time uploading videos onto a blog... here goes!

To view video from last IEP class, please click here and here...

ps: you can only view the video if you have at least flash 8.0

Do the Alphabet with Big Bird!

2006-04-04T23:58:00.000+08:00

The busiest week at work!! Noone managed to prepare anything...

Got a ride back from Acat - was bitching about stuff at work the whole way back!!

Got home at the same time eyeda got to my place. So we 3 sat down and thought of what to do?!!! After a few minutes, all of us were still blank!! (effect from a busy busy day I guess)

I wanted to continue with some alphabet pronunciation with group 1 - only this time, I wanted to use a more hip and happening video!! I borrowed Dina's (my 3 year old niece) Sesame Street Video. "Do the Alphabet" video!!

And later just before we left for Ilham, Acat decided to do a story telling activity with children from group 2... Sorted!!

Got all our stuff and off we went! When we got there, the warden told us that there'll only be 4 of them in the class today - the others had nasyid practice... woookey.. there you go - we didn't have to crack our heads so badly after all.. hehe.. worked to our advantage..

Besides K Eyeda, Abg Acat and myself - Abg Azri (also 1 of our schoolmates) were there! We started off with the video. It was fun!! We had alphabet singing, alphabet exercising and alphabet magic to help poor baby bear (from the vidoe) to learn his A-Z. I have to say, Big Bird's cool!! He has many tricks and strategies on how baby bear can learn his A-Z in a day!!

At the end of the session, both baby bear (from the video) and the IEP boys learned their A-Z and new words too!

We tested them just before ending the session with a word puzzle prepared by K Eyeda & Abg Azri... They did well!! Well done!

Personally I think this video thingy is a good approach for these kids. Let's try to expose them to more of these things, yeah?!

Know Your A-Z

2006-03-28T23:04:00.000+08:00

We split the class to 2 this time round.

Eyeda & I took group 1 (Ezanee joined us later) and Acat & Keena took group 2 (Diyana and her friend joined later).

Group 1 modules are designed for the kids to start fresh - from basics. As for group 2 - they're more focused towards the school syllabus.

For group 1

i) learned sounds of alphabets using videos from starfall.com (if you have kids of your own, let them play around with this website.. it's good for learning English for kids!!)

ii) identified objects according to alphabets assigned (we gave them some pictures all jumbled up - divide them to 3 groups and asked them to cut out objects according to alphabets, paste onto cardboard and labelled them, eg. group a: A-D group b: E-H and group c: I-L)

iii) tested them on the spelling for those new words they learned.

The objective was to get the children to recognise alphabets and associate the sounds to it - to strengthen their reading/spelling skills. We managed to cover that and were happy!!

The kids were excited (we cheated la - Eyeda had some strawberries from Cameron Higlands to 'motivate' the kids to answer questions heheh.. well, it worked! ;p) Also we got them to compete between groups - "The fastest group to complete and decorate their ABC Posters nicely - gets the whole box of strawberries!" :)

As promised, the first group won the strawberries - yummy!

At the end of it, we hung their ABC Posters in the library for their future reference!

Group 2 did a treasure hunt thingy - learning to seek & give directions.. The facees for the group will update you guys on what they did, soon!

Audition & toilet tissue

2006-03-08T09:40:00.000+08:00

Today, we started the class later than usual, at 9 pm. The famous nasyid group – Raihan came to Rumah Ilham. Although we were there earlier than the Raihan’s, since we’re not as famous as them ;) we had to wait for our turn to take the kids. J

This week, we were supposed to divide the kids into two groups. Since we had to start late, Kak Naz came up with an activity using a roll of toilet tissue!!

The roll was passed around the class and the kids were asked to take as many tissues as they want - without them knowing what they were suppose to do with it. Some took as many as thirteen pieces and some took as little as one piece.

Then comes the instruction from Kak Naz, “Ok now, what I want you to do is to write one thing about yourself on each sheet of tissue you took”.

After about 10 minutes, each of them was called up to the front of the class to tell the class about themselves. Some came up with very interesting points e.g. “I am handsome and cute”, and I was touched the most by this point, “I love my family”.

We ended the class around 10.15pm with a little treat of chocolate biscuits. We managed to complete 1 lesson in less than an hour though at first we thought we could not have done anything that week.

Thanks to Kak Naz, now I know another usage for toilet tissues… J

-eyeda-

its a small world after all..

2006-03-01T14:15:00.000+08:00

well for yesterday's IEP we decided to have a little sing a long with the kids. the song we picked was 'its a small world' the annoying kids version. sherri printed oout the lyrics and we had them read it aloud together at first.

then to make things interesting, we had each boy to act out part of the lyrics. when the rest of them sing 'its a world of laughter' one boy would act out hysterical laughing. 'its a world of tears' another would act out crying. by acting out the words, the kids would have a better understanding of what it meant and possibly can help them remember it more.

so the classroom was quite hectic. everyone belting their lungs out, including the facilitators. thought we had a lot of fun.

Oh no! English Assessment!

2006-02-22T12:00:00.000+08:00

It was February 21st and the night was chill. Rumah Ilham was unusually quite and both Azura and I were late to the IEP class. We dashed upstairs for the new location, a better and bigger room for the boys to learn English in comfort. This time it was conducted in the new and improved library. We have missed the introduction session last week but this time let the ball rolls, we are anticipating this year’s class since most of the boys will be sitting for their UPSR exams!

Surprisingly only Acat was around at that time and was about to give instructions to the boys for their assessment. We would like to know how each of them fared after a year of IEP classes. The first test is intended to find out how the boys can make their own words derived from the word TEACHER.

The second test was a spelling test derived from pictures from selected books around the library. Thankfully Aidah who came later explained that it needed to be based from simple photos and we have ransacked the library for appropriate ones. There were pictures such as elephant, aeroplane, shark, horse, clown and such. The kids were confused with some Bahasa Melayu spelling but majority of them have done a good job indeed. Abang Acat said he wanted to be the *garang* facilitator that night.
Hmm…looks like he tried his best though.

The last test was conducted shortly for their reading and understanding of a simple story book. Only some of the boys need no help at all on their pronunciation, but most of them still requires help (and some of them are smart enough to narrate the story based on the pictures shown, ehehhe). Aizan, Azura, Acat, Aidah, Chaint and I were there to assess the boys’ reading test and it was done in a jiffy.

We certainly hope that the boys will not be too tired nor sleepy with next time

contributed by,
Anaz

tell me what do u see..

2006-02-15T14:25:00.000+08:00

for this round of ilham we wanted to test how the children's observation skills are like. we had three kids to one faci, each with a selection of books from the library. and without reading the text, we asked the kids to describe what they see and tell us in their own words.

i personally had one of the kids, syed, to describe to me this story about a family going camping. it had some well drawn scenes in there and syed was able to describe what he thought was happening. there were descriptions like, the racoon was hungry so it sneaked around at the camping site looking for food. how the dad was driving to the camping ground. all this from the pictures that he saw. then just to clarify we had them read some of the text anyways.

afterwards when all of them had their individual go with the abang-kakak, we had everyone in one big group and had them tell us what they see from this one book on community life. (kehidupan berjiran?)

Lets get it started..

2006-02-08T09:38:00.000+08:00

The Ilham English Program is back. We had our first session of the new term. The classes are now held on Tuesdays as opposed to Fridays for the previous term.

For the first session, we felt that a little introduction was due as it had been a while since the last class, two new faces have joined the kids, so what better way to start it all by doing some thing simple like introducing yourself and figuring out the basic information that is required to fill in simple forms.

I was pleasantly surprised when some of the kids remembered the basic things that we taught last term. Your basic 'getting to know' questions. Who are you? How old are you? Where are you from? How many siblings do you have? It shows that they are all eager to learn.

We have made some changes to the new term. We're trying to make the classes more structured. I think this would be a good approach as some of the kids are going to face the dreaded UPSR this year and they'll need all the help that they can get. We still welcome any volunteers who may be interested to join, you know how to contact us if u want to.

So here's to another good year for the IEP.

Last Activity for the year 2005..

2005-12-06T23:38:00.000+08:00

Majlis Berbuka Puasa at Rumah Ilham...

We had a Majlis Berbuka Puasa with all 60 of adik-adik ILHAM on the 24th October 2005 – 20 Ramadan 1426H. Around 40 other guests comprising of almost all ILHAM Volunteers; not only from the IEP Program but also volunteers for other activities organized with the ILHAM Boys for the past 2 years.

the kakak-kakak

the abang-abang

It started off at around 6.45 pm with a tahlil and continued with us breaking fast together. We performed Solat Maghrib, Isya’ and Terawih together at ILHAM’s own newly renovated Surau.

Solat Jemaah

During supper, a surprise ‘movie’ summarizing all the activities PROMUDA Charity Group (PCG) have done with the ILHAM Boys was shown and specially dedicated to ILHAM’s Management, the Boys and the Volunteers with ‘Kau Ilhamku’ song as the soundtrack. Too bad it can't be linked here! The ‘movie’ captured the boys’ attention, as they were the STARS for that night. Plus they were happy to receive some duit raya from their Abang and Kakak at the end of supper.

Movie & duit raya presentation...

Menu for the day that left everyone feeling happy and full were…

Karipap, Tepung Pelita, Teh Tarik, Nasi Tomato, Ayam Masak Merah, Daging Blackpepper, Dalca, Jelatah, Fruits, Bubur pulut hitam, Popiah goreng and other delicious kuih.

Sounds and looks yummy ya! Not to worry to those who missed it, Insya’Allah we’ll organize one again next year!

-eyeda-

Library Project - Phase I

2005-12-06T22:46:00.000+08:00

Rumah Ilham has an extended library situated at the top of the management block. They have a wide range of books, from Archie Comics to Britannica Encyclopedia! Only problem is – it has not been utilized properly.

From what the kids told us, they only enter the library when there’s tuition classes held. Most of the time, the room remains empty and the books collect dust!

At the beginning of Ilham English Program, we brainstormed an idea of having a book drive to collect books for the kids – not knowing they had so many already. When we actually saw the library, the first thing we thought was to ‘GET IT BACK TO SHAPE!’

One of IEP’s volunteer – Abang Zaki agreed to take lead. We had a short visit to the library, listed out what can be done and should be done, what was needed to get the library back in action. After gathering all info needed, an email was sent out to seek assistance preferably from those who were not allergic to dust.. hehe yes, volunteers must be dust-allergy-free!! Or at least bring a mask along 

A few days before the clean-up, we went to Giant Supermarket and Jusco to grab some stuff – book ends, educational posters, cellophane tape, manila cards and the whole works. We also told everyone to bring some pieces of old rags to do the massive window-wipes!

The day came… there were about 8 IEP volunteers who turned up for the challenge, about 5 Primary 6 Ilham Boys (who thought they have ‘MERDEKA-ed’ when UPSR ended and turns out they got to help instead of relax – haha ;p) and we got some extra helping hands from the Teratak Kami Kids. Woo hoo! – We needed all the help we could get as there were many things to do besides just cleaning up… from…

Sorting books to...

Arranging books to...

Cleaning shelves to...

Cleaning room to...

Wiping windows to...

Vacuuming carpet to...

Rearranging furniture to...

Decorating room to...

Putting up posters!!

And we did it all in not more than 5 hours – THANKS TO EVERYONE PRESENT!! (do give yourselves a big pat on the back considering it was a fasting day as well and no one fainted ;p)

We told the Ilham Kids to use the library more often now that it’s cozier. We hope to be able to run our IEP Sessions next year in this library. We plan to have a module where the kids will be given a reading list from the selected books (available in their library) and have a ‘Reading Sunday’ with them once a month – insya’allah – to encourage them to utilize their library and to make reading a habit, of course!

Details on that will be in the Library Project Phase II… coming soon, insya’allah…

Some photos during the clean-up:

1 Before picture..

2 In the process

3 The final touch

5 After Picture

Some photos of the library after the clean-up:

Till We Meet Again!

2005-10-03T17:42:00.000+08:00

Dear All,

Friday, 23rd September 2005 was officially the last formal IEP Session with adik-adik at Rumah Ilham.

Due to fasting month, Raya and also preparation time for their UPSR & other exams/holidays etc, we will be seeing adik-adik at Rumah Ilham on our own personal arrangments - maybe drop by during their Prep time to help with their English homework preparing for their English exams or during the weekends. That is up to you!

IEP Classes, insya'Allah will resume in January 2006.. hopefully with a bunch of familiar faces and many new volunteers with heaps of new ideas!

I will keep you all updated if we have any activities with the kids during Ramadhan until the end of the year. Insya'Allah our Library Project will go on, once we get a confirmed date :)

Till then.. take care and THANK YOU very much for your time and commitment with the Ilham English Program (IEP) for this past year.

Sincerely,

Naz on behalf of PCG

read some more..

2005-09-15T12:55:00.000+08:00

last friday, we had the ilham kids do a bit of reading. they have a library and while it is still in the process of being beautified, the books are always available for them to use. so we picked a book with some short stories in it. (i have no idea what the title was, hehe for i can't seem to remember.. will update on this later).

the kids were then divided into three groups according to their level of proficiency. some were obviously better than the others but we took the time to make sure that all of them tried to read.

at one point i resorted to the tried and tested method of pronouncing the alphabets in the words individually ala sesame street to get the kids reading the more difficult words.

m (mmm) o (o) t (teh) h (heh) e (e) r (rrrr) = mother

somehow it sounds way cuter if elmo does it.

School Holidays are here again!

2005-08-22T11:26:00.000+08:00

The kids are having their school holidays starting 19th August to 28th August 2005.

IEP classes will resume after this school holiday..

Read with me!

2005-08-12T23:01:00.000+08:00

okay. last IEP we decided to do something different. testing the reading skills of the kids with something a bit refreshing. nope not the latest cleo or fhm. we brought a whole set of encyclopedias for the kids to pick and choose a topic that they wanna read about. with the help of the abangs and the kakaks.

from the whole exercise we noted that the reading proficiency of each kid pretty much varied. some were very good in the sense that they require little to no assistance while some were going at it at a snails pace.

anyways, after the kids had some time to read up on the topic of their choosing, we then gave them a few minutes each to talk about what they read and share with the rest of the group. they all did their best to present. and with a lot more work and practice i'm sure things will get better.

Everyone's reading!! yes, yes - read baby read!! :p

IEP

2005-08-11T11:17:00.000+08:00

The boys were not available last Friday (5th August 2005).

Hence, there were no classes last Friday.

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 12th August 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

Jumbled Up!!

2005-07-30T23:37:00.000+08:00

nernid

unchl

uijec

tatpoo

febarkast

hehe.. can u guess those word?

We played a game with the boys.. the theme was 'Meals & Food Stuff', which we got off their textbook.. This time the boys had to answer individually with little assistance from their fellow friends. When the words were too difficult, they were given clues and hints from Abang Khalid and the Kakak-kakak..

Kak Aidah and Kak Oza took lead this week (after Abang Khalid & Kak Naz gave some 'reminders' to the boys about importance of learning and reviewing.. once in a while the boys do need a little bit of reminding, for their own good..)

At the end of class - Abang Khalid came up with a rap song entitled: "Kita tak makan INI - We only eat THIS" hehe good one Acat!!

Answers to the jumbled words above:

nernid - dinner
unchl - lunch
uijec - juice
tatpoo - potato
febarkast - breakfast

IEP Friday

2005-07-28T12:17:00.000+08:00

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 29th July 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

Brainstorming Session

2005-07-28T11:54:00.000+08:00

I arrived late at Ilham last Friday thanks to the 'efficient' LRT Service ;(

When I got there, saw the Kakak2 and Abang2 all ready to start! *phew, I thought to myself.. nasib baik ada diaorang ni :) semua boleh harap!!* so as usual, salam2 with the kids first and joined the class.

We started off with a spelling bee - they were asked to spell out 4 words we gave them to memorize last week as homework and also give us the meaning of the words in malay. Then, we continued with a brainstorming session with the kids that night to build their word bank. Keena led the class, she divided them into 4 groups and gave 4 different key words for them to brainstorm in their groups.

The words were:

SCHOOL
MOSQUE
PLAYGROUND
LIBRARY

All of us were happy to see that everyone participated in the group activity :) and we (including the abang2 and kakak2 ;p) learned some new words that night! hehehe

Fun Friday!

2005-07-21T16:27:00.000+08:00

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 22nd July 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

Draw it and Arrange it!

2005-07-21T16:11:00.000+08:00

After all the fun the kids had at the starlight cinema, it was back to another one of our regular sessions at ilham! After the movie treat, we figured that the kids would be as psyched as we were to resume class, especially since 2 of the previous ilham classes had been cancelled. And so they were. This week, it was the storytelling session (I, myself had personally enjoyed listening to storytelling when I was small, especially since I could let my imagination run wild and picture myself as one of the characters which more often than not, happened to be a princess hehe).

BUT, instead of having one of the kakaks of abangs to tell the story in front, it was the kids who had to rearrange the storylines so that they would all fall nicely into one big story. This was how it went. Abang Acat and Kak Ana had nicely disarranged 3 nursery rhymes/songs: The Little Teapot, Jack and Jill, and Humpty Dumpty, into scattered order and spread the parts of the stories into small cards which contained one sentence each. As there were 3 stories, the kids were divided into 3 groups whereby 1 group was assigned with 1 story. Each of the groups was supposed to rearrange the cards so that they would become one big story.

The tricky part was that since the cards were scattered within the 3 groups, they had to go around and ask if the other groups had the card that contained their story. For example, if group 1 was assigned with Jack and Jill, the kids within the group had to go around and ask if the other 2 groups had any cards that contained Jack and Jill sentences. Once this was done, they had to draw out the story according to what was contained in the cards.

Therefore, if a story had 4 cards, there would be 4 different drawings for each card. Finally, each of the groups had to present to the class their story together with their drawings. This part was really interesting as we got to see their drawing skills, and some of the drawings were really funny too!

So that was another night at Ilham..

Signing off, Diyana

the abang and the kakak-kakak :) outside Inas' house

Next IEP

2005-07-13T11:46:00.000+08:00

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 15th July 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

No IEP Friday

2005-07-06T12:42:00.000+08:00

Sorry to inform all of you but due to unforeseen circumstances, this Friday's IEP is CANCELLED.

Read and Tell!

2005-06-28T20:37:00.000+08:00

-This Class in Cancelled, Sorry Folks!-

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 1st July 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

Guess what I AM doing..!??

2005-06-25T12:35:00.000+08:00

This week’s session was carried out by our cool future English Teacher Kak Jannah. The class started with Kak Jannah handing out small postcards with a sentence to each adik. They have to act out the sentence which starts with ‘I AM …(action).. (eg. I am crying, I am sleeping) and the rest will then guess the actions.

We had Abang Dirk with us this week (an British dude who is here for his law studies attachment with Skrine) to be interviewed by the adik-adik. They were all excited and eager to ask questions. Beside the 5 standard questions that had been taught to them during the earlier part of IEP class, surprisingly they have asked questions like what is his favourite food, favourite football team, favourite colour, they even asked if Abang Dirk had a girlfriend?!

What really amazes us (me most) was the confidence that came from the kids! To me, it does not matter if the questions are correct or the sentences are not in the correct grammatical manner (which that is what us Kakaks/Abangs are suppose to be doing at IEP - correcting and teaching them), what mattered most was the confidence they showed and they are not shy to speak up even to a ‘mat salleh’!

I guess this is one thing to be proud of by the Kakaks and Abangs! After 5/6 months of IEP, little that we know, we have somehow achieved one of our objective in IEP, which is ‘to boost self esteem and confidence’ of the adik-adik. Hopefully by end of this year we can see more changes and improvement and more fun to come!

Regards,
Aidah

Quiz-a-mania!

2005-06-23T21:32:00.000+08:00

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 24th June 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

Akademi Ilham

2005-06-17T11:58:00.000+08:00

On Friday, the 17th June 2005 we had our 1st ILHAM session after the school break. It was good to see the kids again after being absent for so long (sorry Naz!). Yes, they’re still naughty but nevertheless still ever ready to learn. 4 new students have joined the group and their names are Taz, Nizam, Syed Amirul and A’ain. Taz and A’ain are brothers btw. Don’t ask me their full names because I finally remembered their nicknames after racking my brain for about half an hour. Yes, I’m terrible at remembering names but since Azam had pestered me into writing this so you just have to bear with me.

This week the kids learned the English version of the song called “Paling Comel” by Achik Spin and Siti Nordiana. The English translation of the song according to Acat is “So Cute”. FYI, Acat is the man responsible for “butchering”…oppss I meant translating the BM lyrics of the song to English. Hahahaha….It’s not a bad translation, it’s just that it’s really funny when you try to sing it. It’s such a cute song. Thanks Acat :-)

The kids are divided into 5 groups, Brazil, ManU, Arsenal, Chelsea & Nizam Spin & Siti Hajar (there’s only 2 members in this group i.e. Nizam & Hajar. Konon-kononnya macam Achik Spin and Siti Nordiana la). The other 4 groups had 3 members in them. I can’t remember the names of the group members but I know that Azlan was in Keena’s group. That boy is truly smitten. Heheh…Below is the English version of the lyrics “Paling Comel”:-)

I would have never guessed,
that these fireballs,
which were once so small,
have become so big
it’s the same as
my hope for you
it was so little before
have become so big

so let it be
and just let me
replace him
beside you
you are so pretty
so courteous
and so cute
in my heart

I know an old flame hurt you..

oh the first time
that I knew you
you are always smiling
smiling at me
and just like
the fireballs
my love burns bright
for you

The kids were given about half an hour to practice the song with their abang-abang & kakak-kakak. I had a wonderful time trying to sing the song with Aida and my boys. After everyone has finished practice, Acat asked each group to come to the front to perform in front of the so-called ‘professional juries’ namely Azam and Jannah and compete in Ilham Akademi Fantasia. Brazil was the 1st group to come up to the front and sing “So Cute”.

The group consists of Amirul, Hafiz and Rashid (heheh…The reason I remembered their names was because this was my group and we won the Ilham Akademi Fantasia competition!). They sang loud and clear. Of course we know Rashid can never keep a straight face and was laughing throughout the song. Hasif kept putting up the paper containing the lyrics to his face (stage fright maybe? Nahhhhh, I doubt it!) and Amirul, the boy with the big voice did the group proud by singing ever so loudly. Then the second group came out to sing. I think it was Keena’s group with Shamsu, Azlan and Ikmal and so on…Sorrylah babes! I tak ingat who was in which group! Suffice to say that it was a full house.

All the groups did well. However, I’m concerned about Hajar, the flower among the thorns in Ilham. She is extremely shy and looked like she doesn’t feel comfortable participating with the boys or joining them in any of the activities. I don’t really know her level of understanding of the English language, as I have not been tutoring her while I was in Ilham. Maybe we should have more girls in the group. Azam, can you look into this? To me Hajar doesn’t look shy. But she sure is stubborn. Sampai ke sudah tak nak nyanyi dengan Nizam. Nizam had to go to the front and sing by himself. Pity the boy. Nasib baik ada Abang Acat, kan? Heheheh…

That’s all for now. Ampuuuuuuuuuuunnnn if the writing kurang memberansangkan. Banyak kerja la Azam :-) Signing off…

the abang and kakaks

Regards,

Sherie

Class again!

2005-06-16T11:38:00.000+08:00

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 17th June 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

School Holidays are here!

2005-05-27T10:48:00.000+08:00

There will be no IEP classes from Friday, 27th May 2005 to Friday, 10th June 2005 due to School Holidays. We will resume classes after the holidays, just look out for the notice!

THANK YOU!

Last before we break!

2005-05-18T20:38:00.000+08:00

- THIS CLASS WAS CANCELLED -

Apologies to those who went

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 20th May 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham,
Pinggiran TTDI

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

Big Book, Big Picture.. Big Big Big!

2005-05-18T11:22:00.000+08:00

We had a session at Ilham on Friday the 13th.. (hooooooooo... scary friday hehe no not really) This session was a serious session but I was not in a mood to give them homework that day. Lucky them!

I wanted the boys to read with me and what other best way to do it than using the BIG BOOK approach! We got these books from amli in February or March but never really used them in class. They were given to the boys in IEP, so better make good use of it...

The idea of this BIG BOOK approach is so the kids can read together in a groups with their teacher in front. Like that, their teacher can guide everyone to which word sounds like what and concentrate on pronunciation as well.. That's the theory bit of course :o) Although some may be left not so far behind, this BIG BOOK approach did achieve it's aim to get the kids interested in the story (i guess that's because there were BIG PICTURES in the books too :o))

After reading together, since it was serious week - we did some simple sentence writing with the kids. They were suppose to pick 1 kakak or abang to sit with and make sentences out of the words Jannah and Bet had written on the board. Before getting to that - we played 'Simon Says'!!

Once they were all wide awake again, they each took an abang and kakak to get down with the sentences. They had to use the words UNDER, ONTO, ACROSS, IN, OVER to make sentences.

Fun, Fun, Fun!!

2005-05-11T17:41:00.000+08:00

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 13th May 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

Sesi Membuka Kamus dan Pengukuhan

2005-05-08T00:37:00.000+08:00

This week we did a reinforcement session.

Some Friday before the activity was the pizza wheel. The kids played a huge game with extra large board and all and the topic was "Things in the Classroom".

So this time the kids were given worksheets/exercise on a word level on the same topic.

"Ni senang je ni, budak darjah satu boleh buat."
"This is easy, a Year 1 kid can do it."

So to make it more educational and overbearing, in came the dictionary. The dictionary is used as the main and sometimes only source of information and answers for the questions that arises such as what is a cupboard? Well let's look up the trusty dictionary okay?

Then, we did a competition where The Manchester United Team went against Chelsea. No points were tabulated so everybody's a winner! Yeay? The game is about forming words from one big word. The word is blackboard and so you know you can get "back" from blackboard. Hmm. English rocks!

This Friday we had a surprise visit from Pakcik Greg, a 65 years old retiree from the United States of America. He's in Malaysia on a special retirement program called Silver Hair and used to be a History Professor. He came in and played Simon Says with the kids and they looked wary, cautious, but at the same time curious and interested. The way Pakcik Greg talks made the listener listen up and pay attention. Experienced. Seasoned. Dictionary please.

To conclude it was a good day. Hopefully it was filled with input and the kids can digest it in.

From word level we shall grow into sentence level and from hence essays. Wish us all the best!

the boy who cried wolf..

2005-05-06T10:32:00.000+08:00

okay this update is long overdue. last week we had ourselves a story session at ilham. the story was about the boy who cried wolf. first we had the kids read the passage together. there were some big words that needed explaining but all in all they seem to understand the gist of the story.

next to make things more interesting, we broke up the kids in pairs and then assigned them one abang/kakak each.

the abang/kakak had to make sure that the kiddies would be able to tell the story in front of the class. we made sure that the main ideas was clear and we left it up to the kids to give an account of the story based on their understanding.

it was hillarious. some of the kids added a few stuff that made their story so much funnier. hehe.

Ilham Night!!

2005-05-05T14:59:00.000+08:00

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 6th May 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

There's always something..

2005-05-03T11:28:00.000+08:00

In March 2005, we brought the IEP boys out for a movie outing organised by the Nottingham Alumni Association Malaysia. We got free tickets sponsored for the kids for the movie Lemony Snickets.

Everyone had fun that day and we hope to bring the boys out again!!

How to play a DIY boardgame...

2005-04-17T21:56:00.000+08:00

Here goes;

1. First, you need to patch them together on the floor, umm... no, you need to figure out how they go together before you can patch them up you see.
When that is done (with a lot of help from the kids) we started off by explaining the rules of the game. The kids seem to understand and were very eager to proceed.

2. Introduce the remarkable instrument of fate, which is the Pizza wheel.
It works like any ordinary deciding wheel and no, they are not taken from pizza hut. The kids were quite excited by the wheel as it reminded them of Roda Impian.

3. Divide the players into 4 groups of two. The first 4 players will then have a go at the boardgame. When they finish a round, each will tag their team mates and the second batch of players will continue the game, like a relay.
We let the pizza wheel decide which kid teams with which sort of to let them mingle and cooperate.

Let the games begin!

There were four types of boxes for the kids to land on.

Guess what I am?
The player must guess the object within the classroom by the given clue.
E.g. I have feathers yet I'm not a bird. Feather Duster = bulu ayam = chicken feathers?
It seemed to be the easiest of all three, since a picture of a classroom is posted for the kids to see and look for the stuff.

Lights! Camera! Action!
The player is given a situation in a classroom that requires a bit of acting.
E.g. Scene: Going to the toilet/restroom.
It would be helpful for the kids to relate the English words with actual situations in class.

Spell Me!
The player is given a picture of an object and is required to spell it correctly.
It seemed to be hard for the kids to come up with the spelling of longer words. But we manage to help them out through an express game of hangman.

Spin The Wheel!
A bonus box where the player can spin the wheel a second time and choose a question. If he answers it correctly, he will get to advance. If not, he needs to move backwards.
The favorite as it lets them finish quicker. Everyone was rooting for the spin. We all chanted SPIN THE WHEEL 9 times or so and not one chose to chicken out which shows that they need all the support they can get.

Overall, the game went well. We can even use the board for another setting. This activity reminded me that it's easier for the kids to learn when it's something they can relate to. Hope it helps.

waa, how big is da board..

Announcement..

2005-04-15T11:07:00.000+08:00

Dear Reader,

The Second Season of the Ilham English Program (IEP) has been progressing for the last 3 months. We really appreciate the support we received from all the volunteers and the generous donors. Hopefully we will continue to gain support for us to conduct future activities.

Over the next few months, we will continue to assess their level of proficiency by conducting a series of test to gauge how much they have learnt from the whole program. As we have diligently been reporting in this blog over the pass few months, you may see how the children progressing and learn from our program.

It is also worth noting that another exciting project has begun for the upper-secondary students. The Ilham Accounting Series (IAS) is targetted for the Fourth Form Students to enrich their understanding on the Principle of Accounts subject.

With this new initiative running concurrently with IEP, we would like to appeal to your generosity in providing us with donations in terms of books, stationeries, and the likes to facilitate the learning of the children and at the same time to motivate them. Anything goes for this contribution, some examples, not exhaustive though like, diaries, corporate gifts (that you feel you already have too much of it already!), stick-it note etc.

Every little contribution means a lot to these children. We have received donations in the form of encyclopedia sets, story books, dictionaries. It would be great if we can give something to the children to reward them on a job well done. This will tremendously boost their self confidence and the drive to better themselves.

Kindly drop a note at our tagboard to find out further information about the program or contact Naz at ir1nny@yahoo.com or Azam at yalumni@yahoo.com or email ilham_ep@yahoo.com

Games we play..

2005-04-13T12:20:00.000+08:00

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 15th April 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Activities planned:
- Board Game (Things in the classroom)
- Basic phrases and sentences we use in a classroom situations.

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

singing when ur winning..

2005-04-10T17:00:00.000+08:00

hehe. here in ilham we kinda do a lot of fun activities. the approach that we take is kinda two pronged. we feel that by creating a more relaxed environment we can try to make the kids more comfortable to participate in the activities hence boosting their confidence in the long run.

enuff of the science bit..

last friday, we arranged the kids to learn a new song. this time round its that aged old and well heard song called the eensy weensy spider song. or itsy bitsy whatever u prefer. or even the malay version which i am surprised that even the abang-kakaks have never heard before.

what was the song about eh..

first we had the kids read the lyrics that keena have conveniently printed out. then we proceeded to tell what was the whole song all about. there were some new words that needed to be explained. we also came up with that dance to make the thing more interesting. luckily for u guys that u weren't there to see me dance the jig. hehe.

whats this, a fan!

anyways, after the preparation was done. we had the kids sing the song out loud, all set with their action and all.

now do the dance eh..

all together now..

twas all round good fun i think.

pics were a bit classic coz azam wanted to be artistic la kan..

the moral of the story?

2005-04-04T17:53:00.000+08:00

okay, last friday's activity was a bit different. a clash in the timetable meant that we only had the standard 4 kids with us while the standard 5 kids had to do BM. anyways jannah prepared something for the kids. the theme was learning new words through a story. she came up with this surprise birthday thingy with some sea animals.

and the turtle came with the crab..

then the kids had to tell the story based on their understanding to the faci's. this was all good until we came to the part where we asked the kids, what was the moral of the story. moral tu ape bang? oh okay.

cue a lengthy explanation on some of the terms in the stories which were kinda foreign to the kids. surprise, secret, moral. but it was all good fun i guess.

where does this one go?

moral tu ape ek bang?

Another Story Session?

2005-03-31T16:50:00.000+08:00

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 1st April 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Activities planned:
- Movie outing (Sharing Exeperience)
- Starfish' Surprise Birthday Party
(Story telling using flashcards)

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

test, test, this is a test..

2005-03-27T01:41:00.000+08:00

okay, friday night we had the big test for the kiddies. Naz had prepared some questions based on what we had done for the past six weeks. what started off as a serious 'exam like' thing became a more relax session with the kids being able to ask for guidance from the abang and the kakaks.

what was the answer again?

some of the boys did pretty well, hehe full marks and all. but some made careless mistakes here and there. hopefully they will improve as time progresses

checking the answers..

after the test we had a sorta like review of how the kids felt about the whole program. the favourite word for the night is 'gembira'. hehe well we were all glad to be of some help.

cake for the kiddies..

anyways its off to the movies on sunday.

Map to Ilham..

2005-03-25T08:25:00.000+08:00

For a larger version, go to http://anakyatimttdi.tripod.com/ and click on "Hubungi Kami" Link

Check it out!

2005-03-22T18:37:00.000+08:00

Details of our next IEP @ Rumah Ilham, TTDI are as below:

Friday, 25th March 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Activities planned:
- Holiday homework
- IEP Test
- Setting up Ilham English Corner

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

Come Join Us!

how do you describe a...

2005-03-12T11:22:00.000+08:00

... monkey? what colour is a monkey? how many hands and legs does a monkey have? what does a monkey like to eat? does a monkey have a short or long tail?

this was what we did with adik2 ilham last night.. Keena prepared some words on animals and games i.e. monkey, elephant, turtle etc and badminton, rugby, basketball etc and we asked adik2 to describe these animals/games in their own words.

at first i wrote the words on the board and keena started drawing.. after a complete picture of a girrafe, we kinda switched roles ;op hehehe.. but even after switching roles with keena, somehow we still got the kids confused - zafiq said my monkey had a beak!! hahahah (and i thought it looked more like homer simpson than a 'bird' with a 'beak'..) heheheh oh well - maybe kakak2 & abang2 should go for drawing classes huh?

i was happy to see the adik2 holding a dictionary each to themselves.. a few of them were 'racing' with each other, looking for the words to describe these animals/games so that they can tell us the answers!! i hope they will make it a habit to refer to dictionaries whenever they're stuck on a word :o)

Keena also prepared some homework for them to do during the holidays - and knowing the boys, if the work is from Kak Keena, mestilah buat punya!! hehe at least there's a motivation there for the boys ;o) well done Keena for the preps!! :o)

also, it was good to see new faces last night.. hope you guys will drop by more often in the future!!

thanks for a great night with the kids..

one more before we break!!

2005-03-10T19:17:00.000+08:00

There'll be 1 more session before adik2 ilham break for school holidays!!

Details of next session are as below:

Friday, 11th March 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Activities planned:

- Describing pictures to strengthen and improve their vocabulary
- Concentrating on their spelling skills as well

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

See you there!

sing song sing along..

2005-03-07T16:37:00.000+08:00

We had our last IEP session before the school break last friday. At first we wanted to do some sort of recap of last week's story telling bit, but it turned out that most of the kids conveniently forgot to their assignment. After a stern (not la that stern i think, i dunno i 'conveniently' arrived a bit late) telling off by kak sheri the kids were all intent in making up for it in this week's session.

Eyeda started off by jotting the lyrics to this one song on the whiteboard. The song was quite the hit back then in the Kindergarden Hot 100 list. Its the 'little teapot' song. Anyways, we started with just a simple reading of the lyrics, making sure the kids were able to understand the whole thing.

Then we decided to split the kids into two groups. One group, Sharkawi and the Zebras, and the other one, The Best Boys. Then we had a little Rumah Ilham Idol showdown with the groups singing and showing off their moves.

At the end of the day, the judges were united in picking Sharkawi and The Zebras as the winner.

After that the roles were reversed when we had the abangs and the kakaks facilitators to show off their singing skills.

The kakaks won this showdown hands down.

graaaarrrrr!!

2005-02-27T08:56:00.000+08:00

We had a story-telling session with adik2 Ilham last Friday. Ana (Acat's kid sister) a.k.a Z' Great Story Teller and her assistant Acat a.k.a Z' Big Bad Wolf (grraaarrr!) got all the adik2 mesmerised with their act..

Half-way through:
"So, adik2 what house did the first pig build?", Ana asking adik2 - to test their listening and understanding skills. "Kak Ana, build to apa?", Qawi a.k.a Comel asked.

We realised then,what was to us simple words were actually difficult for the Adik2.. so we slowed down the pace a little and made sure they understood the whole story.

At the end:
We left them with some keywords - "OK Adik2, make sure you copy down the bubbled words and find their meanings in Malay for next week, OK!", Keena announced to them..

We then had an 'Auntie Anne's' yum, yum session, courtesy of Keena - thanks babe!

Can't wait for the next session!
Last session before Adik2 break for school holidays..

come and join the FUN!

2005-02-23T16:40:00.000+08:00

As part of the adik2 ilham's request, we will try to organise weekly IEP activities with them.

Details of next session are as below:
Friday, 25th February 2005
8:30 - 10:00 pm
Rumah Ilham, Pinggiran TTDI

Activities planned:
- Spelling test
- Storytelling session
- Setting up of English Corner @ Ilham

Please feel free to contact any of us at ilham_ep@yahoo.com

We welcome all the support from YOU!

come and check it out..

a fresh start..

2005-02-21T11:07:00.000+08:00

i've always wanted to join these type of programs, but time constraints and the perceived notion that i had a life before meant that i never got the chance. now it seems that fate has given me the opportunity to do what i have always wanted.

the kids here at ilham are all very eager. i'd like to think that in one way or the other these kids will be more enriched from their interactions with us. granted that its not always fun and games. we want to instill some sort of basic grasp of the language while at the same time trying to help build their confidence.

anyways, i have a feeling that this may be a start to more wonderful things to come.

Win, Lose or Draw!

2005-02-18T23:48:00.000+08:00

We had our second session of IEP 2005 tonight. Adik2 ilham were eager for another fun-like activity and were all ready to go when we arrived there!

We started off with some group revision on 'self-introduction' and then continued with 'Win, Lose or Draw' game.

After a few rounds, we could now gauge their level of English understanding and will plan for the next activity accordingly.

We are planning to separate them into two groups in the future.

So, tonight, the winner group received a present from us - a set of boardgame called 'The Gallows' which is similar to 'Hangman'. On the other hand, the group that lost had to present to us a song - 'live'. Glad to say, they were very sporting and were willingly entertaining us with their song 'bintang2 berkedipan' ;o)

The Adik2 are requesting us to have IEP sessions on a weekly basis instead of on a fortnightly basis - are we able to?

No promises there, but we'll try!!

That's what I told adik2 ilham tonight..

The Ice Breaking

2005-02-04T23:30:00.000+08:00

Today was the kick-start session of IEP 2005.

Many of us were there - myself, Zaki, Acat, Sherrie, Elya, Keena, Dana, Adita, Azam, Chey and Jai (hope i didn't miss out anyone) and we had 7 adik2 ilham with us - Zafiq, Hasif, Azlan, Shamsu, Azwan, Hafiz and Qawi from primary 4 & 5..

All 7 were shy young gentlemen...

To break the ice - we asked them to draw a self-potrait and exchange it with their friends. Then in pairs they had to take turns and ask each other some background questions like: "What is your name? Where are you from? How old are you? etc...

We were very happy with their participation - it was amazing to see how they put aside their shyness to impress their abang2 & kakak2 there!

Then we continued with a game of charades - adik2 were given a card with an occupation written on it. They were required to act out the occupation so that the others can guess..

We had a lot of fun watching them acting it out and also trying to guess who they were.

We then ended the session with a short spelling test and of course SUPPER!!

Thanks for Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)

It's finger licking good!

Our 1st Meeting!

2005-01-25T22:00:00.000+08:00

We all met up over coffee to chit-chat and discuss on our future plans for IEP 2005.

I was happy to see the commitment my fellow friends/volunteers had towards making our IEP kick-start session a success. Everyone was throwing ideas - brilliant ones too!

"Let's do a book-drive to collect books for the kids and let's bring them out for movie outings! Why don't we gauge their level of English first? How can we monitor their progress?" and so on..

After all the brainstorming, we then decided that for a start, we will concentrate on the primary school kids first & expand as and when needed.

Two heads are definitely better than one!!

Thanks for all your inputs and cooperation..

Who Are We?

2005-01-11T22:00:00.000+08:00

We are volunteers helping orphans from Rumah Ilham @ Pinggiran Taman Tun Dr Ismail to improve their command in English Language via various classroom and outdoor activities.

Currently they are 56 boys in the orphanage studying in primary 4 to secondary 5.

We have our Ilham English Program (IEP) Sessions once every 2 weeks - typically on Friday evenings from 8.30pm to 10.00pm.

We are linked to Rumah Ilham Volunteers Group (refer to Rumah Ilham YahooGroups! or Rumah Ilham Blogspot) and currently still expanding.

If you are interested to know more about IEP or would like to volunteer, please feel free to email us at: ilham_ep@yahoo.com

'Ilham' in English means 'Inspiration'..

This blog is created for us to share our 'Ilham' or 'Inspiring' experiences with you!!