Interview of Teacher Manimala A/P Supramaniah, SK St. George 1, Taiping. One of the schools participating the Rotary Club of Penang's Improved Langueage Learning project.
Teacher Manimala have been running the program with preschool and standard one students since beginning of the program. Her classes are multi-ethnic where pupils mother tongue can be Malay, Tamil or Chinese.
"Through this program I have seen daily basis how my pupils are improving their ability to use English as communication language" She explains the immediate impact. "Compared earlier we just use normal teaching methods. Now we introduced the play based classroom sessions, I can see development in their cognitive skills, thinking skills and creativity, Clear improvement".
Mrs. Manimala tells she has learn new skills herself through this program. Earlier she was practicing the trditional teacher centered teaching methods. Now when she has learned how to student centric learning works in practice, she can use the new skills in other subjects too.
Her pupils really love this new approach and using the digital tools. "My kids really want to do this. They ask us to prepare more playful lessons! We as teachers can see they are really interested to do the tasks in the program."
Other modern teaching skills she have learnt through the program are methods like flipped learning, spaced learning, immersion, scaffolding and modelling. The program has helped to learn these skills in very practical way - with "learning by doing" method.
Teacher Manimala have only one suggestion how to improve the program: "Now we have run this to preschool and standard one only. If possible, please extend this so we can continue at least until standard three level."
