Writing skill for weaker class using peer mentoring and scaffolding technique

The Problem

 Most of the students especially in a weaker class had problem writing essay and this effects their
academic performance as essay question usually holds the highest allocation of mark in
examination. As a result of this issue, more than 50% of the students in 4 Al-Mawardi class were
not able to gain higher than 6 out of 20 marks for language in Directed Writing section of their
Test 1 results.
 These students are in Form 4 (16 years old) and they live in pre-dominantly Malay community
who worked with average salary of RM3000 or below per family.

Root Cause

 English is not the native language of these students.

 Students didn’t come to upper form with the required knowledge aligned by the syllabus of the
Ministry of Education (Most of them didn’t gain credit/pass Pentaksiran Tingkatan 3 (PT3) for
English Language subject.
 Students still didn’t feel safe to practise speaking in English as they are afraid that they will make
mistakes and being laughed at by their peers. This situation seems to be holding the ability of the
students to improve and practise using this language.
 As a result, students are afraid to speak out in class if they didn’t understand any
part of the lesson.
 Students seem to only show the reaction of understanding the task or content
that they learned in the class as they are afraid that they will be criticised by their
other peers. This situation got worse however as they were not able to
successfully answer or create an essay individually during examination.
 I would focus on this root cause as I will have the peers themselves become a
mentor for their other friends.

Your Strategy / Solution

 Peer mentoring:
 7 mentors were chosen based on their marks for essay question in Test 1 (1 out
of these 7 mentors actually gain low mark for his essay but he has consistently
show his eagerness and ability to guide others. He will be my next case study to
test whether his new role as a mentor will help to improve his essay mark in the
next examination. As for during the lesson, he was paired with another mentor
who gain higher mark in Test 1).
  A short meeting was held prior to the lesson to ensure the mentors are well
aware about the flow and task that will be conducted during the lesson.

 Mentors were given freedom to pick the peers that they will mentor during their
lesson (based on their strength and ability to guide the other students).
 Each mentor has the responsibility to guide 3-4 mentees during the lesson.

 Scaffolding technique:
 Students were given a sample of SPM formatted question for Directed Writing.

 Students were asked to recall the format of the essay asked by the question.
 Sample of simple format for an ARTICLE:
 Title
 Writer’s name
 Introduction  transfer info from the question
 Body paragraphs  from the brainstorming and writing paragraph
activity
 Conclusion  Finally, I hope you will listen to my advice
 Students were asked to divide themselves in the class into 4 sections.
 In each section, there will be at least one mentor who will guide the others for the
following activities:
 Brainstorm ideas based on a point using 5W1H
 Build a paragraph based on the brainstormed ideas
  The following resources were pasted on the wall for the students to refer (these
resources were given as most of them have poor level of vocabulary):

 The following scaffolded hand-out were given to help the students in writing their
paragraph.

 Once everyone from the 4 sections managed to write one full paragraph about
their point, they will go back to their original group were they will eventually have
4 different body paragraphs for their essay.
 Mentors will guide the students
 Explain how you have incorporated technology in this strategy, or how you would
incorporate it in the future. You may write about how you would use existing
technology if you had access to it, or if you could create a new app/programme.
 Provide resources that other teachers can use to implement this strategy.
 Add link here

Outcomes

 Students were more comfortable to ask questions from their peers as compared to the teacher.
Students commonly refused from asking questions in the class as they were afraid that they will
be laughed at by their peers. This approach help them to feel less pressure as they were able to
ask questions about content of the lesson that they don’t understand in a smaller group.

 Provide evidence of students' personal/social growth and/or academic achievement

(mindset/knowledge-based). Evidence of your strategies can be in any relevant format (eg.
student work, student results (SAPS), student attendance sheets, video recordings). You may
submit up to 5 pieces of evidence.
 Add link here

Impact

 Describe how this strategy has transformed your students. Aside from the direct outcomes from
implementing the strategy, what other evidence of impact do you observe? Please align your
answer to the TFM Student Vision and Student Learning Vision (i.e. How has the strategy
impacted your students in the aspects of voice, value and capability? How has the strategy
impacted your students in the aspects of growth, goals and strategy?)
 (For Teaching Alumni) How has this strategy influenced other teachers in your school?