About BLP

Blossoms Literacy Project (BLP)

- based on Montessori teaching of English
o e.g.: start with 3 letter words > short vowels > long vowels > more
difficult words/sounds
o Scaffolded development of vocabulary
- Focus on sounds, phonics
- Focus on reading
o Students w/ 0 abc skills, 123
o Emergent readers: >100 words (graded readers early stage)
o Functional: >600 words (short stories)
o Independent: >1200 words (newspapers)
- Students under the BLP should be able to read a newspaper in 3 years
- 100% success rate (All students are from shelter homes and below 12
years old)
- CSR based
- 4-6 hours a week
o 0 to Functional in 6 months.
o 1:10 teacher student ratio
- BLP currently developing its structure
- Concept:
o Parenting education teacher as parent
Make the student feel valued
o Societal Responsibility duty, commitment
- Stringent testing for volunteer:
o TKT (Teacher knowledge training)
o Training programs
o Competency testb
- Proper testing & invigilators
- Grammar worksheets and CDs worksheets provided
o A lot of media/videos/graphics used in class
- Build the background knowledge about every word you see in the book.
(schemata)
- books written by the founder herself (Miss Andal)
- better suited for shelter homes (in contrast to the noisy chaotic
classrooms in school)
- Focused on developing literacy rather than syllabus-based
- Uses trackers, rubrics to track students growth, pre-test, post-test
- We (Fellows) are encouraged to share our LPs and materials (with the BLP
people)
o To be shared in educational conferences
o Is needed around the world
o Copyright, credit and authorship is respected
o Compile through a cloud based storage (Box)
o Rachel to lead?
o There is a possibility to receive financial income from this

Pedagogical skills taught by Miss Andal

Blooms Taxonomy
- We should base all our materials/LPs on this / make reference to Blooms
Taxonomy
- Knowledge from what we write/textbook materials
- Comprehension use multiple intelligences to demonstrate students
understanding
o E.g.: Ss write a song about a science topic
- Blooms Taxonomy Revised
o Creating
o Evaluating
o Analysing
o Applying
o Understanding
o Remembering

Advice for teaching:

- We should use problem-based learning more often
- Also try out Portfolio building: students compile their work and be proud
of it

Cognitive, Attitude/Affect, Psychomotor (CAP) A.K.A. Attitude Skills

Knowledge (ASK) A.K.A Head Hand Heart (3H):
- Areas of development: cognitive, affect/attitude, psychomotor
- These are fundamental skills/areas to develop which we should always
have in our objectives / lessons

How to use?
- Word list = activities to be done by the students
o We as teachers are supposed to translate those words for them
(working memory concept: dont overload the student by
introducing a new concept and a new vocab word at the same time)
E.g.: instead of using the word attempt, we say try.
E.g.: instead of asking the students to paraphrase the
sentence, we say, write the sentence in another way

o
Students then learn the concept (and the word at the same
time if the teacher has time to teach it through spelling and
pronunciation)

Structure of problem-based learning using the CAP

1. What kind of problems can I introduce to the class?
2. What materials & activities will resolve the problems
3. Using skills
a. What skills can be used? (see CAP word list)

E.g.:

Herman Brain dominance tool

- The way you learn is the way you ask questions
o #1 forbidden question: Do you understand?
Q&A session
1. What does the typical structure of a literacy session look like?
- Mainly reading and writing
- Important to use structured and graded books (using their books)
o Follow the Montessori system
- One to one instruction
- 90 minute class
o Straight into reading, 20 min.
o Some speaking, 20 min.
o Some writing, 20 min.
o Free reading, 20 min. (reading for enjoyment, using graded books)
Free reading is tracked
2. How do I use all 4 skills (read, write, speak, listen) in a literacy program?
- Similar to the above
3. How do I teach Problem Based Learning (PBL) when my students are really
weak?
- Try to use English as much as possible
- Translate only as a last resort
4. Can you recommend any books/syllabus that would be appropriate for
teenagers of standard 4 or higher literacy level?
- Dont use Singaporean books
- Such books are rare

5. How can we start a BLP in our schools neighbourhood?

- Find a passionate and committed neighbourhood leader

And then contact Miss Andal

6. How do we use BLP for our Initiatives?

- After school hours:
o Find volunteers ourselves
o Conduct classes ourselves
o Train the volunteers ourselves
o All of this, using the BLP syllabus which will be provided on request

7. Do you know any literacy syllabus that are both effective and easy enough
for a child to teach another child?
8. What are the minimal standards for implementing BLP?
a. No child is considered stupid
b. No child will be treated in a way which undermines their confidence
level
c. KPI: our students will have to go through their tests (conducted by
BLP staff)

*** camscanned docs

***power point slides