ELC Reading Club#7 - The Witches Combining Intellectual and Fun Elements through Extensive Reading

        The English Language Centre held the seventh reading club online on 22 July 2022. As usual, this event was sponsored by the Tan Sri Yeoh Tiong Lay & Puan Sri Tan Kai Yong Aided ELC Teachers & Students Training Charitable Fund. It is conducted based on a storybook from the Roald Dahl’s series - The Witches.

        The book, which was published in 1983, won The New York Times Outstanding Books Award, The Federation of Children's Book Groups Award, and The Whitbread Award. The children’s fantasy was also ranked number 81 among the all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal and was listed under the 100 most influential novels by The BBC. 

        The reading club was held online via Google Meet and was joined by 82 students and 3 teachers. The event started after Miss Shyne gave a short introduction of the book. The presenters of the day were two Junior Three students, Amos Wong Shi Yi and Dominic Lim Yi Shen from J3 Melbourne. Together with the participants, they embarked on a spooky journey of witchcraft and wizardry. 

A mos and Dominic started off by giving the audience a brief summary of the story and eventually moved on to the introduction of some of the important characters of the book. They also took turns to share with the audience what they found interesting about the characters as well as the plot. Not only that, the presenters also asked a lot of questions to encourage the audience to take part in the sharing session. It was fun to see the participants actively exchanging their opinions on the story, moral values and interesting phrases which they had picked up from the book. 

        Most of the participants that evening came from Mrs. Siow’s and Miss Jhanani’s classes. They are English teachers who have recently conducted a mini project on the story book. Their students had to either borrow the story book from the school library or purchase it from ELC. They then read the book, came up with a review and attended this reading club. Both of the teachers agreed that incorporating the reading club into classroom teaching and learning provides in-depth learning opportunities for their students. “Students got to read the book, write a book review and then have meaningful conversation with other readers about the book,” commented Mrs. Siow. Moreover, Miss Jhanani thought the sharing session was very well-conducted by Dominic and Amos. “The presenters did a wonderful job. They managed to make the session very interactive, inviting the participants for input from time to time. I personally had a lot of fun listening to all of them.” 

        The presenters described the experience of chairing the reading club as fruitful. Amos and Dominic agreed that they gained a lot out of this event. “We got to learn how to make effective PowerPoint presentations, which is very useful,” said Amos. In addition, the participants thought the session was meaningful as they got to come together and talk about the same story which they had read beforehand. 

        The reading club ended with a fun mini quiz in which the participants were to answer some questions correctly as fast as they could. The winners of the night were Hoh Hong Zou, Leong Zhen Shuen, Lim Luo Shan and See Sheng Tien from S1 Melbourne as well as Khoo Xi Yu from S2 Toronto. They were given Roald Dahl’s books as prizes.

《兴华月报》2022年7月号
http://www.hinhua.edu.my/ebook/2207hinhuamonthly/mobile/index.html