Eye of the Liger: Liger Literacy

I realize that I usually post about the more general experiences that we have in Cambodia: observations, meals, trips, etc., and not too often about the kids. Since the students are the reason why we are here, I will try and give you a little glimpse into some of the teaching and learning that has been going on since returning from break. I sometimes struggle with the clash between the public nature of a blog and the private lives of our young students, so I will not provide names alongside the work samples.

Since returning from holiday, my literacy program has really hit its stride. I have between 10 and 13 students in each group (three rotating groups), for two hour-and-forty-five-minute blocks per week. So, for example, I have the same 13 kids on Mon/Tues mornings, and a different group on Thurs/Fri afternoons. JoJo is my eternally optimistic and incredibly dedicated intern, who has been working with me off and on (mostly on) since the start of the year.

Each literacy session is held in our colorful and inviting library, and begins with a group circle where we answer the question of the day. This opportunity to share is a chance for students to focus on and think creatively about something that they may never have been asked before. The questions range from: "If you could be a fruit, which one would you be?" to "If you could give your parents one gift, what would it be?" The answers, of course, range from serious and thoughtful to impulsive and silly. It is a great oral language exercise as well, because we always have the students start off with a sentence stem in English. Even if they are only repeating, "If I was a fruit, I would be a" and then shifting into Khmer, at least they are getting used to speaking in English in front of other students.

It's also a great teaching opportunity for me and JoJo. I mean, even with those two above questions, which may seem straightforward, we have to explain the difference between eating a fruit and BEing a fruit. And the word 'gift' has a lot of meanings, so are we limited to only material gifts? We have to get creative in our explanations as we don't have translation much of the time.

Some of the responses to the shares can get pretty introspective and rather symbolic of where these kids come from.

If you could give your parents one gift, what would it be?
-"love, because they always love me"
-"a big house"
-"a phone so they can call me anytime"
-"a birthday party with a big cake"

The phone response prompted an investigation into whether or not there is a working phone at this child's house. It was determined that his mother has a cell phone, but the battery is either broken or always running out, so she often has to call from a friend or neighbor's phone. We are currently in the process of getting a working phone for this family.

What law would you enact if you were the Cambodian Prime Minister?
-"I do not like the way the streets are so crowded, so I would make the rule that no one can park their car or moto on the street, but only on the sides (sidewalk, but they don't have consistent sidewalks here). Also, anyone selling something has to do it back from the road so that all the cars can go by faster and make less traffic."
-"I would outlaw all drugs and also would not let Cambodia sell drugs to other countries."
-"Everyone would always need to wear a helmet, no matter the time of day. Even babies."

It has been such a great start to each morning or afternoon to hear these responses.

Next comes the read aloud. I have been so focused on our students learning to read in English that I have not been reading out loud to them with the frequency that I would if I were a second or third grade teacher in the U.S.. So far we have read a few fairy tales together, including Little Red Riding Hood, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Goldilocks, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Gingerbread Man and Sleeping Beauty. These read alouds have also served to introduce our students to the English books in the library, so they will be more likely to choose to read them on their own at a later time.

After our whole group portion, the students usually break up into small group rotations: individual reading groups with me, sight word practice with JoJo and silent reading. This week I have been assessing sight word recognition and doing new running records to determine each child's reading level, so things have been a little different. After the rotations, JoJo begins a whole group project with the kids, while I go and pull different reading groups from Nica's class (our primary goal is for each student to get explicit reading instruction at their level every single day - unfortunately this means they get pulled out of technology sometimes).

Last week JoJo decided to introduce a 'scribble story' to the kids as their project, and it has been a major success. She drew a little scribble on a small piece of paper and each student got one. They then glued the scribble into their notebook in whichever orientation they wanted, and from the scribble, extrapolated a picture. They then had to write a story that matched their drawing -- they could write in either Khmer or English. I didn't expect that all the students would be so engaged in such an open-ended task, but for the most part, they have worked intently since the first day. My lowest group in terms of English speaking, reading and writing skills (as well as general motivation, focus and fine motor skills) really surprised me with the quantity and quality of their work. Some of them wrote up to two notebook pages in Khmer and their pictures have all been incredibly neat and detailed.

I went through the student notebooks today for the first time since they began their stories, and while some kids are not finished, the three below were too good not to share.

The first one is from a girl who writes about a farmer and his carrot. You can see the original scribble is the right side of the carrot, starting at the stem and curving down to the grass. I love this one because this girl writes the exact same way she talks.

Below is a story about a fish and Max, one of our interns. I love it because I could totally see this student and Max hitting the water for some fishing. They seem like a very compatible duo. Also, the quotations just make it... The scribble is the lower half of the big fish's jaw down into the beginning of his tail.

Below is a story written by one of our day students, who is a very precocious and sassy little girl. I love the way she turned her picture into a comic strip, despite it's rather phallic tooth (as Jeff was eager to point out). I think the initial scribble is the left half of the tooth. I also appreciate her story because it's relevant to her recent experience -- all the students visited the dentist at least once over the course of a couple weeks and many students had extractions.

Other than that, we are constantly pushing sight words (words like there, who and every that cannot be sounded out, but rather need to be memorized as they are exceptions to phonetic rules) and moving the students through the reading levels. Unfortunately, I continue to run into the problem of having access to culturally appropriate texts in English, at the students' current levels.

For example, today I was doing running records and the two books that I was heavily relying on were so contextual and vocabulary based that it didn't even seem fair to use them. The first one was called The Zoo and the text read: "A lion." "A tiger." "A bear." "A wolf." "An ape." "A chimp." And so on. Each page was accompanied by a photo of the animal. Most kids got through the first three and then came to wolf and looked at me like they had no idea what it was. There are no wolves in Cambodia. Same for ape and chimp. A few just went for "monkey," but others knew that was incorrect based on the first letter sound. I can safely assume that more than 90% of same-aged peers in the U.S. would have used the pictures and their knowledge of animal names and read through the whole thing correctly, even without looking at the words.

The second book was almost worse. It was called Let's Make a Sandwich. First of all, Cambodians do not eat sandwiches. They do not typically eat cold cuts or bread. Even when I read the title for them, they were still at a huge disadvantage when it came to words like lettuce, tomatoes, bread and slice. Again, this text would have been simple for the average first or second grader in the U.S. because of their background and experience, but it was very challenging for my kids.

The other thing that I am constantly coming up against is a lack of phonetic ability. Cambodian government schools do not teach strategies like sounding out, stretching sounds, tapping sounds, looking for smaller words inside bigger words, etc. They teach by dictation and memorization. My kids are still dependent on this method, to their detriment. At this point they all know their letter sounds, but continue to have a difficult time breaking up unfamiliar words and instead just say "what?!" or "I don't know!"

Despite all the challenges, our students have come such a long way in all their literacy skills. It is so exciting to watch them grow in their confidence and ability. Below are more pictures of some of the things we have done in literacy, and just some random fun ones of the kids.

The set of four below is the result of a discussion after reading the book How Things Move. I challenged the kids to list other ways that people can move that were not portrayed in the book. At first, the students were very hesitant and limited to their Khmer. Once I introduced the white board and drew a few ideas myself, they went wild. Thankfully they are much better artists than me -- if I was forced to communicate through drawings I would be in a lot of trouble...