In Class Support

Grade 2

Next week our big Grade 2 team will go to the MooMoo Farm to learn about how milk is produced. This week we were getting ready for our field trip. The classroom teachers prepared an article from the Phnom Penh Post for the students to read. The article was about the successful beginning of a new milk farm managed by two former missionaries. 

My ELLs had to read the article, answer the questions and be ready to re-tell the most important facts. After reading together and discussing the challenging vocabulary, we answered questions prepared by the classroom teachers and practiced selecting important facts. I chose to do mind maps with some of my students to make sure they would have a scaffold to rely on when they have to discuss the article or present the important facts in class.

We had a shared writing session and after discussing passages of the article my students practiced selecting keys words and phrases. I modeled paraphrasing the language of the article for my students and they all had a chance to try this strategy on their own.  Finally our mind map was created and quickly we retold the article using our scaffold.

Miss Courtney girls created fabulous mind maps.

We also continued developing our comprehension skills and read more RAZ books with my Grade 2 students this week.

Jennifer, Rachael, Sak and Visal enjoyed reading a story together and discussing it.

In Class Support

Grade 3

My grade 3 students had a great week full of rehearsals and performances. We were all learning from various online performances and from each other. Practicing giving feedback and reflecting on our mistakes was an important part or our classes.

In Miss Claire's class an exciting session of Readers Theatre took place. Our students worked in mixed ability groups and after practicing for a while had to perform in front of the whole class. I worked with a group of boys and we had to get ready to perform a Native American story about the Navajo People and how they learned to weave rugs.

The players were very creative, trying their best and coping without any props. Minato enthusiastically worked with everybody else and was loud while saying his part.

All the efforts were not in vain and the audience cheered and clapped when the boys finished performing.

Bravo Boys!!

EFL Classes

Grade 2

In my FL classes I was also supporting my students in understanding the process of milk production. We talked about cows and their body parts, about the technology that is used in the milking process and about hygiene. The Study Ladder slides were very helpful and after watching and discussing them I offered my students a sequencing activity and they had to arrange pictures with the steps of the milking process in the correct order and present it to the group. During this week my students had several opportunities to practice using the academic language of the unit and all of them were keen to share the learned facts or wonderings. Next week we will continue to focus on milk production.

Grade 3

With my Grade 3 students we focused on performing and reading strategies. One of my classes this week was devoted to playing charades. My students did not know what charades were. I showed them a video and we discussed the rules of the game. Then they all chose partners and had a chance to consult with each other while getting ready for the final performance. Each student pulled a card with the task from the basket.

We all had so much fun and all my ELLs were very creative using body language and facial expressions.

Jade was very expressing showing us a dancing charade.

Minato showed us how to read a book

"Jack and the Beanstalk" was the theme of another class this week. I showed my students a brief cartoon to refresh their memory of the story.  We also watched how other young players are performing readers theatre plays. We have 9 students in our group and there are 9 characters in the Jack and the Beanstalk readers theatre learning engagement. We pulled our parts from the hat and started practicing. I am sure next week we will have a fabulous performance!!

Watching some students of the same age performing and then discussing the strategies

Miss Boramey our new EAL TA helped us practice!

EAL Support Grade 2

This week all my grade 2 EAL students had to complete the WIDA test. It was a lot of work for my students, but the results are really excellent and it it is very exciting for me to observe my students' growth.

During the EFL classes we read several books about staple crops and grains. My Grade 2 ELLs focused on comprehension activities and we practiced drawing conclusions, identifying important facts and making connections. We also had a Think-Pair-Share session, where the children had to discuss and compare how rice, oats and wheat are grown.

KimVeng, Hailey, Alicia and Maly presented their findings about how rice is grown.

EAL in Grade 3

During in-class EAL support with my Grade 3 ELLs we enjoyed creating limericks and performing them for the rest of the class. At first my students were not sure that they could create their own limerick, but after a couple of attempts they became very confident and had a lot of fun discussing characters and making sure their limericks made the others smile.

Miss Michelle's students creating limericks.

In EFL class we read books about performing and created shadow puppet skits.

Sofia, Thomas and Rothida performed a short story about a dog, a bird and a butterfly.

Jan and Minato are performing.

We also discussed the fact that only 15% of communication is verbal and the rest we understand from facial expressions and body language. My students thought it was an important piece of information for them as performers.

We also read a book about stage fright and learned about strategies to overcome it.

My Grade 3 ELLs discussing how to overcome stage fright.

EAL Beginners

Both of my groups of beginners continued to work hard developing their reading and thinking skills, discussing characters and analyzing their actions, predicting events and discussing the main idea of the story. 

Alicia and Hailey are the leaders in the group.

Reading books together and discussing them is fun!

One more week just flew by and as always it was full of great activities and amazing learning.

G2 In Class Support

Hailey in Miss Courtney's class is learning about where rice grows.

Our Grade 2 students are learning about staple crops. Living in South-East Asia and in Cambodia provides us a lot of opportunities to learn about rice. Our kids demonstrated a lot of curiosity and asked many questions about rice and how it is grown. All those questions guided our research and all the children created very informative posters about rice. I had to support the ELLs and some mainstream students through this project developing their research, communication and thinking skills. We were learning new vocabulary, and practiced using it during big and small group discussions. 

Sak is creating his poster about rice in Miss Anita's room.

Samir and Sorriaj are learning about rice and other grains in Miss Karyn's room.

G3 In Class Support

The activity of this week was the running dictation of limericks. Our G3 students had to work in pairs - one student ran up to the limerick display, memorized a line from the limerick and ran back to their partner to dictate it. Next they had to practice performing the limericks in front of the whole class. We all enjoyed a bit of running but mostly performing with our friends. Speaking, reading, listening, writing skills were practiced during this great learning experience.

Yubin and Dahee are practicing their limerick.

Jade and Mahin are practicing their limerick.

EFL Classes

In my EFL classes, the G2 students were creating mind maps and discussing RAZ books related to our unit "food as a resource" theme.  We had discussions about how and where crops grow. We read several non-fiction books and learned how to extract interesting and important facts from the text.

My G3 ELLs watched several videos with performances and produced a concept map about what performance is. We also listened to a podcast about sea turtles and my students had to create a skit in groups. The message of the performance was to protect sea turtles. My students were very excited during the activity and most of the skits were very successful.