Grade 3 EFL Class

All my students were pretty enthusiastic about our decision making discussion.

To trigger their thinking we watched a video and discussed what was new for us in the video and what we learned.

After that we read a story that gave us some food for thought and discussed the decisions and actions of the main character. We talked about how one decision leads to another and why it is so important to think before we act and others are affected. 

Since moral values dictate our decision making process, I also thought that fables could be excellent to provoke discussions as the "moral of the story" is stated there very clearly. I may try to use fables next week.

In order to summarize all the thinking my students created a concept map that would show how one decision triggers another. My students had a choice of using the story we read for creating the concept map or they could use their own life experience as an example.

The bell rang when our concept maps were mostly ready. Next week we will share and discuss our maps. I am really looking forward to this class as I observed some of my students using their own life experiences and I can’t wait to hear their stories.

Kim Veng  and the  concept map he created. We will learn what it is all about on Monday.

Welcome Back to School!

I was looking forward to seeing all my students! 
Our first English as Foreign Language class on Friday with Grade 3 was truly special. All my students were bubbling with enthusiasm and eagerly shared their summer experiences and plans for the new year. We all met the new students and participated in fun team building activities. My kids had to draw their self portraits, describe themselves with 3 words and share what their favourite activity is.

The End of the Year Celebration

We had a fabulous year! Our learning journey with Grade 2 and 3 was full of wonderings and discoveries, challenges and fun. We learned about the world and people around us. We became better friends, effective communicators, principled and caring community members.

With every learning curve we realized that life is full of amazing and wonderful experiences and our learning adventure is never-ending and fascinating!

We will continue our inquiry process during this summer and then later in Grades 3 and 4. The best thing is that we are not alone in exploring the world around us - we are together with our parents, friends and teachers!

We are ready for Grade 3!!

Yes, we are a fantastic team!

Jade's chocolate cake was definitely the highlight of out  Gr 3 EAL party!

ENJOY YOUR SUMMER HOLIDAYS!!!

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. 

We all had a week long holiday and came back to school relaxed, full of impressions and ready for learning and having fun with friends and teachers.

In Class Support

Both Grade 2 and Grade 3 started their new units. It is one of the most exciting phases of the inquiry process, as our students share their wonderings with us about the theme of the unit.
In Grade 2 we began to discuss food as a resource. We began introducing our students to the new vocabulary of the unit and I prepared several activities for the whole class. In order to set the mood and give our students some food for thought we watched a video about World Hunger and Food Waste. A meaningful discussion took place after we finished watching the video. The targeted language was used again and again during this discussion. After that the children were involved in a cooperative learning activity. I chose six new words to focus on and all the students worked in six groups. Each group received cards with the word and definition and the word and image. The task was to discuss the cards with their parters and on an A4 sheet of paper write down the various connections they could make and come up with several wonderings. We worked in mixed ability groups and EELs had plenty of support from their peers. In the end of the session we shared our connections and wonderings with the rest of the class, while sitting in a circle on the carpet. We all enjoyed the activities and all the students had multiple opportunities to construct their understanding of the new words and practice the new language of the unit.

Kim Veng, Lukas and Erika were learning together.

Alicia actively participated in the discussion when learning with and from her peers.

While planning together with the Grade 3 team we decided to do the Color Symbol Image thinking routine with our students. Following Kath Murdock's recommendations we asked each student to complete his or her own CSI chart. The word in focus was PERFORMING. In the end of the session we all had a chance to share our thinking and perceptions with the rest of the class. This class was very insightful and we learned a lot about each other. For some people dancing was flowing like blue water and for others dancing was like hot red lava. Our Grade 3 kids came up with fascinating and wonderful symbols some of them common and some of them quite unique.

Yubin chose a yellow color for PERFORMING because yellow is a happy color.

Sharing in Miss Lisa's class was a great time for teamwork and even the shy team members spoke.

EFL Classes

In our EFL classes we began the week with reflecting on our holiday. My ELLs had to recollect their holiday experiences, plan their writing, write about their holiday and illustrate their writing.

We also began to think about our units and create concept maps and discuss our prior knowledge.

On Earth Day we listened to a podcast about water pollution and answered comprehension questions. 

EAL Beginners

We continued reading books  and developing our literacy skills in a small group of EELs. 

We discussed the main idea of the book and the importance of the author's message. My students practiced making connections to the unit theme, reading out loud and giving reasons for their opinion. 

We also enjoyed retelling the story at the end of the class and were proud that we remembered all the characters. 

Our plan for the next session is to make puppets and act out the story.