EAL Grade 3 In Class Support

In all three Grade 3 classrooms we chose to focus on the oral persuasive argument at the beginning of this week.

In Miss Claire's and Miss Lisa's rooms the children watched a video about Indonesian children working on tobacco plantations.

Miss Claire's students took notes while watching the video.

In order to better understand the problems raised in the video, our students formed small (4 students) discussion groups. The teachers assigned roles for each child, a parent, a tobacco boss and an NGO worker, to every member of the group. Then all the "children", "parents", etc grouped up to discuss their arguments. After that, all the students returned to their small groups and started debating about rights and responsibilities.

Miss Lisa's class is warming up before the debate.

In Miss Michelle's class, the students had to think of a scenario that would illustrate a violation of children's rights and present a freeze frame. Pictures of the freeze frames were taken and printed out for the students to add speech balloons with their statements.

Samir, Moon Ju, Mia and Panaboth's freeze frame.

All the students enjoyed adding speech balloons to the photos of their freeze frames.

All the students were very engaged and found the activity interesting. In the end, three short debates took place and our students practiced arguing about child labor and discrimination.


EAL Grade 1 In Class Support

In Grade 1 we successfully resumed our reading rotations and continued our guided reading sessions.

Noel is making thoughtful predictions.

Reach, Somnang and Itthimun are making connections.

Our students also wrote a story about a fight with a friend and described their feelings.

We used the substitution table strategy when we wrote our story with Miss Carina's students.

Miss Rachelle's students finished their realistic fiction story drafts. The next step is to use the editing checklist and to revise the stories.

Riku was the first one to finish his draft.

Grade 3 EFL Class

The unit about children's rights is coming to the end. All our third graders have learned so much! I asked my ELL learners to reflect on the past six weeks, answer a couple of questions and share with the group what was the highlight of the unit for them. They had to express it in one sentence. My students mentioned the UN Convention of Children's Rights, various facts that they learned during our field trips and the guest speaker sessions.

Moon Ju wrote that she did not know that many children in the world did not have their rights and that she would like to help them.

Grade 3 In Class EAL Support

This week had an exciting beginning as our Grade 3 team began learning about homophones. I told my students that the word homophones came from the Greek language and homos means "same" and phone means "sound".

Our Students are listening to Miss Lisa introducing the concept of homophones.

Both in Miss Lisa's and in Miss Michelle's rooms we discussed homophones with our students and gave them a chance to practice using homophones. Our students had to complete sentences by choosing the correct word from the homophone pair. When all sentences were completed we discussed the challenging sentences and it turned out that several students learned several new words.

Next the students formed 4 small groups. Each group had a set of cards with homophone pairs. The task was to choose the most interesting pair from the pile and prepare a short mime skit for the rest of the class to guess what homophones they chose.

Xander's group is still choosing a pair of homophones to present.

In this group, the boys decided to present one pair of homophones and the girls chose a different pair.

When all the groups were ready we all came back to the carpet to enjoy the presentations. Some groups were more expressive than others and sometimes it was easy to guess and other times it was impossible. The children had a great chance to share their creativity in expressing their ideas through body language. One group came up with the idea of making a sign to support their presentation.

Making a sign was a great idea!

All our Grade 3 students were very engaged in this activity and enjoyed acting the words out and hopefully will remember the tricky concept of homophones.

Our Field Trip to CCF

The Highlight of the week was our field trip to CCF (Cambodian Children's Fund).
ISPP Grade 3 students had a chance to meet Khmer students from the CCF school and play math games with them.

After a tour around the CCF facilities, it was time for us to return to ISPP. All our students and teachers were greatly impressed with the amount of work the CCF does to ensure that Khmer children from the poorest families have their rights.

Our Group photo at the CCF school library.

Playing math games with cards.

Charly and KimVeng are taking the lead

Our "I Wonder" sessions went well as usual. Miss Claire's students were wondering about how to make soap and we learned a lot about this. 

I was extremely proud of Moon Ju from Miss Michelle's class. In my EFL class, I showed my students the video  "If the World Were One Village". Moon Ju learned from that video that many people in the world live without safe water and clean air. Today during the "I Wonder" time she made a thoughtful connection and asked me if we could learn more about how to save water and teach others to do the same. It was exciting to observe Moon Ju's growth as an inquirer and her ability to pursue the topic that she is interested in. 

Moon Ju is wondering how to save water.

Jennifer, Mollymoon and KimVeng learned how to make soap today.

EFL Grade 3 Class

In EFL my Grade 3 students were engaged in the activity where they were expected to read about one of the rights, and then learn facts about the violation of this right and reflect on whether they have this particular right or not. My students shared their perspectives on the advantages of ISPP, the importance of nutritious food and a balanced approach to using technology for learning and for fun.

Small group discussions.

Grade 1 In Class Support

In Grade 1, Miss Rachelle's students practiced creating a narrative story using the 6 box template. Prior to writing, we discussed the story structure and the importance of having a setting, characters, the problem and the solution.

Misuki, Riku, Viphou and Nao Nao took turns sharing their ideas about the plot and main events of the story. Peter who lived in Australia was our main character. The boys had great ideas for the problem and a very unexpected solution.

Next week we will reread and edit our story. As soon as we decide that it is all ready, we will publish it and create illustrations.

Creating stories with friends is fun!

Grade 3 In Class Support

Our Grade 3 students continued exploring children's rights with the help of our teachers and guest speakers. On Tuesday Miss Sara ( Samir's Mom) from Winrock International delivered an informative presentation about child labour in Cambodia. 

Miss Sara is talking about child labour.

In Miss Michelle's class, we continued discussing child labour. We watched a powerful video and read an article about the Indonesian child workers that are harvesting tobacco leaves. All our students were shocked to learn about the horrible conditions the small children work in. They also learned about the consequences of nicotine poisoning. After watching the video we read the article in four small groups, highlighting the key words and discussing the unfamiliar language.

Some words were hard but we understood the main idea.

At the end of the class, we had a sharing session and the children reflected on the video and article and made thoughtful connections.

We also discussed what children's rights were violated in the video.

Later in the week, Miss Jan from the Thabita NGO came to talk to the students about the rights of women in Cambodia. Miss Jan also talked about how her NGO helps the poor families to start new better lives.

Miss Jan has been helping Cambodian people for more than 20 years.

In Miss Claire's class we practiced making three different types of connections (text to text; text to self and text to the world). The students worked in 4 small groups and each group read a different text before we began to make connections. I chose to read "Thunder Cake" by Patricia Polacco. Both Miss Claire and I prepared some cards with various sentence starters to scaffold the writing of the connections for our students. My students liked the story and they naturally began to talk about their grandmothers and their fears that they managed to overcome.

Kim Veng, Mollymoon and Jennifer using the cards with sentence starters.

Grade 1 In Class Support

Miss Rachelle's Grade 1 students had to create poems about their feelings and emotions. In our group, we thought about what we do when we are happy. We talked about how we move, what facial expressions we have and what thoughts we have in our heads when we feel happy and excited. Making connections and discussing the students' experiences made it easier for the children to use a lot of action verbs and create wonderful poems.
We also talked to our Grade 1 students about realistic fiction. We read a story book "Clancy and Millie and a Very Fine House". The students in my group practiced making connections to their life and that helped them develop their understanding of the features of realistic fiction.

We discussed the characters, setting, problem and solution of the story.

After practicing the discussion in small groups we returned to the classroom and shared our findings with members of other small groups that read different stories.

Eira, Misuki and William retold their stories to each other.

In Miss Carina's room, our students had to create poems about colors. The small group of students I worked with had lots of fun sharing ideas and thinking of rhyming words.
Yun Jae created two poems about blue and about brown. Here is one of them:

What is brown?
The snake is brown.
It is the King of the snakes 
And it hangs from the tree branch upside down.

Yun Jae was proud of his poem.

In Miss Kelly's room, we read a book about growing plants. Before reading, the students made predictions about the book and discussed whether it was fiction or non-fiction. After reading the book the children practiced creating a flow chart with the steps for growing herds. We revised the importance of capitalization and punctuation when we were proofreading our flow charts.

All students made thoughtful predictions.

Grade 3 EFL Class

All through this week, my ELLs continued discussing children's rights. They were involved in a comprehension activity about being bullied. After reading the text and completing the tasks, my students discussed the mistakes of the boy that was bullied in the story. They also made connections to their own background experience and shared their ideas for solving the problem. 

In order to further develop my students' speaking and listening skills, I used cards with short scenarios of children's problems. My students took turns reading the cards and then shared their perspectives on the described situations. 

BB is reading his card to the rest of the group.

Grade 3 In Class Support

Our Grade 3 students continue learning about Children's Rights.  This week was full of various learning experiences, fun activities and visits of guest speakers.

In Miss Lisa's class we helped our ELLs to unpack the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We talked about the agreement between the countries to implement the convention. We also began discussing the articles of the convention.

We are learning about our rights!

In Miss Michelle's class we had a great team of talented poets who created acrostics, 5 senses poems and rhyming poems about our needs and wants.

Creating poems is fun!

Miss Michelle's students are sharing their poems with the rest of the class.

In Miss Claire's class the students focused on writing about imaginary children, describing their family, life style, age, culture, nationality, likes and dislikes and of course their rights.

Ms. Tracy from CCF invited our students to come visit the CCF elementary school.

Guest speakers from Save the Children, Friends International and the Cambodian Children's Fund delivered great presentations, shared a lot of information and helped our students to construct their understanding of the issues related to children's rights in Cambodia.

We learned a lot during the Friends International presentation.

Mr. Nelson from Save the Children taught us about children's rights.

Grade 1 In Class Support

All this week we continued assessing our students' reading skills and are really impressed with the results.

Maly made great progress!

English as a Foreign Language in Grade 3

After watching a video about rights and responsibilities my students had to reflect on all the information about children's rights they got so far and make a list of rights. I supported their thinking by writing their ideas on the board and the list was getting longer and longer. After their lists were completed we compared them with the UN Convention list of Child's Rights. It was exciting to observe that my students remembered the most important articles of the Convention. This activity also helped the students realize how many rights they are privileged to enjoy.

Grade 3 In Class Support

In Miss Lisa's class we started the new semester with the Color Symbol Image thinking routine. Our students had to think about themselves as learners. All the children were fully engaged in creating their posters. Soon it was time to share and the boys and girls took turns explaining their thinking and making it visible. Lots of original ideas and symbols were shared and discussed. It was interesting for me to listen to the students' perception of their learning styles and strategies.

It was a great sharing session and even the EAL students felt very confident

Miss Michelle's class was busy writing a recount about their holidays. Moon Ju was writing about her trip to Siem Reap and I helped her with some wording and sentence structure. We also used Google translate to clarify the meaning of some English words and translate them into Korean.

During the second session in Miss Michelle's class the students had to face the challenge of selecting 20 items to take with them on a hot air balloon. The objects had to help them survive a long journey. After a heated discussion the 20 items were selected, only to find out that we had to get rid of 15 of them and keep only the 5 most important ones. Our students were supposed to start thinking about their needs and wants with the help of this activity.

Moon Ju came up with several great ideas and suggested to her team to take a medical kit with them.

In Miss Claire's room we had our usual guided reading session. Kim Veng, Mollymoon, Jennifer and Sanita had a lot of fun reading "Dragon with A Cold".  We discussed some of the figurative language to make sure my students understood every detail of the story. We also talked about what we learned from the story and it was interesting to hear the various useful lessons that they picked up.

Grade 1 In Class Support

Throughout the first week we were busy assessing our Grade 1 students. The students made great progress in their reading and the teachers need to regroup them to form new ability groups.

Arun was very a confident  reader during the assessment.

Grade 3 EFL Class

I have started discussing rights and responsibilities with my Grade 3 students. We reread the "Turkey Girl" story and made connections to our responsibilities at home.  The students shared their thinking about what happens when we neglect our responsibilities.

I also thought it would be beneficial for my students to revisit some editing strategies. We completed the "Revise Your Writing" comprehension activity and tried to apply the revised strategies.

Samir applied the editing strategies and corrected some of his spelling and punctuation.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The last two weeks in December before the holidays were busy and exiting at the same time.

The summative assessment was successfully completed, parents had a chance to learn a lot about their children's learning during the Three-Way Conferences, and the Sports Days were full of joy and laughter!

All the students and teachers worked hard during the first semester and are ready for the break.

I hope everyone has relaxing holidays, enjoys family time and gets ready for school in January!

Grade 1 In Class EAL Support

On Monday morning Miss Rachelle's students had to practice reading books and then create a post card.

Two procedure texts were prepared by Rachelle in advance and our students had to compare the two texts and decide which one was better.  The children read through both and immediately realized that one procedure was better than the other, as there was more information and the steps were numbered.

After reading the procedure texts together with my students, I modeled card writing and we discussed their ideas for making cards. After modeling and discussing the language it was easier for the students to create their own cards.

Nao Nao and Noah are nearly finished creating their cards.

Grade 3 In Class EAL Support

Miss Claire's students were blogging on Monday in our computer lab. Jennifer decided to reflect on their field trip to the water treatment plant. Mollymoon wrote about their buddy session when they created some paper boats together. KimVeng decided to share his Minecraft experience.

All the students had to write a blog and illustrate it with some photographs.



Miss Lisa's students had to brainstorm the causes of water pollution and then choose one form of pollution to begin their own research.

Maly's group shared the results of the brainstorm.

In Miss Michelle's class our students also had to discuss the causes of water pollution in groups. After making a list of causes the children had to focus on one form of pollution and create a question about it.  When we shared and discussed the big questions, the students realized that they have to come up with more questions to plan their research. It was done in groups and then shared in a form of a Gallery Walk activity.

Tashi is reading Samir's questions.

Grade 3 EFL Class

We had an exciting class at the beginning of the week as my EFL students had to present their projects about the journey of the river.

We had an opportunity to listen to three presentations and share our feedback with the presenting team. We also talked about feedback and how we should word our comments in order to support our peers. Sentence starters like : "I noticed that..., I wonder..., I discovered that..., I think..., I like..." were introduced to the students before we started to comment and they were encouraged to use them.

Hailey's group members were very confident.

Bie Bie's group managed to overcome some disagreements and did a great job.

Jiun's group demonstrated great presenting skills and correct pronunciation of challenging words.