Grade 1 In Class Support

We continue to work hard developing the reading skills of our Grade 1 students. This week Eira joined our group and Reach climbed up a level and joined Miss Dee's group. We read a book about hats and made great predictions, answered comprehension questions, made various connections and discussed the main character. All the students liked the book and were engaged in the discussion.

Noel was very excited during our discussion.

The students had to write about the main character.

While supporting our Grade 1 learners in their inquiry about the ocean, I practiced research skills with Miss Carina's students. They had to continue their research on various marine creatures and learned a lot of amazing and important facts.

Our students worked on their research in pairs and demonstrated great collaborative skills.

In Miss Kelly's room we had a great reading session. The students in my group read a book and, after a brief discussion, wrote down their observations. Several students illustrated their writing with very detailed drawings.

Samnang and the girls had a productive discussion that provided ideas for their writing.

Grade 3 In Class Support

We had an eventful week in all the three Grade 3 classrooms and the children showed a serious commitment to learning while enjoying the various activities that they were offered.

In Miss Michelle's room we listened to fantastic presentations about our students' "I Wonder" projects. All of them were very different in terms of media choice and the topics ranged from nuclear bombs to Cleopatra.

I was proud of Moon Ju who talked about how to become a police officer.

Another fun activity that Miss Michelle's students were involved in was learning about idioms. All the children had to explain the meaning of the idioms. All four groups of students practiced their thinking skills and had very productive discussions. The children had to listen to each other and use the knowledge and language experience of their peers if they were lacking the knowledge themselves.

Everyone learned something new during this activity. 

After watching a couple of fun videos about suffixes, Miss Claire's and Miss Lisa's students were engaged in various cooperative activities. The students worked in four groups, rotated every 10 minutes and practice word-building and spelling skills. They also had a chance to use academic language while explaining to their peers the meaning of suffixes and words. One of the favorite activities was a memory game and all the students had a chance to improve their speaking, thinking and memory skills.

During the sorting out activity the students had to explain their choices.

Building up words with  5 suffixes from the poster and illustrating the meaning of the words was another popular activity.

Drawing the meaning of the words.

Sorting out activity. Stephan is explaining his word.

All the girls in Jennifer's group practiced explaining the meaning of the suffixes.

Miss Claire's students also continued learning about the unit words and were creating google slide presentations, defining new words and choosing images for illustrations.

Mollymoon had to use both a book dictionary and online dictionary to find the definitions of the words.

The readers theatre of Lorax was another highlight of the week in Miss Claire's room. In Miss Michelle's room the students participated in the "Recycling Maniac" play.

All the students enjoyed the play and made thoughtful connections to the unit.

When Moon Ju's group was performing, my group was a supportive audience.

In Miss Lisa's room our students were engaged in reading comprehension activities. Later in the week the students focused on preparing their "I Wonder" project presentations.

Maly has just finished her research about endangered animals.

The students were ready with their findings and began to create their slideshows and posters.

Hyo Yeon was wondering what was the most popular university in Korea.

The Grade 3 EFL Class

In order to practice report writing skills with my students, I chose to engage them in guided report writing this week.

We watched several videos about water, listened to online articles about water, read Earth's Water book online and completed the activities. I also prepared cards with important and interesting facts about water for my students and selected four more books for them to read and research. We have started working in four groups of two on our water report this week and we will see how much learning will happen during the next week. My students will have to present their reports next week.

Grade 1 In Class Support

In Grade 1 this week we were busy reading and writing stories. The "Wake Me Up in Spring" story by James Preller was the favourite this week. I was impressed with our Grade 1 ELLs! They continued to develop their comprehension skills and the "Wake Me Up In Spring" book gave all my students a lot of food for thought. Together we looked for clues and made our conclusions.We discussed how the main characters felt and explained our thinking. My students had to find the proof for their ideas and understanding in the story and share with the rest of the group. I modeled this strategy for them first and then all the students took turns sharing their thinking.

Another highlight of the week was the "Collections" book by Margeret Ballinger and Rachel Gosset.

We had an engaging discussion and googled the names of the birds and rocks that the students did not know. After reading and discussing the story, my students were asked to make connections to their lives and tell us about their collections or ideas for them. It was exciting to observe the great interest in the story that the children demonstrated.

Lucy enjoyed reading the book about collections and being a member of our reading group.

This week we welcomed Andres (a new student from Norway). We had a great session reading a story about Mr. Wolf's Dinner and taught each other English and Norwegian. It was fun!!

Learning from each other is fun!

Miss Carina's  students were writing their stories. Peter finished his realistic fiction book and started his fantasy fiction about an adventure on Mars.

We had a busy time publishing our stories.

In Miss Kelly's room lots of students were drafting their stories. I worked with Vincent and we managed to complete his draft. Vincent's story is about an adventure in the mountains.

Vincent was proud of his story draft.

Grade 3 In Class Support

We have learned a lot about the English language in Grade 3 this week.

In Miss Claire's room we talked about idioms and after watching a video the students attempted to construct their understanding of the idioms. They had to work in four collaborative groups and each group had native English speaking students to help the ELLs.

We also spent some time reading stories and practicing our inferencing skills in small groups. The discussions were very productive and the students further developed their reading comprehension skills.

Reading "Jamaica's Find" triggered interesting discussions.

Our students were engaged, curious and their predictions were interesting.

In Miss Lisa's room we began our landfill experiment and the students wrote their hypothesis.

In Miss Michelle's room we had a busy Tuesday learning about prefixes in four collaborative groups. All activities were successful and I am grateful to The Curriculum Corner for the ideas.

The sorting out activity was fun.

Drawing the meaning of the words triggered thinking and creativity.

Everybody enjoyed playing a memory game with Miss Boramey.

We also did some vocabulary work. Our students had to watch two videos and write out all the words that related to our unit - Earth's Resources. When the lists were ready, we had a group discussion and chose the most challenging words for the Stir the Class activity that we are planning to do next week.

EFL Class

The focus of this week in my EFL class was on listening skills. We listened to several podcasts about water pollution and answered the questions. It was not easy for my students to catch and process all the information only by listening. The students had pair-share time to discuss the story with their peers and pick up some information that they missed. At the end of the class, I gave my students the written text of the article and we had a chance to correct our mistakes and proofread our answers to the questions.

All my students were engaged in the activity.

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.