Blog Archives

Last Day of the 2010-11 School Year

30/7/2011

Hi everyone,

Well, we did it! It was an exciting first year with lots of ups and downs, but we're more than ready to take on our second year once we start up again in September after the summer break.

Student Conferences
Shally finished up student conferences and pre-registered most of the students for the 2011-12 school year on the last day of class. We had only two days for conferences, but we'll probably expand them to over a week next year so that students have more time to ask questions. On average, students met with Shally for about 8-10 minutes. However, some students need as much as 15 minutes because they wanted to discuss personal problems with him. Often, a few of these meetings end in tears because students are overwhelmed with difficulties at home or at public school. Yet, most of the meetings have students smiling because they are given encouragement and constructive feedback.

Secret Sentences
While Shally was in meetings, I had a mixed tense writing and speaking activity for the students called "Secret Sentence". Students were given three strips of paper and had to write a "secret" on each strip of paper. The students then folded up their strips of paper and had the students put them into a basket. I then gave each student three of these "secrets" from the basket. Students then had to read these secrets and then mingle with their classmates and ask questions to find the writer of the secret.

After each lesson, I collected these secrets and categorized them into groups. You can read some of these "secrets" in a short slide presentation in the "BEA Voices" section of the blog. You'll be surprised at some of these "secrets"! There's one "secret" that made me burst out laughing because I have no idea where the student learnt that expression, but Shally may have had something to do with that. Can you guess which "secret" made me laugh?

Awards Ceremonies
Before we dismissed each class for the summer break, we had a short awards ceremony. The top three students in each course received a "Grammar in Use" activity book and a notebook for prizes. It was quite difficult at times to get a group photo because I couldn't get the kids to sit still for a minute! However, I did manage to get some great photos for the website. You can view them on the home page under a new section called "The BEA Bulletin Board".

Summer Break
BEA will be closed until August 28, but the staff will be back on August 29 to get the school ready for registration on September 1. All students will be to class on September 5.

Until then, Shally will be revising the Basic and Pre-Intermediate programs while I'll be designing BEA's new Intermediate curriculum and setting up our library program. It'll be a busy "break" for both of us.

During the break, we'll keep you updated on our progress with our new projects and accreditation from the Ministry of Education.

Back to the books....

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

0 Comments

Student Evaluations and Conferences

29/7/2011

0 Comments

Hi everyone,

Yesterday was a super busy day for everyone at BEA with student evaluations and conferences.

Evaluations
My morning started out making the student evaluation. I had wanted more time to prepare it, but of course, there is never any extra time because preparing lessons takes up most of our mornings, so administrative work has to be during the few free moments of the day.

Anyways, this was my very first time to make a formal research evaluation. This one is a trial run before I do a more formal evaluation of the school next year. It was indeed a challenge because there were so many areas to cover. I included facilities, materials, curriculum, teaching, improvement and general headings on the survey with five subheadings for the curriculum section: speaking and listening, writing workshop, journal writing, task-based project and tests. There were 100 questions in total! Student had to read each question and then rank it on a four-point scale: disagree (1), somewhat disagree (2), somewhat agree (3) and agree (4). In addition, there were comments boxes where students could make suggestions and give their own comments.

During the evaluations, I was available for the students to ask any questions. Most of the students needed a few vocabulary terms explained to them. Ideally, we'll have more time next year to translate the survey into Khmer so that we can avoid any misunderstandings.

I'll be on a working holiday from next week, so one of my jobs is to go through the surveys and calculate the results. However, I had a quick glimpse of the surveys last night, and almost all of the comments were very positive, especially towards Shally and his teaching style. Many students also commented that BEA's teaching methods, the communicative approach (CA) and task-based learning (TBL), were new to them, but a good way to learn English. Once I get through these surveys, I'll make the results available on the website.

For those of you who are interested in how we evaluated our program, you can see pages 4-5 of BEA's annual evaluation at the end of today's blog posting.

Student Conferences
Shally had an incredibly busy day yesterday with student conferences. We have these student-teacher meetings at the end of each semester. The students get some one-on-one time with Shally to discuss any concerns about their learning at BEA. In addition, Shally explains the student's progress and final grades. Each student is given about 10 minutes, but often they want to talk much longer with Shally about other personal concerns.

During the student conferences, Shally also informed the students about the new teaching schedule from September. We'll be adding another class, so BEA will be starting from 3:00pm and finishing at 6:50pm. We will be having 50 minutes lessons instead of hour lessons. The reason we had to make this change is that many of the girls who wanted to register for the pre-intermediate course last year were not allowed because 7:30pm was too late for them to be returning home. In general, Cambodian parents are very protective of their girls and they are required to be home before sunset.

In addition, it was brought to our attention during the year that a few students were studying at other English language schools with the help of a sponsor. Shally and I agreed that it's no fair to enroll students who are already studying under sponsorship at another language schools because there are so many youth who have no chance at all to study anywhere. Those students were a bit upset because they do not want to give up their studies at BEA. Regardless, we need to give an equal chance to those who have no chance at all in the village.

Shally will be kept very busy today with the second part of student conferences and pre-registration.

I still can't believe we made it through the year...well, almost, just one more day...

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

BEA Annual Evaluation Sample
File Size:	120 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

0 Comments

Review and Sample Lessons

28/7/2011

0 Comments

Hi everyone,

Just two more days until the end of semester two at BEA. It's been such an amazing year, and I can't wait for the start of the new semester in September. However, there's still a lot to do before then...

Tuesday's Lesson: Wonders of the World
I was off teaching on Tuesday to catch up on paperwork while Shally taught the kids my “Wonders of the World” lesson. This type of lesson introduces global society to Cambodian students while also giving them the necessary vocabulary to talk about such topic. In this lesson, Shally reviewed the vocabulary from Monday’s lessons and then introduced other famous monuments found throughout the world. The purpose was to have the kids use this vocabulary to talk not just about Angkor Wat, but also other places.

Each student was given two pictures of a famous building with some basic facts. The students had to talk about two of the four following places: Macha Picchu, Neuschwanstenstein Castle, the Great Wall of China or The Golden Pavilion. They then has five minutes to prepare a mini-presentation for their partner. During this time, Shally was kept really busy with pronunciation instruction. One of the challenges of introducing supplementary material in a Cambodian classroom is that students want to know the meaning and pronunciation of every single word. After their preparation, they explained their monument to their partner, and their partner had to ask questions. The students were given only basic facts about each place. However, they wanted to know much more about each of the places, especially the pre-intermediate class.

Here’s one of the dialogues from two pre-intermediate students:

Kimsan: If somebody paid me to visit the Great Wall of China, I would go right away.

Saren: No! You have to keep the money for university and for your family!

Out of the four places, the Great Wall of China and the Golden Pavilion were the most popular places that students wanted to visit.

Sample Lesson Plans:
For those of you interested in our lesson plans and materials, you can view them at the end of this blog. You can see how we've localized vocabulary for a Cambodian classroom. In addition, you can see the process in which I've been training Shally to develop his lesson plans. This is a review vocabulary lesson, so it's a bit different from our typical speaking, listening and reading lessons. However, you'll get a sense of how we approach teacher training at BEA. These lesson plans also play an important role in Shally's online teacher training when I'm back in Japan.

Please forgive any typos - we're just in the first draft stage.

Wednesday's Lesson: Sentence Auction
In Wednesday’s class, it was Shally’s turn to get caught up on paperwork. He’s been spending most of the week calculating second semester grades. He’ll meet with each student on Thursday or Friday to discuss their progress at BEA and to pre-register them for their new course in September.

This was actually the first time I was completely on my own without Shally in the classroom. It was quite pleasant to have the kids all to myself.   In today’s lesson, I decided to review some of the writing problems they had in the paragraph writing section of the quiz. Overall, the students have made a lot of progress in writing more clearly and coherently. I now have no trouble understanding their writing. The reason for this is that they are now consistent in their use of English writing structure. I was also surprised to see that the writing workshops in February had a big impact on the structure of their writing. Almost every single paragraph included topic and concluding sentences. When I did the writing workshops in February, these two structures were the most difficult for the students to grasp.

In order to review some of the key grammar and structural difficulties from their paragraphs, we had a sentence auction. The first part of the activity consisted of a worksheet with sentences taken from their paragraphs; some were correct and some were incorrect. Students then had to work in groups to identify the correct sentences. Afterwards, we played a sentence auction game with these sentences. Each group was given $25 BEA dollars (our school’s currency used for games) and had to compete with other groups to buy the correct sentences in an auction. In the Basic B class, students took up a bit of class time arguing about which group had the most powerful team names (before we play a game, groups have to choose a team name). In this class, the groups chose “The Birds”, “The Rabbits”, “The Tigers” and “The Apples”. The Rabbits claimed that the would win because they were the most clever while the Tigers believed they would win because they could eat the Birds, the Apples and the Rabbits. Indeed, the Rabbits did up winning the sentence auction. I always love these types of classroom deviations. As usual, winning teams got three pieces of chocolate while the others got one piece each.

Evaluations:
I’ll be spending my morning making up our course evaluations for the students to complete later this afternoon. During the month of August, Shally and I will review these to see how we can revise our program and make BEA an even better experience for the students from September.

Back to work…

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Wonders of the World Lesson Plan
File Size:	153 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

Vocabulary Review Worksheet
File Size:	201 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

Wonders of the World Activity
File Size:	2475 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

0 Comments

Review Week & Observations

26/7/2011

0 Comments

Hi everyone,

It's only Tuesday, but it feels liked I've done a week's worth of work in the past two days. Unfortunately, I couldn't go into BEA this afternoon because we have to prepare for student conferences and pre-registration this Thursday and Friday.

Review Lessons and Teaching Observation:
Since we finished our final test last week, we're having a variety of review lessons this week. For yesterday's day lesson, I was able to download an EFL reading lesson on the Pyramids of Egypt. However, those lesson always have to be rewritten for the Cambodian classroom, especially the teaching notes because they are not nearly detailed enough for less experienced teachers. For this lesson, I wanted show Shally how to teach the same material to different levels with a special emphasis on vocabulary teaching.

The students were familiar with the pyramids since most of them vaguely remembered the topic from high school. However, as predicted, the vocabulary was the foremost interest to the students. Although it's not necessary to understand every single word when reading, Cambodian students insist on knowing every word. Shally has implemented a very effective teaching strategy: he allows the class to ask for only vocabulary explanation for three unknown words (this is in addition to the ones already pre-taught before the reading activity).

As usual, I model the the lesson in the Basic A course, and then Shally teaches the Basic B course on his own. I'm available during the lesson just in case he needs support for new teaching techniques. In the pre-intermediate course, I model only certain parts of the lesson that Shally would like to observe before he does it on his own.

One of the biggest improvements I've noticed in Shally's teaching is his elicitation and vocabulary teaching techniques. When Shally first participated in one of my teacher training program about three years ago, one of his difficulties was eliciting background knowledge from the students. I was very impressed at the ease in which he does it now.

During the observation of the Basic B course, I even learned a new vocabulary memory technique from him. For example, after he has written down the vocabulary list, he will erase two to three words. Students then have to shout our the missing words from the list. Despite my many years of teaching, I'm happy to still be learning myself!

Final Tests:
I'm still marking the final tests - a little over half way done now. Overall, I'm very impressed in the progress most of the students have made in paragraph writing. Students have a much better grasp of organizing their ideas and as a result are writing more coherently. In the next few weeks, I'll upload some of the examples onto the website.

Interestingly, I've noticed a consist error among most of the students. When students had to respond to a short-answer question, many answers "He had a cold because he rode his bicycle under the rain." I asked Shally about this and he explained that students are directly translating from Khmer.

When I head back to Japan at the end of September, I'll have a suitcase full of journals and tests to bring with me. I hope to have a few research papers written (and published) by the end of the year on Cambodian English.

Accreditation:
Although it seems that I'm quite busy, Shally has been even busier than me. BEA has applied for accreditation from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MOEYS) so that we can issue our own certificates, which would be equivalent to certificated earned at high school. Shally has had to make several trips to the Ministry, and has had to prepare hundreds of pages of documents in the past two weeks.

Well, that's been the start of the week at BEA...

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

0 Comments

School Supplies and Motorbike Rides

24/7/2011

1 Comment

Hi everyone,

The past few days were quite hectic at BEA, especially since we have just one more week before we’re closed for the summer vacation.

School Supplies:
Shally and I spent most of Friday morning at the Preah Vihear Book Center ordering supplies for the new school year, which will start on September 5. We’re offering four courses for the 2011-12 school year, and we’ll have almost 100 students, which means we need more supplies. As usual, BEA students will receive all their school supplies for free. Their orientation package includes one textbook, two notebooks (per semester), a book bag, and a pen case with two blue pens, a red pen, two pencils, a highlighter, a correction pen, a ruler, and a pencil sharpener. If students use up their pens and pencils before the end of the first semester, they are given new ones. We were able to get everything at the Preah Vihear Book Center, except the pen cases, so we had to visit a few other book stores in Siem Reap before we found them. I budgeted $1000 for all the supplies, but surprisingly the grand total was $920. Now, we just have to get the textbooks.

NGO Administration Training Program:
I met Rie for a late lunch on Friday to evaluate her NGO administration training program. She said that it was a very valuable experience, and would highly recommend it to other students interested in NGO work. She also said that she was very surprised at the amount of work and time needed to run a NGO, and was shocked that just Shally and I were able to run an entire school on our own. My next job is to go through her evaluation and training materials, and revise this program so that we can offer it as a permanent training program from February 2012. Although the evaluation was over, Rie’s work for the day was not. We kept her working until the last minute of her stay.

Final Tests and Writing Journals:
BEA students started the second part of their final tests, which consisted of paragraph writing. While the students were writing, Shally finished the speaking evaluations. Shally now has a lot of marking to do within the next few days, and then has to calculate the final grades for the second semester. Also, we collected all the writing journals from students. I’ve started to go through them so that I can come up with topics for research papers before the end of the year. In addition, I’m planning to put some of the students’ comments on the website as “testimonials” to their learning experience at BEA. Overall, I was quite moved at the effect BEA and Shally has had on improvement their English abilities and their lives.

Rie’s Farewell Motobike Ride:
Rie finished up her last day at BEA in the office organizing all the supplies for the 2011-12 school year. We’ll really miss her help, and wish she could’ve stayed longer. I was so impressed with her dedication and hard work, and especially at how quick she was able to finish all her tasks! Thank you so much Rie!

Before Rie left on Saturday, Shally took her on the back of his motorbike through Trapeang Sess Village and the Angkor countryside so that she could see where our students lived and worked. I followed behind on my motorbike, and had a bit of trouble navigating the winding, dirt roads, especially since it had rained the night before, and everything had turned to mud. We headed out into the Angkor countryside along some very narrow paths, and unfortunately I ended up with a flat tire. Shally’s uncle just happened to be in a rice field nearby with his water buffaloes, so he was able to help us get my motorbike back to the main road to get repaired. Fortunately, Rie made it back in time to catch her bus to Phnom Penh. Always drama with Shally and I until the very last minute!

Next Week:
Anyways, we’re back to work tomorrow at BEA and it’ll be another busy week. Shally will be holding student conferences and I’ll be dealing with pre-registration for the new school year.

Back to work even on Sundays…

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

1 Comment

Final Tests for Semester 2

21/7/2011

1 Comment

Hi there everyone,

It's been pouring rain this afternoon in Siem Reap. I gave up my bicycle and have been riding a motorbike for the past few days. This is the first day driving in the rain. Despite being soaked to the bone, I was able to make it back home safely.

MOEYS:
Today started out quite early with a morning visit to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, but more commonly know by its acronym MOEYS in English. Shally and I made the 30-minute trip on his motorbike to file some paperwork for BEA. All went well, but we'll still have to make a few more trips in August.

The government offices are located on a compound-like area outside of Siem Reap. It's a bit far, but quite convenient because all the main offices are within walking distance of each other. On the way out, we passed the "Ministry of Religion and Cult". I didn't think anything was really wrong with the sign, but Shally pointed out that it should've read "Ministry of Religion and Culture". Whoever made the sign actually ran out of space, so he could only include c-u-l-t.

NGO Administration Training Program:
I spent most of my day at BEA today with Rie, our NGO Administration trainee who is participating in BEA's pilot NGO Administration Program. Yesterday, Rie learned about basic office management, consisting mostly of opening and closing student files. Today, she got a crash course in basic accounting. She got a pile of receipts that she had to categorize as fixed, variable and miscellaneous expenses and then design an excel spreadsheet to include all of these expenses. I really wish she was staying for more than two weeks because there's so much more I could give her to help us out, especially since we're preparing for our second school year. Regardless, I'll be meeting Rie for lunch tomorrow to evaluate her two-week training program. Once we make revisions, we're hoping to offer this training program to others who are interested in NGO administration. This will help BEA get some much needed funding to expand our school next year.

Final Tests for Semester 2:
While I was in the office for most of the day, Shally was running our final tests for semester two for all of our courses. Over the year, each student has had to complete six tests, which consists of a written and spoken test. The written test is spread out over two days: the first day is devoted to vocabulary and short-answer questions while the second day focuses on paragraph writing.

During the first part of the written test, students also have to complete a speaking evaluation. They are given guidelines on what to say, and then have two minutes to prepare their answer. Shally then evaluates their speaking ability based on fluency, pronunciation and grammatical accuracy. For example, for the final speaking test for the basic course, the student had to look at a series of pictures and then tell a story using the simple past tense.

Despite the pouring rain this afternoon, every single student showed up for today's test. I'm still amazed at their dedication to their studies.

Back to the books now...

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

1 Comment

Poster presentations and Volunteer Program

20/7/2011

0 Comments

Hi everyone,

We're back on the BEA blog after a short break since March. I had to return back to Japan unexpectedly in mid-March after the level 9 earthquake to make sure my husband was alright in Tokyo, and to prepare for a possible evacuation due to the Fukushima nuclear accident. Fortunately, the situation is slowly getting better.

For the past few months, both Shally and I have been quite busy with finishing up the last part of our second semester. I've been helping with lesson planning, test preparation and curriculum revisions from Japan. Shally has been even busier with implementing our program, evaluating the students and managing BEA!

Poster Presentations
I was back at the school on Monday, and students were starting their final Task-based Project. Over the year, they've had to complete six of these projects. They consist of designing a poster around a particular theme, and then organizing a 10 minute presentation with their group. I was so impressed with the progress all of the students have made over the year, especially the students in the basic courses. Students who started with very basic speaking abilities can now give presentations and speak about themselves and about Cambodia quite fluently. Shally has indeed done an amazing job at teaching and supporting the students throughout the year.

NGO Administration Program
Also, we are running a two-week NGO Administration Training Program and a Cultural Awareness Volunteer Program with one of my students from Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. Rie approached me last year in our Communication course, and ask to learn about NGO Administration. She's now taking part in a pilot program consisting of different aspects of NGO work, such as project design, data base construction, office management, accounting, purchasing, among many other NGO-related tasks. We hope to offer this program on a permanent basis from next year to others who might be interested in learning about NGO management. Rie has also help test our Cultural Awareness Volunteer Program, and I'm meeting with her later on today to discuss how me can make it a permanent part of BEA's curriculum. The purpose of these programs is ultimately to establish a permanent source of funding so that we'll be sustainable in the long-term.

Final Tests
In addition to training Rie on office management today, I'll be designing the very last writing and speaking tests for the second semester. During the year, students have been evaluated on a monthly basis on both their writing and speaking skills. In total, they've had six of these test throughout the year. Shally will have to run the tests this Thursday and Friday, which means he'll have quite a bit of marking to do this weekend.
You can view photos from this week's task-based projects in our photo gallery on the home page menu.

Happy to be back!

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

0 Comments

Last Day of the 2010-11 School Year

Student Evaluations and Conferences

Review and Sample Lessons

Review Week & Observations

School Supplies and Motorbike Rides

Final Tests for Semester 2

Poster presentations and Volunteer Program

Blogger

Archives

Categories