Teacher workshops

My name is Heli Kytola, and I have been in Phnom Penh and at Riverkids for a year now. My normal role is that of primary teacher in Sweden. Since coming to Phnom Penh, I have worked as kindergarten coordinator, training other kindergarten teachers and writting a curriculum for the kindergarten. My colleagues and I have equipped the kindergarten classroom with new teaching material and the teachers have improved their teaching techniques noticeably. Soon it will be time for me to leave this friendly and exciting place but before that, I was asked to have a workshop with the primary teachers at Blum and Steven House.

On 24 September 2008, I held a workshop on math and language classroom resources. The teachers at Blum and Steven House chose to spend the morning hours of their public holiday to further extend their knowledge about suitable math and language techniques and to learn more about resources available for the primary level.

We looked at various games, charts and pattern and sorting experiences the teachers could use to make the students’ work more fun and challenging. Adding the dots of dices together to see who reaches 20 first does not really feel like work but is a learning process nonetheless. We discussed using everyday events in counting e.g. cutting an orange in half and talk about the halves and the whole, comparing the amount of girls and boys present or measuring who is the tallest student in the class. We looked at various flashcards and the teachers said they hoped to get some of these flashcards for their own use because right now they draw illustrative pictures on the white board for the students, and this takes up a lot of valuable class time. Another resource that would benefit our students would be Unifix cubes for counting. That is just a small hint for those who are coming to visit us here in Phnom Penh : )

We talked about the importance of reading stories in kindergarten and in primary school. The students need to expand their vocabulary and attention span, and explore different ways of thinking and solving problems. One good way of doing this is through stories, legends and fables (morality tales). I explained that the students could improve their reading and writing skills by writing small books. These books can be stories they make up themselves or a retelling of stories they have heard before.

Half a day was not enough to learn about all the resources and ideas that can be used at Blum and Steven House, but it was at least a beginning. The teachers themselves were especially eager to attend more workshops after they started using these new techniques.

Heli Kytola