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Frances, Theresa and Gabby spent their August weekends in Battambang to complete the SBA Workshops
WORKSHOP 2 - 11/12 August
The second session was a follow-up lesson on Bath-Time. One of the central goals of SBA; relating meaning to reading was further demonstrated through discussion. The students shared their experiences of people they know who hated bathing which drew laughter from the class. There were many opportunities for the students to practice language items, namely, regular and irregular past tense. A few students stepped forward eagerly to mask new vocabulary words learnt, one of the strategies in SBA. Vocabulary word cards, prepared before hand, were given out to students to categorize and display according to foot wear, clothes and things in the bedroom. Attendance for the afternoon class was down to seven. Those who could not come were involved in the preparation for the Assumption Feast day of Our Lady on Sunday, 12 August.
It was a major feast day celebrated in honor of Our Lady, the patron Saint of the church with procession and dancing followed by High Mass concelebrated by the Prefect Apsotolic and 3 priests. Fr. Bruno Cosme, MEP from the St. John Mary Vianney Major Seminary in Phnom Penh gave the sermon. Representatives from the different provinces participated in the celebration. It was a joyful and colourful event. Many faithful and on-lookers with cameras in hand lined the street to take in the sight and to take mementos of the procession.
The highlight of the weekend was an invitation to lunch at Vuthy’s home. He is the youth leader and his parents are the pillars of the church. It was a sumptuous meal with soft and hard liquor served. We enjoyed the family’s hospitality and made new contacts. One of them was Fr. Bruno who kindly gave us a lift back to Phnom Penh.
Msgr Kike was happy when he found out that more students (from 14 to 21) were attending the workshop. He seemed interested to find out who had been doing the advertising. However, we were not able to tell him which villages the new students came from.
WORKSHOP 3 - 18/19 August We We booked the 0845 hours bus to Battambang but it was delayed and left at half nine. Thus to make up for “lost’ time, the bus driver was speeding when we were traveling along the countryside of National Route 5. After a few hours of traveling, a cow suddenly ‘decided to cross the road’ (usually they are tied to a little stick in the ground and it must have freed itself) and the bus driver could not stop in time. The bus hit the big cow and the it was flung into the little ravine. We were all seated on the front seats and had to brace ourselves. We were worried about the poor cow but the bus driver was more concerned about his bus than the passengers on board. As we continued our journey, every time the driver came across a cow or a herd of cows, he slowed down, as he seemed afraid that another accident might occur. Meanwhile, Theresa was sitting in fear, even when a dog crossed the path of the bus; she braced herself for the worst to happen!
We assumed that the bus driver had killed the cow and thus the bus company had to compensate the poor farmer. However, it seemed it was the other way round. The poor farmer had to compensate the driver of the vehicle instead. The reason was due to the poor farmer negligence as he let his cow loose. We had arranged for an afternoon class on Friday but due to the delays, we had to cancel it even though half the class turned up! We were very apologetic about it. I have to say we were in shock and we had to nurse a headache that evening.
The class started with another big book story on “Granddad and the Bee”. This was followed by a session on selection of books for shared reading. The class, divided into five groups with a team leader each had to choose a book according to certain criteria.
They had to go through the book and discuss its merits, for example, values and illustrations that lend themselves to prediction and discussion, the teaching points that they could draw from the books (color, the size and type set of print) in accordance to the level that they were teaching. For younger children, greater emphasis was put on the illustrations, story line for discussion, the print and values to be taught.
Then each group leader came up and shared their selection. That activity ended the Shared Book Approach.
The following activity was on Modified Language Experience Approach (MLEA). There was a discussion on the topic – “Our Garden Playground.” Key ideas and vocabulary were put on the board. The class was split into five groups and they were each given a “task” based on the topic. A few groups were chosen to draw out certain features found in the garden playground, while one group was selected to do cutting.
Another group was chosen to draw the main layout of the garden playground.
At a given time, they came together to discuss and put their different features into a composite picture. It was a bustling time at the blackboard when it came to putting the final touches on their drawing. It was heartening to see how they had come together as a team to name and describe their garden playground guided by Frances.
In the afternoon, we had another session on MLEA but it was based on group activities. They were given a topic, a follow-up on the Class story. They had to work on it: drawing and creating their story.
WORKSHOP 4 - 25/26 August
Graduation project (Preparing for the Certificate Awarding Ceremony) was the theme of the last session. The students were split into five groups and they had different tasks to do – one group was in charge of the balloons (balloons are expensive here, US$0.07 for one), another group had to gather flowers from the garden and the third group had to display the different stories done to date on the wall.
For the fourth group, they had to arrange and write the captions of the last three weeks photos.
Lastly, the “artists” had to capture the whole process in pictorial form. It was wonderful to see how they put what they had learnt in the last couple of lessons into practice.
Before lunch was the “graduation”. Msgr Kike, Father Gabriel S.J. and Frances took turns to present the students their certificate of attendance.
Msgr Kike told the class “You have received; now you share with the others, and you give it to the little ones.”
Chy Thy of Tahen village “I’m very quiet when I met the teacher; she made me happy about her “Big Book” so I take this experience to share with my students. They will be interested and try to know what I will show them.” Whereas Yan Sokhorn from Tapung village shared, “I feel very happy that I can join the workshop because I can get some experience from the teacher and we can share with the children.” Frances’ closed with this remark to the class: “If you teach what you have learnt, you learn twice over”.
