New on our WaterBridge Outreach site (formerly known as Spirit of PaperTigers Outreach) feedback from Butterfly School in Popeae, near Udong, Cambodia. Butterfly School is a free English school in the village of Popeae, near Udong, Cambodia, set up by Canadian Heather Willson, of Kamakura, Japan. Free English classes are offered to the students who keep up with their schoolwork at the local Cambodian school. If you are interested in more information about the school please contact author Holly Thompson here.
Butterfly School has participated in our Outreach program for the past two years and and recently sent us their feedback on the 2011 Book Set. All the feedback from Butterfly School can be read by clicking here but here is a little preview:
First, the books are lovely, great illustrations, and moving but simple stories. The texts are short enough for the students to understand the narrative easily and the illustrations provided lots of visual information to enhance the stories. Having five copies of the same book made it very easy to use them in the classroom.
I only had time to work with one book, so I chose Rain School, as it seemed the easiest one to begin with. I just read the story first, having the students look at the illustrations and my actions. Next, we read the text together, repeating after me either individually or as a group. The next day, we tried the yes/no questions and the multiple choice questions. In the advanced classes, we also used the open ended questions. Students had fun asking various other students in the room, and seemed to enjoy being able to get the right answer. On the fourth day, we used the sentence ordering exercise, which was a first for them. However, they caught on quickly, and really enjoyed the challenge.
The students were fascinated by the idea of building a new school every year, although most of them were glad they didn’t have to. They felt an affinity with the students in the book because their school reminded them of ours in Cambodia; the fact that it is a one-room school and rather crude and simple. They all said they liked the story very much.