Last term in our after-school Coconut Club at Kamala School, the children continued to enjoy the ever-popular skateboarding, skipping, board games and arts & crafts all whilst practicing English and learning new vocabulary from their teachers and volunteers.
Colouring and drawing activities helped the children improve their fine motor skills and have great fun too! They were also creative in their computer lab – designing Valentine’s Day cards and printing them out to give to their friends and teachers. The children enjoyed learning how to manage money: buying furniture for their pretend home, learning the English names of the items, how much they cost and counting out what was needed to buy what they wanted. Chess and checkers became great favourites in the last few months and their teachers were so pleased, as these fantastic brain-training games help the children with their concentration and the ability to think strategically.
March saw the end of the school year and after receiving their graduating certificates, the students in primary year 6 went to their teachers to say thank you and goodbye as they will move to senior school in mid May. Although those living at school can still join our afterschool club, the charity can’t afford to teach English to senior-year students. The teachers symbolically tied a string around the students’ wrists whilst they gave them wishes and inspiring messages for their futures.
As we start the new school year in Thailand this month, our teachers are looking forward to many more fun learning moments to come. Phuket Has Been Good To Us teachers and volunteers could not help these children without the support of our donors from around the world. Thanks to your kind donations we are helping the children change their futures for the better. We thank you for being there for them.
As COVID restrictions eased and we were back in class teaching English to disadvantaged students, our teachers heard the chorus along the corridors: ‘when will Coconut Club start again Teacher??!!’ Coconut Club is our afterschool programme for over 200 children aged 6 to 18, who have to live at school during term time, due to familial reasons. The club offers the children extracurricular activities such as skateboarding, badminton, board games, arts and crafts as well as Computer Lab sessions thanks to kind donors. PHBGTU Teachers and volunteers were delighted to recommence the club, offering the children after-school fun whilst giving them opportunities to develop new skills and self-confidence.
The children who had been living at school before the lockdowns told those who were new all about Coconut Club highlights such as Birthday Parties! With restrictions easing further, at the end of November, we were thrilled to be able to run a joint birthday party on the school grounds for forty of the children in primary school who live at school during term time. The children’s excitement was intense!
Senior year students from the local United World College Thailand helped out. They planned fun activities: the children played dodgeball, badminton, were engrossed in a painting project and, most fun of all, learned the chicken dance and danced Gangnam Style!
Our teachers and volunteers had gathered items that had been kindly donated by Friends of the Foundation and they laid them out on tables. After the fun and games, the children were able to choose their very own birthday gifts! First, pick up a tote bag, then preloved clothing, new flip flops, preloved soft toys for the littlest ones. Toothbrushes & paste and beautiful stationery. It was lovely to see the children so happy with their decisions. The party was rounded off with ice cream for all! A very special day.
We are hugely thankful to our donors from around the world for giving the children the opportunity to learn and grow. With your support, we are helping the children change their futures.
Thankfully, this new school year, we are back to face-to-face learning in school as Phuket started to relax some of the COVID rules to allow students back to classes. Our teachers are once again able to provide English language education for disadvantaged primary school children aged 7 to 12 years old.
But it’s not plain sailing, especially for the youngest children we teach in Primary Year 1 which is made up of 30 little energetic and curious 7-year-olds. These children have missed 2 years of Kindy due to the pandemic, as the Kindergartens all over Thailand were closed to keep the little ones safe. This means that many of the children came to class at the start of the school year with very poor motor skills, let alone finely tuned ones. This was also the first time most of the students will have sat in a seat let alone been in a school setting. In the first weeks of school, the students tried hard to keep up with their new surroundings and long school hours. Classes run from 8:15 a.m. (students must be in school by 7:30 a.m.) and they are dismissed at 3:30 p.m. There is no nap time.
But, our teachers don’t let this stop the learning and the fun! This year in their first ever English classes, the 7-year-olds will learn so much: the alphabet, greetings, command words, singular and plural, feelings, self-introduction, weather, days of the week and school objects. The class is always buzzing with energy, and you will often find learning happening through songs and games. Meanwhile, in Science in English classes, the students will explore topics through experiments and experiential learning. Learning in a second language their topics require them to understand lots of new words about living things and non-living things, parts of a plant and different animals. In Mathematics in English, the students learn through games, quizzes, and competitions. They will be counting and writing numbers, comparing and ordering numbers, number bonds, and addition and subtraction.
Students of all ages always arrive in their Phuket Has Been Good To Us English classes with big smiles on their faces eager to learn (we only see this through their ‘smiling eyes’ as we still have to wear masks at all times whilst in school). Anyone seeing these huge smiles would not be able to stop themselves from smiling right back.
We are hugely thankful to still be here for the children after such difficult times. The children are always eager to learn and absorb everything we teach them. Our teachers are so grateful to our donors from all around the world for giving them the opportunity to nurture the children, see them grow and watch their English progress.
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In March 2022 the second Thai school term came to an end and the disadvantaged children studying on the Phuket Has Been Good To Us English Integrated Studies programme took their end of school year exams. Their teachers were delighted with the students’ results, showing their resilience after yet another difficult school year learning so many of their lessons online due to COVID. After a well-earned break, the new school year started in May 2022 and, after over two years of online teaching due to this pandemic, at last with COVID numbers decreasing, we were able to return to in-class learning.
In their first meeting with the students, their Phuket Has Been Good To Us Teachers discussed “essential classroom agreements”. The students were involved in planning what their learning would look like for the coming school year. The teachers didn’t give rules but created them with the students. The children understand why these guidelines are necessary and why everyone’s voice matters. They know in our classrooms, they are in a safe place where they are seen and heard. We know that children thrive and learn in safe environments. We are also helping to teach them at an early age that their presence, their thoughts, and their point of view matters. We exercise their right to ‘vote’ on how they want to succeed together and discuss the possible consequences of their actions. We teach them to think as a class and be accountable for their actions. After we set our agreements in each class we cut out a huge red heart and signed in the “heart of the class”, with each of the students setting their goals for this term. Part of our classroom agreement discussion is knowing what other available learning resources they have in the class, where they are, when, and how to access them, such as how to properly keep the books they borrow from our book corner.
As their English and Maths & Science in English classes started for the 2022/2023 academic year the students were ecstatic to learn something new with their classmates around them again at last. In our English classes these less privileged children will learn not only the Thai curriculum but we will also develop their communication and teamwork skills over the coming year. We are excited for all the learning moments ahead and are hugely grateful to our supporters around the world for making all of this possible for disadvantaged children in Kamala School.
Since the second Thai school term started on 1st November 2021, the pandemic has unfortunately continued to impact the disadvantaged children’s lives in Kamala, Phuket. About 50% of the term school has been spent online learning only, leaving the children living in school isolated from their families and school friends. The Thai teachers at school have not introduced online learning and so Phuket Has Been Good To Us online classes are the only way the children are able to connect with the outside world and their classmates.
At the beginning of term we studied online from 1st to 14th November. Following ATK tests for all students and teachers on 15th November, we were happily able to return to school for classes.
Thankfully, our first graders had the chance to step into the classroom. It is amazing how they are able to adapt to the changing times but also at the same time, heartbreaking because it is not what is supposed to be normal for them to experience at their age. For our little 7 year old Primary year 1 students we break large class into smaller groups to ensure more teacher-student contact time. Most of these children have not been to kindergarten because of the pandemic and so 2 to 3 years of learning has been taken away by the special learning circumstances. When we are in school, we try to give them back what they have missed. They are so excited, and very engaged in every simple question and answer activity.
For the younger Primary year students, we try to move around the school, sit in circles in outside spaces; if we can have more experiential learning, using the spaces for the little ones to explore and breathe as opposed to having them just seated in the class at least for reading group sessions to make up for the lost phase of their student life. Eventually they will have to also learn certain rules and routines like when sitting for an exam but there’s plenty of time to train them for that.
The younger children love to read books and ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?’ is their favourite. It does a wonderful job of teaching colors, animals and rhyme to the children. Easy-to-follow rhyming text captivates students’ attention and encourages them to wonder what they’ll see next!
For the older students it’s great to be in class so they can learn to socialize, work in groups and pairs. For Maths in English and Science in English classes in particular it helps the children experience hands on learning with blocks in mathematics and experimentation in science.
Unfortunately, over the new year period COVID numbers increased and we had to return to online teaching from 4th January onwards.
When our welcome, relaxing circle time at the beginning of class physically isn’t possible in online learning, we have introduced an ‘easy morning talk’. Whilst waiting for the other students to join in, we use the first 15 minutes of our time before the class to check in on our students and ask how they are feeling. Students are allowed to talk and express themselves freely, show things they are excited about with the group, such as a resident cat, and also ask how others are.
We are now entering the third year of teaching during this pandemic. We have been amazed by how quickly our primary year students grasped the essential IT skills needed to fulfill their tasks online. To keep on motivating them in achieving their goals, we keep on exploring and introducing new ways for the students to experience. Gamification of formative assessments through online live and self-paced competitions as well as use of simulations to understand scientific concepts have been introduced. The students love that they can continue learning at their own pace and have a personalized practice time on certain topics they need to work on. It also takes virtual socialization to a whole new level that they all feel very much still a class, a big family team, wherever they are learning.
Thank you to all our supporters for helping to make this possible for these disadvantaged children.
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