We visited a school in Prey Veng.
Among schools in Cambodia, although having a library, sometimes their books are covered by dust because children don't often read. We first need to let them come to find delight in experiencing books.
It should be a good idea to set up books, making a small library space, in each classroom enabling children to access books easily. But since this idea is difficult to realize due to shortage of funds, we encourage teachers to read daily little by little. We explain the benefit of reading (either active or passive reading) to teachers such as to enhance sociality through simulated experiences and to enhance concentration.
Usually, some degrees of effect would be seen just by reading/ listening to teacher’s reading continuously without deeply fathoming the story every time. Just because, besides children have little opportunity to read variety of books, the content of language class here generally doesn’t much seem to let them exercise to think the intention of the author or feeling of characters, we usually try to take some time to think with children about each story.
They don’t have a habit to read books or to think about stories, they cannot summarize their ideas if we abruptly ask what they think. So we start to review a story step by step with children, let them remember who appeared in the story, what they did, and what happened… And we would also ask which character they like and why. Like this, we aim children to sense the world of each story.
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