It is absolutely fantastic to see dedicated teachers like Manith embracing new teaching skills to work with the students.

​A simple example is the use of flashcards. Rather than simply learning words by heart or memorising how to pass a particular test, these flashcards bring back the fun into learning! An example would be- a flashcard could show the word “banana” and the exercise would be to come up with your 5 favourite fruits. Make learning fun again.

Currently, PeopleStories Foundation is still designing the lessons, but we are set to launch the first “Booster” course on 1st of May 2019.

In only a matter of months, we will be supporting 123 Grade 7 student with the great help from local teachers who are preparing the lesson plans as we speak.
 
If you are as passionate about teaching and education as we are, we would like to hear from you!

​Let’s discuss what more we can do to improve the Khmer literacy skills of children all over Cambodia so that they stay in school and have a shot at a brighter future. 

We wanted to help students improve their Khmer literacy with a tailored learning initiative.

We first tested the Khmer literacy skills of 1,100 students from Grade 1 to Grade 7 and discovered that while some of them could read and write Khmer alphabets, 83% of the tested Grade 7 students failed to understand basic articles or write simple sentences in Khmer.
 
With these findings, we deduced that the best way to improve the application and understanding of the Khmer language perhaps was through a targeted learning course, which we would like to call it “Booster” for the 125 much needed help Grade 7 students.  

We envisage each “Booster” will revolve around activity-based learning instead of just the conventional copying and memorising. 
 
Hope this will enable students to fully immerse themselves in the Khmer language through an interactive and social learning environment. This will also empower them to have more ownership over their actions and more importantly, realise that their literacy challenges can be overcome with exposure to the right learning materials.

After months of investigation, we discovered that one of the root causes was that many of these students struggled to read and write. They did not have access to sufficient early childhood learning and their illiteracy simply worsened with age.
 
This inevitably affected not only their performance in school, but also their morale. They started to believe that education was wasted on them and their time would be better spent in the farms or working odd jobs to earn a little income for their families.

Literacy skills, being able to read and write, is a tool used when children receive and interpret information. It opens the doors to more educational and employment opportunities so that people are able to uplift themselves from poverty. 
 
We, at PeopleStories Foundation, believe Khmer literacy skills are imperative to student’s success at school.  They are one of the key elements to stop students drop out from school or having repeated in the same grade.