New Ways of Learning

One of the main challenges in completing school in Cambodia is when students transition from primary to secondary school.

In an ideal world, there are high quality curriculums that are consistently used to make the transition easier. In a less than perfect world, this presents a real challenge and some of the students struggle with all the subjects in secondary school, simply because they lack the necessary Khmer language skills, making grade 7 and onwards an at times unnecessarily frustrating experience.

As part of PeopleStories’ Khmer for Success program, we are looking to address this by preparing students with a 2 months holiday Khmer booster class before they enter grade 7 in November 2019.

​We need to be clever and creative though delivering these workshops to the students as a mere repetition of what they were taught during the previous school year would most likely only produce the same result.

What does this mean? Teachers have to find new, fun and engaging ways to entice students to return to school for 3 days a week during their holiday.

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.

All credit goes to the wonderful teachers for committing their time during school holidays. A big Thank You to them also for being open to learning how to collectively better look after the new generation of amazing children growing up!

click to learn more about our Khmer for Success program