Nan Project 2019
It’s that time of the year again for me to go back to Nan. This year, however, will be my last year. Therefore, I decided that we should focus more on getting results rather than having fun.
Short Introduction
Nan Project is a project I came up with my mom. Since I was abroad for almost half my life, I felt that my own understanding of my own cultural heritage started to fade away. Because of this, I wanted to learn more about my culture as well as giving to the community (through teaching English). The school I selected is located in a small town, named Nanoi, in Northern Thailand. Over the years, we slowly grew closer with the locals, becoming part of their family.
The program had been fairly simple. My sister and I recruited around six to seven other people to join us each year. We divide into smaller teams to teach grades 1 through 6. Now in its final year, we want to do try to send off the school on a positive note. That is why we want to put in even more effort.
Part I: Pre-Project Meetings
Before going to Nan Province, we met up at my house to discuss the topics, teaching methods and controlling mechanisms for the students.
Me giving a presentation on our project last year
The team members for this year’s project
Design Thinking
I decided to introduce design thinking, the art of solving problems, to my teammates. None of them learned about it before but were willing to try the concept out. There are many ways to solve problems, but I taught them the same concepts that I’ve learned. Despite all the different approaches that design thinking offers, all of them emphasizes coming up as many solutions to a problem as possible in a short amount of time and test them out in the real world. Here is the structure that I introduced:
Everything starts off with a problem. We either influence this problem ourselves or have observed it. Next is the assumption that we need to make before coming up with a solution (why is the problem the way it is? What assumptions are you making while coming up with a solution?). Next, we must try to brainstorm as many solutions as possible. The key is that we don’t want to be stuck with just one idea. We would want to test them out as fast as we can so that we know what we did right or wrong. But to test our solutions, we also need to come up with a criterion for success: some kind of benchmark to indicate whether we should continue on our path on refining our solution or to change our direction. Right now, it is hard to explain in words as the concept is very hands-on. So I hope to illustrate these ideas later on as we test them out.
Coming Up With a Schedule
Before coming up with how we will structure the class, we need to think about what we learned from last year:
We cannot keep the students’ attention for the whole class. Afterall, they are just kids. They soon lose interest.
We never actually reviewed what we taught them. Therefore, we had no idea whether they remembered what we taught them or not.
The teaching plan was unstructured. There was no continuity between classes
So we decided to come up with this schedule:
There are several assumptions we want to test out:
The kids will actually pay attention more if they know that there is a reward for doing so (e.g. playing games at the end, candy, etc)
Practicing will allow them to internalize information in the short term. Reviewing previous class’s information will internalize information in the long term
A game at the end will make the lesson shorter. This means that we will end the lesson just when the students are losing their attention. It will also energize and end the class in good spirits.
Topics To Teach
Deconstructing Our Objective
When I asked my college Japanese professor I really respected of how she came to construct the class, she said that she first started off with what she wanted her students to be able to say and then work backwards to see which components are needed to be taught to be able to reach this objective. So this was what we did. First, we each brainstormed what we think we should teach them. We gave ourselves around 5 minutes to brainstorm as many topics that we think we should teach them. Afterwards, we posted them on a wall and grouped them together.
My teammates and I brainstorming
General Topics
From this activity, we came to a conclusion that we should teach about:
Basic information about oneself (e.g. family, hobbies, etc.)
Food & Drinks
Direction and Transportation
House Chores
Shopping
Components
Now that we have the general topics, we went back to the table and thought about what components we would need to teach them. Again, we gave ourselves 3 minutes per topic to brainstorm its components.
I will not go over each of the topic (will be covered later on when we are actually teaching), but these will be incorporated as details that we will teach them.
Teaching Methods
We thought about the scenario from our perspective and from the student’s perspective. I asked my teammates what they thought is an effective teaching method in their own experience or if they have been in a class where they thought the teacher was really good at teaching. Then we brainstormed what we think possible ways of teaching that would be effective from our own perspective
Here are the guidelines we thought were good teaching methods:
Encouraging in-class competition (in groups, not as individuals) for prizes
Being relatable to everyday life
A mix of both serious teaching and relief (e.g. games, life stories, etc)
The teacher being able to explain in detail but makes it easy to understand
Teachers interacting and participating in the exercises they give
These are some possible solutions that we can potentially test out as we teach to see which one works best with elementary school students.
Part II: Teaching
For this year's teaching project, two other teaching assistants and I are teaching two grades: grade 3 and 4. There are two classes per grade with around 30 people per class. It will be too long to write about all of four classes I teach so I want to focus on the third grade. In third grade, there are 3/1 and 3/2. The 3/1 class is the school's Mini-English Program (MEP) while the 3/2 is the normal program. This means that 3/1 is the accelerated English class and thus more advanced than 3/2. This poses a problem to us as we cannot teach both classes at the same pace. But at the moment, we want to see their level in English. Nevertheless, I've decided to include both of them because one class reflects an advanced English skill while the other is the normal level.
Other things that should be noted:
Due to limited amount of time, we will be focusing on conversation and getting the kids to become more confident while speaking.
We do not meet everyday. We meet around 2 times for each class per week. This is a challenge as the students can forget what we have taught them.
We do not give grades and we do not punish students. A way to discipline them and get them to focus is to tempt them with snacks.
1st Class
3/1 (MEP)
Schedule
Introduction, divide into teams: 10-15 minutes
write their names onto a piece of paper and make it into a name card
write their names in English on the opposite side of the card
After dividing into teams, we would have them write their team name on it as well
Teaching: 20 minutes
Lesson will be based off of basic information: hobbies, what you do in your freetime
Students will write their hobbies in Thai on post-it notes and post it on the board
We will look at each post-it note one by one and see if they know it in English
We will also teach them verbs so that they can incorporate their hobbies into sentences
Practice: 15 minutes
someone will act out and the students that are sitting will raise their hands. We will pick those who are the fastest
A correct answer will translate into a point for that team
At the end of the class, the team with the greatest amount of points will receive candies from us.
Games: 15 minutes
A game of simon says if time permits
The 3/1 Class. Photo credits to James Li
Morning greeting. Photo credits to James Li
Students writing down our vocab on the board. Photo credits to James Li
My teaching assistant and I teaching. Photo credits to James Li
Result
Overall, I think the class didn't go that well. There are many reasons for that.
One reason is that we were not keeping track of time. Some activities took much longer than expected. When we were making them write out their names, that took around 15 minutes. Because of this, we also didn’t get the time to play games with them.
The kids pretty much know every word that they wrote on the board in English. They looked bored as we were teaching and making them repeat after us. When we asked them to copy what was on the board in their notebooks, they didn't really want to do it because they already know it.
Dividing into teams was not a good idea. The exercise emphasized speed and luck rather than English ability. Those who did answer but whose team did not win were really down because they tried really hard only to see their efforts go down the drain. Vice versa: those who did not participate but was on the winning team got the prizes.
Our lesson was not true to our purpose: teach them conversation. They were merely spitting out words but they were not making any sentences.
For Next Time
To keep track of time, we will now keep a stopwatch running the whole period to see how long each activity takes. We will also set a time limit on students so that they know how much time they have to do a certain activity. This will also encourage them to speed up their writing.
We should award individuals that participate rather than the team that won. Therefore, we should get rid of the team structure.
Since this is obviously too easy for them, we need to increase the difficulty. The question is how? Translating word by word is too easy. They can probably make sentences. I thought back to why my college Japanese class was so effective in teaching us the language and realized that one of the components they made us do is to reenact scenarios from daily life such as going shopping or going to the restaurant. This structure will also emphasize conversation.
Keeping this in mind, we will get them to find a partner and reenact an English dialogue I made up. There are reasons for this: 1) this is more relatable to their daily life, 2) students will actually have fun performing, 3) teachers can participate more with the students.
3/2 (Normal)
We modified the schedule a little bit since this class is not as advanced as the MEP class.
Introduction: 15 minutes
write name in English using markers so that we can see this time
ask "what is your name?" and expect them to answer in full sentences
Teaching: 20 minutes
write their hobbies in Thai on post-it notes
translate them word by word into English
write a list on the board and make them write in their notebooks
Practice: 10 minutes
Ask them to raise their hands and answer in full sentences
"What do you like to do in your free time?"
"I like to..."
Afterwards, I will have one of my TAs act out a verb or noun they learned and they will have to raise their hands to answer
Games: 15 minutes
Simon says using the vocabulary we taught them.
Result:
This class is almost the opposite of the MEP class. They are very shy and not willing to participate even if we offered them candy.
They are more willing to participate if we make the review into a game: e.g. simon says. Since we became better at time management, we were able to fit in a game of simon says at the end.
But overall, this class does not know as much vocabulary as the MEP class so the pace was much slower. This allowed us some breathing room to work with the materials that we prepared. We didn't have to worry about making the material harder to challenge their abilities.
For next time:
We will review the vocab using simon says at the beginning of class. This time, we should try playing a game to wake them up.
Perhaps getting them to partner up before answering our questions will make them more confident and more willing to participate.
We will use the same lesson plan as 3/1 for next class, but we will adapt the plan accordingly.
2nd Class
3/1
Taking last lesson's learning points into consideration, we restructured how we want to teach the MEP students
Schedule
Start off with a game to review: 10 minutes
Using my Japanese professor's advice, we want to be able to review what they learn every class so that they will always think back to the previous classes. We used simon says to incorporate the vocab into the game.
Teaching: 20 minutes
We created a dialogue, imagining what it would be like to go to a market.
The dialogue is fairly simple: "what is this?" "how much is this?" "can I buy this please?" "That will be 60 baht."
1st time: The teaching staff would go through the dialogue and act it out
2nd time: we act out the dialogue again but slower. We then need to ask them to make sure they understand everything we said
3rd time: we wrote out the dialogue on the board and then acted it out again, showing them line by line. After, we made them copy it in their books
4th time: after they're done writing, we acted one last time to hit it home.
Practice: 15 minutes
Get them into pairs and then let them act out and practice
We would want them to memorize the whole dialogue and then perform in front of us
We would give candy to those who could do it from memory
Games: 15 minutes
Since kids don't long attention spans, we'll end the class with some kind of game to review what they've learned.
We brought our props to use in the dialogue that we teach them. Photo credit to Te Pungpapong
Basic things we teach them about shopping. As you can see, the information is out of order making it confusing.
One of the TAs (Nadon) helping students write. Photo credits to Te Pungpapong
Me helping students (Class 4/2) with their dialogue. Photo credits to Te Pungpapong
Students getting up to find a partner to practice their dialogue. Photo credits to James Li
Result:
We managed to time it well enough that everyone was able to take notes and then practice. However, there are still no time for games. But since the kids were really focused on the job, I think it is worth it.
Teaching in the context of everyday life turned out to be pretty effective. Other than acting out, kids love making the props themselves (e.g. paper cutout of fruits and bank notes) so they were more devoted than usual.
It turns out that making the task more difficult and asking for volunteers is a better tactic. We prepared enough time for everyone to perform so when everyone gets a candy they feel rewarded for their hard work.
While everyone did go, only 4-5 pairs out of 15 were able to commit the dialogue to memory and do so fluently. Others had a strong resolve nevertheless but still relies on the board for reference. But I imagine it is hard to commit a dialogue you just learned to memory in such a short period of time.
The hard part is to control those who are finished. They ran around making a lot of noises.
The teaching staff wrote down the phrases but they were not really in order. We need to reorganize what we write on the board so the kids will not be confused.
For next time:
Since we have finally found the right difficulty for this class, we will continue to teach in the dialogue form. Kids seem to be having a lot of fun.
We will try to review the dialogue again for the next class to see if they will still remember it. I told them this class that they should go back home and memorize it for the next class.
To control those who are finished, we might ask them to go help those who are still practicing. If not, we'll ask them to draw actual props and reenact in different roles.
I would write out the dialogue on a piece of paper first before having one of the teaching staff rewrite it on the board.
3/2
For the schedule, we pretty much used the same as the 3/1 class.
Result:
Because this is not an accelerated English class, the students took longer to take in the dialogue and memorize them. It turns out that very few were able to commit to memory and perform at the same time.
Since this class was also more shy, we would go to their tables and check their performance instead of having them come up and perform.
For next time:
We will continue to review shopping and make sure they could do it
For 3/2, we fixed our mistake from 3/1 by putting the dialogue in order
3rd Class
3/1
Schedule
Review: 15 minutes
Simon says for basic hobbies vocabulary
Shopping dialogue performance
Teaching: 20 minutes
After making sure, they could reenact the shopping dialogue, we will now teach them the restaurant dialogue: one will be a waiter, the other will be the customer. Dialogue may include things such as: "How many people?" "This way please," "Here is the menu."
The performance will also be four times – same as the 2nd class
They will write down the dialogue and practice themselves
Practice: 10 minutes
Games: 15 minutes
Result:
Only half the class was here because some were at scouts camp.
We tried to teach the class anyways and for those who were here, they were focused and dedicated to memorizing the dialogue
For next time:
We will try teaching the same thing again once the whole class comes back
3/2
The schedule is the same as 3/1
Result:
The kids took more time to review shopping, but more pairs were able to do it (perhaps they really did go back and practice).
We started teaching about the restaurant but the class ended when they were still writing the dialogue so there was not enough time to practice themselves. I told them to go back and practice to perform in the next class.
The front has a lot of energy but they were fairly focused on the class.
They were ecstatic (jumping up and down in their desks) when I give them the thumbs up and praising them after they were able to perform the dialogue correctly and by memory. The task at hand was the same level as the advanced English class so those who were able to do it must have felt extremely proud with themselves even if it took them longer to learn.
Many were not able to read English. Because we could not teach them everything in a short amount of time, we wrote down the karaoke (thai pronunciation of English words) so that they could act without worrying about their ability to read. Of course, this means that we are sacrificing the time to teach them reading for giving them the confidence to speak conversationally instead.
Almost all of them actually tried to get the dialogue right and they were not complaining about what we were making them do.
For next time:
Continue to use the same format but allow more time for practice.
Karaoke writing seems to work well and the kids were willing to act out if they could understand what they were saying.
Nadon and I performing our dialogue. Photo credits to Teddy Thepsutha
The Karaoke version for 3/2
Fourth Class (Final)
3/1
Schedule
Review: 10 minutes
Shopping dialogue
A game of simon says to wake the class up.
Teach: 20 minutes
with the whole class back, teach them the restaurant dialogue again
Practice: 15 minutes
Games: 15 minutes
To finish off our program, we'll end with a game of splat. It's not related to what we want to teach them, but we think the kids can cool off after their hard work.
Result:
At first, it was hard to integrate those who already could act out the dialogue and those who missed the last class. But luckily, those who missed caught up very fast.
Some actually made their own props just for the lesson. They love drawing up their own menus and imagining their own restaurant. We allowed them a lot of freedom in how they want to layout their setting for their acting so they took the liberty to do so.
A fair amount of students came to me and asked me if they could act again. I told them that there will be no candy for the second time, but they said they're fine with it. And because some acted for the second time, many followed without expecting any reward in return. It was an awesome way to end the program because now I saw that the method worked really well and the students were enthusiastic enough to act out the dialogue multiple times.
We still had difficulty those who finished early, but most of them used their energy towards perfecting the dialogue for the second time.
At the end, it got to the point where candy doesn't have to be the highest award. Being able to commit a hard dialogue to memory and performing it perfectly made the kids thrilled. They wanted to do it more than once and the class ended on a good note with them being very confident in themselves.
I can't remember the exact number, but around 70-80% of the class committed the dialogue to memory and performed well.
After the class, two students asked me if I could return next year because they said they enjoyed how I taught the class.
3/2
Same schedule as 3/1
Result:
Of course, the class did not progress as fast as the first but almost every pair used a lot of their effort to try to perfect their acting.
We only had three pairs out of fifteen be able to perform without looking at their notes, but all of them were very devoted to learning to act out the dialogue.
We awarded those who could do the dialogue with bigger candies, but we also awarded everyone in the class anyways because they were really focused on their tasks.
Conclusion
List of things I've learned
Kids love performing. In their free time, they also watch youtube videos of vloggers, so there might be a part of them that wants to act out.
You can only focus on so many things when you have a limited amount of time. For this time, we focused on conversation so we were not able to tackle other things such as writing or reading.
Team-point system does not work well. While students like competition, they can still feel that their efforts are wasted once they lose as a team. At first, I underestimated their confidence to speak up so that was why I divided them into teams. It turned out that they are very confident in themselves and were willing to contribute if their efforts are rewarded. Those who did not participate at first would start to feel the pressure as their peers, one by one, were getting candy as rewards. The class behaves like a domino: once people start contributing, more will naturally follow.
As much as I want to make sure that they remember what they learned, it is very difficult because we do not meet everyday. It is very easy for them to forget if they do not review the material before the next class.
There are those who could memorize the dialogue in a few minutes and others who have trouble writing because they cannot read English in the same class, so it was very hard to make kids do the same thing. If we were to cater to a specific group of students, others will be at a disadvantage. We did not have enough time to figure out how to tackle this problem.
Because we don't give out grades and we don't want to physically punish them, we use snacks and candies as an accountability system. Those who participate get a better and bigger snack. For those unwilling to participate, I coaxed them into participating by giving candies to their friends who do participate. They soon feel the pressure to do the same.
I hope that my showing the teaching process will help those interested in carrying out a similar project in the future. The students are still very far from fluency. However, with the right method and process, they will be able to come close to it. The dedication is already there. It’s just that no one has lit up that fuse yet.
I’ve learned a lot both inside and outside the classroom from these past three years. I wrote last year that I was somewhat lost in what I want to do in the future. I don’t think I will become a teacher, but I’ve realized that the countryside greatly contrasts Bangkok, the capital city. This unequal development makes me want to do something. What’s frustrating is that these students have the motivation to compete and go beyond, but they lack the resources to do so. There’s a world out there and I wanted them to realize that. English is a starting point. I look forward to coming back, not as a teacher, but as someone who can bring progress to the rural areas.