Assignments in the Classroom

Since being here I have been given several projects. The first was to record the weight, height and how fast each child could run a distance of 50 meters onto a chart and later into an Excel worksheet. The chart with the data is for the teachers and kids to see their progress over the next three months. The concept of graphing is difficult for many children to understand, but I think that when they graph their data a second time they will begin to see the change. A long-term project while I’m here is to take math curriculum books that Richard Haugland, the owner of Starfish Country Home School, wrote and convert them into a digital format with clip art rather than dots. The final project is making an evaluation chart of the progress each child has made since being here at the Starfish School for four months. The evaluation chart will have several boxes next to the child’s name, and when the child either completes the requirement or partially completes the requirement I will record the data with a sticker or color in half the box. The different requirements are skills such as counting from “1 to 10”, “1 to 20” and “1 to 100” in both English and in Thai. I have become a pretty good counter myself in Thai, so I might give myself a sticker. Other requirements will be reciting the alphabet in English and Thai, and also being able to describe a picture in both Thai and English (i.e. upon being shown a picture of a monkey the student will need to say “monkey” and “ling”). I hope this will motivate the children to aspire to excel in school, and this will also be a visual guide for the teacher as to what skills they need the children to work on in the classroom. There will be more assignments in the future, but I think for now my plate is almost full with the amount of daylight that I have.