Long Division and Algebra

I arrived by Mr. Phally's tuk tuk at Northbridge International School by 11:30 this morning. By then Kate had lined up three children who their teachers felt were struggling overall in reading. Because this is a private international school, some children are from all over the world but a good portion are wealthy Cambodians. These children speak Khmer (pronounced Khe-my) at home yet this school only teaches in English. I spent some time speaking with the English second language consultant. She said that determining whether the children are having trouble phonetically (meaning not correcting pronouncing words thus interfering with comprehension) or whether a general vocabulary weakness was interfering with comprehension. Never the less these three children all falling a little behind the rest of the group and knowing why will help to bring them up.

I spent about 45 minutes with each child, testing letter names, sounds ,sight words and comprehension. I will meet with their teacher tomorrow to explain what the results of the testing. I have two other children to test tomorrow and then I am doing a lesson with a classroom. I have brought with me from home the letters my Ascend class wrote and the Northbridge students will write letters back. I am really excited about that.

Anxious to get back to the orphanage, I left Kate at 3:30 and Mr. Phalley took me back over. Kate stays late after school each day to exercise. It is only a 15 minute tuk tuk ride. Talk about two different worlds. Country club to poverty. I thought the children would be back from school by the time I arrived. Only the upper school girls were there. Elementary children are not dismissed until 4:30. Some of the girls were the same girls that we took to the concert. I explained that today I brought coloring books. They were not so thrilled but two girls said they would come to the "library" with me. It was clear they knew I came with the best if intentions and did not want to disappoint. I set up what I brought and they each took a book and fresh box of crayons as did I and we colored. I started making small talk and asked if they had homework and did they need any help. They said no it was easy. Although they learn some English in Cambodian public school, it is not quality and communication was tough. I asked if they did Math and they replied yes but hard. Trying to get a feel for what an 8th grader did there, I wrote a long division problem on some of the plain paper. They shot right up with "yes yes show me"..
I did one out in front of them. I wrote one out for each and coached them through it. They were psyched. They acted like they had just won American Idol. They handed me back the pencil to make more problems. One girl knew some multiplication facts the other more. I showed them how to make a multiplication chart. I began making them more difficult and they would look back at previous problems to remember. While the one was finishing writing out her tables, I showed the one this: 6 + b = 15 b=? and explained this is Algebra. We did several together. I showed her how she needed to get the variable to one side and solve. Within a half hour she was solving equations like this 2f +6 = 14. I quickly hand wrote out a page of these and told her "homework". I then gave the other one a handwritten page of long division. They are expected me back to correct. I never thought I would be teaching any Math. Those who know me well, know it is not a favorite, but after today it is.


The girl on the far left was in my Math class today. :)

New words I learned today: "an seopol" which means read book.

Tomorrow using the computer in Kate's school I will print off as many Math sheets I can.





**As I was leaving the younger children began to arrive, I found Rak Smey and showed her that I left a stack of coloring books and crayons up in the library. As I was leaving the room began to fill with the younger children all happy to be laying on the floor with a new coloring book and a fresh box of crayons. All was well.



Remember the boy and the watercolors? When I left the orphanage today I did not see him. I got back in the tuk tuk and rode the 15 minutes back to Northbridge. As we waited at the gate for Kate to come out, a boy rode up along side in a bicycle. It was him, he had heard I was back and followed the tuk tuk to show me he still had the watercolors.