Dr. Dom's Current PBL Practice
Is it possible for Grade 4 learners to teach Thai school kids English?
Teach Me project is the most current project that we are working on. The project aims at giving back to the community. Teaching Thai government school kids reading strategies, providing them with the tools to support their learning needs in English conversation. The Teach Me project is open-ended in nature, allowing the students to create any tangible final product they would like, that falls under the umbrella of a certain topic. The students are given a general rubric to help guide them towards quality work, but are not told what or how to create the learning materials. That is all up to the student. Students will teach and create educational games and videos with Thai translations. Students are given multiple opportunities to ask questions and gather data from the timeline of events, such activities include: observations, interviews, reflections, feedback time, lesson planning and continuous content development. Students further assess the Thai government school kids' needs and find out about their level of proficiency. Community involvement and participation in the development and use of teaching and learning materials is an essential part in developing children’s literacy skills and a central component in sustainability and true transformation within a society. Through the use of locally available materials, parents, caregivers, siblings, and learners themselves can develop their own learning resources. As big as this problem may be, the empowerment of our kids can help make a difference and create positive change in something much bigger than themselves. Our Teach Me project is connected to our Business PBL, as we raised 16 000 baht to donate for the Thai government school.
Entry Event
Reflection: I see, I think, I wonder, scale and feedback form.
Found the problem: Not all Thai working people can communicate in English.
The Driving Question
Individually written down and combined then voted by both classes.
Kindergarten Observations
Students walk around the room with a clipboard and wrote down their recordings of main findings, thoughts and questions about how kindergarten students learn a language .
Expert Parent
Expert parent is Jade’s mom and she works at a University She gave us feedback on our lesson plans and how to improve the content.
Investment Proposals
High school students acted as investors for their app, students had formal meetings and continuous feedback sessions
Persuasive Letter
Students persuaded Principal Mari that our "Teach Me project" will be a great success
Interview with a Teacher
Students learned that it is important to make an interactive game that involves movement.
Visit to the Thai School
We went to Loi Sai school to observe and teach the kids basic vocabulary to further help understand their proficiency level to adapt our learning materials
Created Video Content
Video recording of English lessons for the Thai government school kids.
Test and Modify the Slides and Games
Students created prototypes on cardboard and then created their final games digitally
Ongoing Journal Reflection and Feedback
Students write their observations, new information learned in a weekly journal
Workshop
May 25 2023. We helped raise 16 000 baht for the Loi Sai Thai government school and donated educational board games, an app and educational videos.