I want to change our approach to working with external schools to see if we can get better results. We will provide more and longer hands-on training to a few schools IN THE CLASSROOMS to see if the use of our materials can become more effective.
The idea is that Khru Nam would initially approach one local school to get an agreement that she could spend one hour a day for three weeks working with one of their kindergarten teachers to teach only the letters of the Thai Alphabet. Hopefully, they would learn the letters of Thai Consonant Set 1 the first week, of Thai Consonant Set 2 the second week and of Thai Consonant Set 3 the third week. If they were slower than that, we may somewhat extend the duration of our on-site training or would let the teacher continue until successful without in-classroom assistance by Nam.
We would pretest the students on the 32 (not 44) pictures and letters then do the regular individual tests after finishing each Thai Consonant Set and a posttest after finishing all three Thai Consonant Sets.
It would be best to start with a very local school near Maetaeng that we have never worked with such as Baan Pon and to work with kids who know very few Thai letters already (probably 4 or 5 year olds in K2 of a three year anubaan program). We can start any time but preferably yet this month.
All teaching of the Thai Alphabet would be done with flashcards, not PowerPoint Presentations. They would get a Thai Alphabet poster to put on the wall. We would provide the school with at least one set of the smaller Thai Alphabet flashcards and use one larger set that we would keep.
We would provide Thai Alphabet printouts for the children to take home and probably some tracing sheets of their Thai nicknames and Thai letters to do mostly as homework or to fill time while doing individual testing. There are additional Thai Alphabet worksheets too such as matching letters and pictures that we would provide the school during our three week presence.
I want agreement from the school in advance for a full hour Thai Alphabet class early in the morning to make it worthwhile though.
Initially Nam would directly do the teaching and introduce methods such as flyswatters, handing cards to kids who give correct answers, kids collecting cards, competitive games such as running to get the card that is named, using multiple smaller groups with a student leader, groups for “special needs” kids and maybe even 5 baht rewards (from us). By the second week, if not earlier, Nam would mostly observe the teacher doing the lessons and help with assessments and motivation of students. Some of the good teachers could eventually qualify to be our trainers too.
It would be useful to have parental support in the classroom and to have a parents meeting prior to getting started to explain what we are doing and what our October results here were. A school SHOULD look at this as an opportunity, not as a threat. The students should also see this as a fun activity
Nam would initially do at least one classroom in three different schools near Maetaeng one after the other in the next few months this way to see what the results are and whether our Anubaan Pilot Project may be a useful approach. If the schools we work with get good results, we can give then the Thai Phonics Lessons that follow and get them started on those probably using only flashcards but would not give them unlimited in-classroom assistance for long durations.
If results justify in the first three schools, Nam would continue doing this and at the same time train a new teacher employed by Starfish to become an in-classroom trainer for outside schools. In the long run, I feel that a Starfish trainer could simultaneously work with at least three classrooms a day for an hour each in the same or nearby schools. Over a full year we may be able to have a presence in up to 20 different schools just near Maetaeng.
We would, of course, heavily rely on data we collect from pretests and posttests to attract other schools that we want to use our curricula. We may then also expand training to math and English classes.
In the long run it would be useful to have a Starfish trainer full-time in Maetaeng, one in the city of Chiangmai and possibly in Bangkok, Chiangrai and even Samut Sakorn. One could even conceive of having Starfish trainers in Isaan or the Burma border but not for some time yet. The cost of this approach versus the number of students supported would be far lower than opening addition facilities to host our own anubaan classes.
Having trainers in Chiangmai and Bangkok may be useful for improving student recruitment, down to the point of identifying specific students we should try to recruit from each school. It would certainly get us better known to schools in those locations.
We may be able to use the Anubaan Pilot Project to train Rajabat student teachers too.
We would also integrate our Thai Alphabet research project (our new P1/P2 class project) into the Anubaan Pilot Project and hopefully get positive results that can be published.
Next February through Songkran we will have hill tribe students here who will be learning the Thai Alphabet letters. That is another opportunity to do hands-on training for external teachers. We may also have an April-May project like the October project that can be used for teacher training.