A Great Teacher at Saint Francois Primary School

M. Ny, Director and English teacher at the Primary school is definitely a great teacher.

I have observed him today and I’ll first write about the reasons why he is a good teacher, then about his weaknesses and finally how to improve his teaching and reach a fantastic level at the Primary school. He was teaching Grade 1.

What was great:

-          His energy.

-          Use a visual aid. Use the flashcards in a great way (guessing game)

-          Use of games with the cards and with a ball.

-          Pair work to maximize the speaking time using the pattern:

§  Do you like _________?

§  Yes, I do / No, I don’t.

-          Monitors the activities efficiently

-          Good instructions for the activities.

-          A fast, loud, and enthusiastic answer from the students.

What can be improved:

-          Some aspects of his pronunciation are still weak, even though his English is good overall. He has the pronunciation problems all Cambodian people have, no final S, problem with the SH sound (fish). Despite his efforts, he transfers that to the kids.

-          The game with the ball could have generated more speaking. More students could have been involved in that game

-          Other games would have been great.

-          A song would have been good.

-          The way to choose which students will be playing could be a fun activity too.

How to improve:

-          Audio-visual devices such as a computer, a projector, a sound system, should be provided. In fact, there is a projector: It would be great if it could be fixed on the ceiling, and if all classes could benefit from this installation.

-          The use a teaching methodology including visual aid and recording would compensate the teacher’s pronunciation limits. It could provide some songs adapted for each new lesson. It could easily be incorporated to the program provided by the Ministry of Education through the book “Fun with English”. Genki English is a great methodology that could be implemented. Its cost is $497, including a software to download, access to a lot of flashcards handouts to print, more than 100 lessons covering 100% of the sounds of English, plenty of games to practice in class, a lot of tips for the teachers, and a great phonics methodology…

What’s going on at Saint Francois Primary School is already very good: 
it could become great!