Goducate has a Children’s Home in Yangon, Myanmar. The 12 children there come from very poor families and have lost one or both parents, either through death or remarriage. The children attend state schools, where English is not taught. They learn English at the Home, where they also receive help in catching up with their schoolwork if necessary. Knowing English would be a plus-point for them when the time comes for them to be looking for a job..
Goducate also teaches English to the children in four villages in Myanmar. Our workers in Myanmar visit these villages and teach them English through songs and stories.
I went along with a small team from Singapore last week to introduce our Sing Your English (SYE) program to the children Goducate serves in Myanmar. We found that some of the children in the villages do not go to school because they are too poor. In one village we were told that these children were instead working in bottle-washing factories, where the washing is done by hand.
Learning English at the Children’s HomeLearning a song in English in the villageThe bottle factory
It’s been more than a year now since Goducate started using simple English songs to teach the language to young children in Indonesia. The songs are used not merely as an ice-breaker to loosen the children’s inhibitions or to set a cheerful mood for the class. They are used as the main text for the lessons, which are intended to impart enjoyment rather than fear of learning the English language. The children learn songs fast, and they easily become familiar with the words, even without understanding them initially. This led us to develop a curriculum for English lessons through songs and other fun activities that would help children improve their language learning.
The Sing Your English (SYE) program is an extracurricular program, with no examinations and grading, to reinforce the fun aspect of learning English. The students are taught to use words and phrases related to those that are in the songs, and in this way to pick up conversational English.
Goducate has already introduced the SYE program in several cities in Indonesia, such as Batam, Pekanbaru, and Medan, and we hope in Bandung later this year. The SYE program has been used not only within the four walls of a classroom, but also in communities and through English camps. It has been well received in all these settings.
To speed up curriculum development, and to allow me to focus on teaching students and training teachers, a content team of four people was put together in the Philippines to create the songs and the manuals. The team started work in June this year and so far it has completed both writing and editing the manual for Book 1 and is halfway through the manual and workbook for kindergarten children.
The books are targeted at Indonesian children. It is possible that they will have to be modified slightly for children in other countries. Meanwhile, the SYE teachers are providing the content team with feedback, to help them make the books as appropriate as possible.
Cambodians generally do not celebrate their birthdays. However, at the Cambodian Children’s Home we do celebrate the children’s birthdays. It is one of the ways by which we let the children know that they are special.
With nearly 40 children in the Home, we try to observe the birthdays in the most economical way, yet make the celebrations full of fun. We thus celebrate birthdays with a little party by the month, with different kinds of cakes each month.
Although the parties are for combined birthdays, we do something special on each child’s birthday. There are no fancy balloons, clowns, or mascots, and there may not even be cakes. We often burst out in song, perhaps with special food and a gift. We may surprise the birthday child by suddenly singing while in the learning center, or even while the birthday boy or girl is still sleeping. Or we may go through most of the day pretending to forget that it is somebody’s birthday before acknowledging it. But it is always something special to let the birthday child know that he or she is loved and remembered.
Icing a birthday cakeIcing cupcakesA combined birthday
