Reading Confidence

Rasmey, an 8 year old in grade 1 at a school Orieng Ov District, Kampong Cham Province, was a shy, unhappy student in class. She often bent her head to the table because she was worried that her friends would laugh at her when the teacher wanted someone to read or write on the board.

Child to Child activities are an important activity implemented by KAPE for helping children who face such difficulties with their reading and writing. This year, Rasmey’s teacher selected her to join their new child to child activities. She spent 15 to 30 minutes during break time with Sokleng, a student from grade 6, who helped her with her reading and writing. After a few weeks, she began to be able to read and write a bit better than before and was able to read and write simple things on the board and began to grow in confidence.

Now she no-longer bends her head to the table and often puts her hand up when the teacher asks for a volunteer to read or write something on the board. She no longer has to worry about her friends laughing and has become much more confident in the class. Her teacher said “Rasmey is good student. She was never absent from school, but she had difficulty reading and writing Khmer letters. Now she is able to enjoy her lessons as she knows that she can read and write well”.

Rasmey is just one of the 150 students (76 girls), that was identified for such support across the 5 out of 19 target schools that chose this activity in the Rewrite the Future (RtF) project, funded by Save the Children.

The RtF project is an educational service project which uses school grants and activity menus to ensure stakeholder choice in program design, as well as child rights-based planning. It develops and supports the Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport’s Child Friendly Schools (CFS) policy in remote areas in Kampong Cham Province. Child to child is just one of 43 potential activities for supporting the schools in the target area.