ASEAN Day

For those that don't know, Thailand is one of the ASEAN Countries. Over the past 5 years or so, Thailand has been preparing for the opening of ASEAN, ensuring Thai people that once ASEAN opens (last year on December 31st was the official opening date) they will be able to go to any of the member countries and work in any of the countries. From what I've seen and heard, Thailand is the only country that is really preparing for ASEAN and it is more of a way to get them to put the member country flags on every school and government building, as well as encourage the teaching of English so that the students can go to the other countries to travel.

For opening worship these students read Psalms 133 in 9

different languages

This guy came and taught Jesus Loves Me in Burmese

 August 8th is the day that the treaty was first signed, and hence every school is supposed to host an ASEAN Day to teach about ASEAN. This was the first year since I've been here that we've done it. So, using the theme and information from the English Camp that the CVT Volunteers put on, we worked to have the 7th grade students teach the younger students. We had a drawing to see what group they would be in, and what they would be teaching. They each had one country to teach about, and then a set of English vocabulary to go over as well as an activity with the vocab. With 20 minute rotations they had enough time to do all of it before moving on. The 5th and 6th grade students had their own special tasks, creating a map of the member countries in groups (Thai students are notorious for not knowing where places are on the map), drawing an ASEAN flag with the meanings of each part in Thai and English, as well as a word search with the country name, animal, flower, capital, and currency for each country in the puzzle.
Overall, the students had a great time. The 7th grade students were able to show what they could do in teaching the younger ones, the younger ones were able to learn from the older ones, just showing how this school is like one big family.

7th grade students teaching in a 1st grade class

teaching Kindergarten the flags of the countries

matching family words with pictures

playing fruit salad

even this 5th grade teacher tried out the word search

Kindergarten coloring pictures of the animals of ASEAN countries

drawing pictures of what they want to be after learning about occupations

working on their map together

trying to find those pesky words

watching a video about ASEAN at the end of the day

showing off their maps

the flags of the ASEAN countries, notice the flag stands

made out of bamboo in a local fashion