Active learning means a great range of games and activities

Some favorite activities

From math to geography to language, it's better with a game

If you ask parents what they like about our schools they'll probably say: "My children are learning. And they come home happy." Ask a student and they almost always say "gitjagam." That means activities. Our schools also have more traditional classroom settings; we look for a balance between the two approaches. Here's a brief glimpse of some typical activities and games.

Matching games
The first three games all follow a similar pattern. A dealer lays out nine cards. Then players try to find two or more that go together in a certain way. If they're right, they keep those cards. The subjects and exact rules vary.

A teacher and several students look at cards on a table, playing a geography game — Countries: The front of each card shows something distinctive about one of twelve countries: A landmark, traditional food or clothing, the flag, an outline of the country. Identify two cards for the same country.

Two boys sit on floor with 9 number cards between them, playing a math games — Math: Pick out three or more cards that can combine to make an equation, using standard math operations: Plus, minus, times, divided by. For example: 10+3 = 12+1. This is an easier deck; a harder set goes up to 99.

Students at a Lao school look at cards that depict various aspects of trees, such as flower, leaf, fruit. — Nature: Each card shows a feature of a certain tree species, such as flower, leaf shape, or bark. Players try to identify two which are of the same species, which is identified on the back in Lao, English, and with the scientific name.

Geography is fun. Honest!
And in case you thought it would impossible to create four games that make geography fun, here are three more.

Lao students use a map as they play a game called World Traveler — World Traveler: Roll dice to choose two countries. Here, we're traveling in southeastern Asia; you can use other regions. Without looking at the map, describe the shortest route – by land when possible – between them.

The front of each card shows something distinctive about a country. (About 50 countries are represented.) One student holds it up and reads the names of four countries listed on the back. Others have to guess which country it is.

Each card lists 7 statistics (e.g. population and land area) for a country. Everyone draws the top card from their stack. One person announces a category in which they think their country is strongest. Compare cards, and the winner calls the next round.

Real skills
The purpose of schooling shouldn't be merely to prepare children for the job market, or for adulthood. A good, well-founded education will achieve that, without making it the focus. Many of our activities, however, do have a clear link to skills that will be useful later.

A small Lao boy pretends to sell vegetables (represented by cards) to a young man, as he pretends to run a market stall. — Buy and sell vegetables, bargaining just like you've seen your parents do. And as you do so, you'll learn to make the right change.

Three young women in Laos learn to use an abacus — Everyone learns the abacus at their own pace. They get cards with a math question, work it out on their abacus, then check an answer sheet. They decide when they're ready to move to a harder level.

Five Lao boys, photographed from above, rolling food into small balls for cooking — Boys and girls alike are glad to learn to cook, especially because they get to eat it afterwards. Moreover, those who learn to cook may take more interest in knowing what goes into processed foods that they buy.

Games for learning English
We've got kids reading Lao, and enjoying it, as early as any of their counterparts just about anywhere in the world. English is harder. Ideally, we'd have fluent English speakers, but anyone with those skills can earn a far higher salary working for a foreign business or NGO than we can pay, while keeping tuition fees that most families can afford. We've got several games that make English fun, and when visitors can play these with children, it gives their learning a big boost.

A Lao boy hops on one foot, while playing an English-learning game with a foreign visitor — Children need to move; this game lets them do it. A reader – ideally a visitor with good English pronunciation – reads a command, such as Make a face like a cat; or Hop on one foot.

Small children sitting in or crawling through boxes, with a young adult facilitating. — Children don't always like being told what to do. But playing the Box Game, they love it. One person reads out commands in English: Sit in that box. Crawl through that box. And they eagerly do it.

Sample cards for an English game, showing two words (lock and rock) which, from a native Lao person, may sound similar — Each card features two English words which, if spoken by a Lao person, may sound similar. The speaker holds up the card, looking at the side with a picture, and reads the top word. The listener holds up 1 or 2 fingers, to indicate what they heard.

Experiments
The phrase "active learning" often brings to mind science experiments. It is far broader than that, but it does include experiments of all sorts.

A boy watches a rock swing on a string, as part of a science experiment about pendulums — Hang a rock from a string, then start it swinging. Record how many times it swings in 30 seconds, length of the string, whether the rock is big or small, and how far back you pulled it. Do you notice any patterns?

A boy tests the weight limit of a toy bridge made with K'Nex; it is breaking, under the weight of some books — All ages enjoy this experiment. Design and make a bridge, then see how many books it can – or cannot – hold up. Later, add another twist: Weigh your bridge, and divide its weight limit by weight, to see how efficient it is.

A young woman watches as hot water, dyed red, rises up into an inverted bottle with cold water. — Put hot water, dyed red, in a bottle and then invert a bottle of cold water on top. What happens? Such activities are new for our teachers as well as our students, so our teacher training includes having teachers do these experiments themselves.

Building and creating
Creating things – whether it's art, a house, or a model catapult, involves forming some sort of goal in your mind, thinking about how to get there, then making the journey, probably with lots of adjustments on the way. Those are all valuable skills, and you don't learn any of them when you're busy memorizing for the test.

A small girl at Big Sister Mouse school in Laos, plays with wooden blocks. — There is a timelessness to wooden blocks, and watching children play with them, you can understand why. An Egyptian might think this girl is making a sphinx; to us, it's more likely to be a Buddhist wat, with steps in front.

A colorful geometric design made by a girl with Pattern Tiles — From these colorful, homemade pattern tiles, children make everything from symmetrical geometric designs, to giant mosaic elephants. They often get inspiration from one another, then embellish on that – the creative process in action.

A boy with a model catapult made from popsicle sticks, preparing to fire a pingpong ball — We show students a toy catapult made from craftsticks, so they understand the general idea. Then we take it away so they can design and build one themselves. They can't just copy what someone else did. Instead, they learn about trial-and-error.

On the move
Much of Lao life has traditionally taken place outdoors. Here, as elsewhere, that is changing. Large numbers of young people are staying in their room, glued to a cellphone. We're helping children discover that a very different, deep satisfaction can come from other activities.

A boy riding a unicycle on a dirt lot — People sometimes ask: Why do you have unicycles? Because kids enjoy them. That's a good enough reason. But also, they learn that something which looked impossible at first, was not. Is there a more important lesson we ought to be teaching?

Most kids have never ridden a bike, when they enter our school. Thanks to donors, we've been able to buy and maintain a small fleet at each school, and the children soon acquire a skill that's good for them, and for the planet.

This group is on a 12-kilometer hike that begins at Big Sister Mouse #1, follows a rural road through the forest, up a mountain and back down, with a stop at a secluded swimming hole, then loops back to the school. Then they ask, When can we do it again?

The joy of learning
School should not feel like a prison, or a job, or a fate to be endured. Children are happier, and they'll learn more, when they feel enthused about a subject. We offer many opportunities for that.

Several children inspect small rock and mineral specimens, and some fossilized shark teeth — Our collection of rocks, minerals, and fossils circulates between schools. Whether looking at an ancient shark tooth or polished obsidian, students are fascinated. They've never seen these things before.

Two children make the sign for butterfly, in Lao sign language — Children enjoy sign language, and there's evidence that because this nudges them to think about individual words and language, it helps with reading skills. It also increases awareness of the challenges facing people who are deaf.

A small boy reads aloud from a book and displays the pictures to other children. — Too much of the world believes that if kids aren't reading, somebody had better make them do it. We take the opposite approach. As this boy reads aloud, other kids (1) learn there's something good in those books; and (2) want to be like him.

That's merely a sampling of our activities at Big Brother Mouse schools. We haven't mentioned our musical instruments, sports, Chinese lessons, dancing, and dozens of other games. Here, we simply want to show that when we talk about active learning, we really mean it.

One man who is making a difference

Siphone Wuttisakdy and the first Ton Kit school, which he founded in Laos

Siphone Wuttisakdy has been part of Big Brother Mouse right from the start.

In 2004, while Siphone was a student at Teacher Training College in Luang Prabang, Sasha brought him three used computers from Thailand. Siphone rented a double-sized dormitory room and installed the computers on one side. The idea was to make computer time available very cheaply to other students, at a time when laptops were rare, smartphones didn't exist, and the only computer access for most students were the internet cafes for tourists, which were too expensive for more than brief email sessions.

Originally, Siphone envisioned that students would use language software on the computers to improve their English skills. Demand was slow at first but Siphone stuck with it, spreading the word, and experimenting with different approaches.

Eventually it became clear that students were more eager to learn computer skills that could help them in the job market, specifically word processing, spreadsheets, and Photoshop. Siphone changed the shop's focus. He wrote simple textbooks in Lao to teach those skills, and business grew.

Siphone later expanded to a larger building, with 10 computers and a small library. Plus movie time on weekends – often the high point of the week for students who worked full-time while going to school. With no good computer repair shop in Luang Prabang, he went to Thailand and took a short course in computer maintenance. Running a shop with 10 computers and hundreds of inexperienced users coming through, he had plenty of opportunity to hone those skills.

When he opened the small shop in 2004, Siphone's first staff was Khamla. As novice monks together, they had become close and trusted friends. Sasha and Khamla, who later formed Big Brother Mouse together, met at Siphone's shop.

Siphone wrote two of our first books. He collected four traditional Lao folktales in The Cat That Meditated. Then he wrote Baby Frog, Baby Monkey, a rhyming book about animal babies. He followed these with an alphabet book, Funny Letters, a collection of stories about Laos's most famous folk hero, Xieng Mieng; a book about good nutrition and parasites, What Happens to Your Food?; and The Picture Thesaurus, which we believe is the first thesaurus in Laos. In all, he has written 28 books for Big Brother Mouse. He became one of the country's most prolific authors, and one of the most read.

Siphone Wuttisakdy, one of the most widely read writers at Big Brother Mouse — Siphone sat beside the Nam Khan river, during his time as a writer at Big Brother Mouse, for this author photo.

After laptops and then cellphones became widespread, Siphone closed the computer shop and joined full-time at Big Brother Mouse, where he was already often helping. While he brought many useful skills to the office, one that we endlessly appreciated was that he knew how to keep computers running.

Fourteen years after opening that small computer shop, Siphone put his business skills and his passion for education into a new project.

After playing a lead role setting up our first school, Big Sister Mouse, and dismayed by the poor quality of schools in his home village, Siphone moved back to that area and opened Ton Kit school. Ten rooms immediately filled; parents were desperate to provide a good education for their children. He added more rooms. They filled up. He added more rooms, built a second school, and then a third.

Everyone familiar with what Siphone has achieved is impressed. Even more impressive is the number of children in Laos who now have the opportunity to develop their potential, thanks to Siphone.