English Crayon (EC) is developed in the US by KIZ-M, a popular preschool education company in Korea. KIZ-M had wanted to introduce EC to Vietnam and selected TAK as the first preschool to pilot the project in April and May 2015. 

 

We piloted the programme and found it to be better than most of the readily available EFL curricula in Ho Chi Minh City, including the language schools. 

 

For one, the EC lessons were well developed and researched and were able to engage our students most of the time. Secondly, it has a variety of very well-produced, high-quality teacher and student resources. Unlike most other EFL programmes, EC puts much effort into developing resources for the teacher to engage her class. By integrating creative educational technology into the teacher aids and student resources, EC curriculum developers have enabled the teacher to concentrate on teaching the lesson without the distraction of having to develop her own amateur teacher resources.

 

To top that, each student is presented with a Student Pack every month that contains story books, DVDs, charts, stickers, Do-Do books (work books) for parents to bond with their children over English lessons at home. Parents are given a Parent Guide Book (translated in Vietnamese) to guide them in using the Student Pack at home.

 

Each student is also able to loan a PlayPen (US$100) which reads to the child when it is hoovered over their sentences in the story books. The teacher has her own customised PlayPen which is used to remotely activate the various activities for lessons - you need to see her in action to understand the advance Korean technology that goes into it!

 

Because of the strengths of the programme, TAK has replaced its current EFL curriculum with English Crayon. EC is also introduced as an after-school enrichment programme for ASYC and has also received very good response and feedback from parents.