An elementary school in the southern Vietnamese city of My Tho has built a thatched house on its campus to help students learn more about life in the countryside.

A project to construct the thatched house, located in the ‘countryside corner’ of Nguyen Hue Elementary School in Ward 6 of the city, was initiated by the school’s principal, Huynh My Hoa.

The principal said the corner was built in the academic year of 2011-2012 to serve literature, natural and social classes related to rural areas.

Besides, it is also open to students at break time.

“I’ve seen that students usually learn about the countryside, but our kids mostly live in the city,” Hoa said. “They cannot imagine what the rural area is like.”

Thinking the beauty of the countryside lifestyle needs to be preserved, the principal then came up with the idea of building a thatched house and a countryside corner inside the school to help students study better.

“Though the corner just simulates a part of the southern rural region, it has been effective for the school’s teaching and studying. After learning theory, students come here and see what they have studied in reality. That helps them remember the lessons more deeply,” Hoa expressed.

The corner simulates the countryside in southern Vietnam with a bamboo fence, thatched house, water jars, calabash tress, straws, statues of rural animals like buffalos and storks, and other things that urban children have only known through books.

“I live in the city and have never been to the countryside so I have no idea what it is,” Pham Doan Hong Phuc, a fifth grader, said.

“Now I can smell grass and straw. Though the animals displayed here are not real, they have brought me the feeling of a countryside area. Thanks to such vivid classes, my writing skills are getting better,” he added.

Pham Thi Thu, a literature teacher at the school, said her students love the classes at the countryside corner. Teachers are also interested in teaching here since they can use the displayed objects to illustrate what they say about rural areas.

“Students have only learned about the countryside through books, not from reality like this,” Thu said. “When they study here, they can look, touch, smell and hear to feel what rural Vietnam is like.”

“That feeling is way different from reading a book or watching images on the projectors in the classroom,” she added.

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