“Journey on Learning in Action - Changing Practice, Changing Minds” Seminar

Program outline of “Journey on Learning in Action ── Changing Practice, Changing Minds” Seminar
Session1 Session2

“Journey on Learning in Action ── Changing Practice, Changing Minds”
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C03 How to 'mark' Chinese writings?

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C04 "Think before and after" : basic writing skills training
Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6  Part 7

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C05 "Interest-driven learning" : new thinking in teaching Chinese literature

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E01 Putting thoughts on paper – the what, how and why in process writing

Teachers at St. Francis' Canossian School found that some of their students did not write with confidence. Students followed very closely the writing frames and answered the guiding questions faithfully when writing their composition. The products were very similar in content and presentations. The highly structured guided writing put constraint on students’ writing development. In an attempt to enhance students’ proficiency in writing, teachers changed their practices in the teaching of writing at P. 3, P. 4 and P.5 levels from guided writing to process writing. ……<Please click here for details>

E02 Reading information texts with joy and tears

Information texts, among various text types stipulated in the Curriculum Guide, are found to be challenging to teachers and students alike. They are a broad category denoting the least common text features and language structures. Teaching information texts by strategies like reading aloud and shared reading is found to be unrewarding. Teachers at T.W.G.Hs. LEO Tung-hai Lee Primary School shared the same experience. They believed that their students needed more practice other than that provided in the textbook. ……<Please click here for details>

E03 Opening a treasure chest: experiences in “Reading weeks”

T.W.G.Hs. Tam Shiu Primary School has incorporated English readers into the curriculum for many years. Yet teachers often met looks of incomprehension in classrooms of mixed abilities. Facing the challenge, the teachers attempted different curriculum planning and pedagogies. Over the years, the School progressed from treating readers as a curriculum option; scheduling readers in reading cycles in which students could only read an English reader once a week; to settling on reading weeks which offer the major benefits of creating a sustained favourable atmosphere for reading and providing instant feedbacks on students’ comprehension. ……<Please click here for details>

E04 Enhancing competencies, broadening minds - how assessment supports learning

Teachers are aware of the impact of assessment on student learning. What students do in their class work, home assignments, preparation for tests and examinations, and how they perceive the results of tests and examinations, has profound influence on them as learners. Seeing that assessment has such a powerful backwash effect on student learning, teachers at SKH St Peter’s Primary School re-examined and reflected on their practices and perception towards assessment in their English KLA curriculum. They identified some of the challenges that they faced in the school. These included the school tradition and culture in teachers’ marking practice, and the multiple demand of assessment. ……<Please click here for details>

E05 Poetry writing and appreciation in action

How to help struggling and reluctant students to find success in writing and speaking is always a teacher’s concern. Using activities that offer pleasurable learning and the development of language awareness can be an entry point. Research findings indicated that writing short pieces such as poems and rhymes, using words that students liked or knew, did help struggling students write with increased confidence. Such a practice also encouraged able students to experiment with language, thus enhancing their creativity. With such an idea in mind, the P4 teachers of Pat Heung Central Primary School explored using simple poems to stimulate their students to read and write. They attempted to find out if their students could improve in writing and speaking through structured learning procedures. ……<Please click here for details>

E06 Write right – rubrics as criterion-referenced learning tools
Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6

Writing is clearly a complex, multifaceted process requiring the ability to manipulate many sub-skills simultaneously. Teachers at Lok Wah Catholic Primary School are aware of the inadequacies in the writing of their KS2 students. They found that students generally fell short of ideas in their writing. There was evidence of attempt by students to respond to the prompt but the writing focus was not consistently sustained. How can they help students to write right?

Drawing on the premise that reading and writing should be connected, teachers integrated substantial reading input in the learning modules and designed reading tasks to equip students with the reading skills for understanding of specific text types. Students were immersed in the genre during reading. They then composed a text in that genre through shared writing before they were guided to write their own text. ……<Please click here for details>

E07 Can junior primary students go beyond sentence writing in English?

For emergent writers at junior primary level, coherent text writing is always a hurdle to overcome. They are acquainted with substituting words in structured writing frames to produce a number of repetitive but discrete sentences. Parallel and highly structured guided writing are the general practice in writing lessons. However, junior primary students need to cope with the demand of the Primary 3 TSA writing papers that require them to demonstrate proficiency in producing writing with “relevant ideas” and “coherency” . This is always an area of concern for English language teachers at SKH Lui Ming Choi Memorial Primary School. In view of the need to give an early start to P.2 students in the training of writing coherent texts, teachers initiated a writing program to develop students’ writing skills at the end of the 2006-2007 year.……<Please click here for details>

M02 Multiplication is more than just "Memorizing the multiplication table"

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M03 Developing the problem-solving skills of P.4 Students in Mathematics

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GS04 Implementing multiple modes of assessment in General Studies

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GS06 Enlivening students' learning through museums

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