"Journey on Learning in Action - Learning & Teaching．Intellect & Affection" -English

英文學習領域

Developing School-based English Writing Curriculum ── integrating both grammar and skills in the writing process

Ms FUNG Ho Kwan Jeanda
(Senior School Development Officer)
Ms CHUNG Shuk Ling, Ms HUNG Wan, Ms FOK Mei Yan
(SKH Chi Fu Chi Nam Primary School)

From a recent sharing session on students’ performance on Pre-S1 writing, the markers had the following comments on students’ writing:
Most students have little awareness of tenses, noun forms, parts of speech, and Subject Verb Object (SVO) pattern etc.

Most students manage to produce relevant content but not enough elaboration on ideas. Students fail to write the dialogues in the pictures correctly.

The ideas are not so organised (From sentences to paragraphs, from paragraphs to essays)

As in TSA, markers reported that although students were eager to write and were able to produce a written task 80 words in length, they had problems with grammar, spelling and sentence structures. Literal translation from Chinese was found in their writing.

It is generally agreed that writing is a difficult area to teach. It is commonly found that students have difficulty in making connection between the grammar structures they have learned and the subsequent writing tasks. From the exchange with English teachers, we know that they constantly doubt whether formal grammar instructions are necessary in today’s English Language curriculum, how this can be integrated in writing, and most importantly how much time they need to spend on writing lessons.

Building up the grammar structures before students could write is fundamentally important. Weaver (1996, pp. 9) thinks that grammar is best taught in context. She also suggests that teaching grammar within the context of students' own writing is more effective than teaching it in isolation. Similarly, the English Language Curriculum Guide published in 2004 also advises us that the learning and teaching of language forms is most effective in the context of writing.

Teaching Grammar structures in the context of writing was tried out with students of SKH Chi Fu Chi Nam Primary School and in a number of primary schools. In SKH Chi Fu Chi Nam Primary School, teachers teach language structures through models, for example, reading passages in the textbook, teachers’ model writing and students' own writing. Feedback on content and ideas development, lessons on sentence pattern building, and peer editing were used to help students learn how to apply the learned structures in their process writing tasks. It was found that students had raised their awareness in using target language structures appropriately and had improved their writing skills.

In her book ‘The Grammar Plan Book – a guide to smart teaching’, Weaver (2007) suggests that teaching grammar in isolation doesn’t improve writing…while teaching fewer things deeply and in the context of writing holds more promise for long term gains.’ In an attempt to integrate this idea into the school-based curriculum, teachers from SKH Chi Fu Chi Nam Primary School designed a brief planning checklist for each writing module that gave a ‘scope’ and possible sequence when teaching grammar in the context of writing. They tried to organize the writing modules according to what needs to be taught for a particular text type. After teaching students how to expand and enrich content, teachers also incorporated the practice of revision and editing into the writing process. For instance, teachers came up with a P. 4 module writing plan:

Week

Date

Module Writing Task

Language input

Writing Skills

5/9 – 16/9

Unit 1 & 2

Module Writing – Me and my friends

Text type: descriptive writing

Questions for thought:

1. What do I expect my students to write?

2.What can my students write?(previous knowledge)

3.What input they need?

(grammar, vocabulary, sentence patterns/starters etc.)

-Vocabulary input -both previously and currently learned (adjectives to describe appearances/-ed adjectives to describe feelings / comparatives/ hobbies, interests/likes/ dislikes)

-Sentence starters like ‘Sam wears a … (size), … (colour), … thing).’, ‘…is good at…’, ‘I think he/she is…’, ‘I like him / her because…’ etc.

-Reading textsinput(e.g. use past students’ model writing)

-Students make use of Word & Sentence bank Booklet

-Expanding sentences

(e.g. John runs. John runs quickly. John runs quickly in the playground. John runs quickly in the playground because…’

-Mind-map

[*Improving choice of words/ sentences / proofreading skills / punctuation/ paragraphing skills were incorporated into the writing packages throughout the term]

The plan helped teachers to focus less on single grammar items in the units and modules. Instead, they were more aware of the language students needed in their writing. They were more aware of drawing on both students’ previous knowledge and currently learned language so that students could apply the skills in a more integrated manner. As seen from student work, the content of their writings was richer than before.

Students were also introduced to a variety of text-types for writing throughout the past three years for a better understanding of their different formats and language features. Ample inputs were needed before students could write procedures, stories, travel journals etc. Teachers spent more time at the pre-writing stage on scaffolding students with lists of words, phrases and sentence starters. They then taught students how to apply in their writing elaboration skills such as giving reasons, explaining the procedures, using dialogues in story writing and expressing feelings whenever appropriate.

In SKH Chi Fu Chi Nam Primary School, teachers made a good start by planning the lessons on writing a procedural text together. They had made adjustment according to the needs and abilities of their students in different classes especially the split class of less able students. From watching a video from their teacher Miss Lee (Miss Lee Can Cook Wonton) as motivational activity to watching funny inventions on Youtube and reading different kinds of procedural texts, the module lesson plan was integrated with a series of scaffolding activities for building up their knowledge in using appropriate imperative verb form ‘bake, stir, beat, remove…’, ‘Glue, fold, unfold, staple, hang…’ and procedural language structures ‘This is a … It is made of … It is used for …’, ‘We can glue this…with …’, and the connectives ‘First, Second…’ Guessing game and miming games were found in the midst of the lesson plan to sustain their interests in making crafts and design their inventions. The less able students were well-supported with a list of words, phrases and sentence starters before and while they were engaged in group discussions. Positive results were identified in students’ final writing tasks.

Following these steps and strategies of planning and implementing the writing curriculum, the framework for writing was gradually constructed and the flow of writing lessons became smooth and more systematic. Positive results were identified in students’ work over the years. Students have developed some writing skills and techniques for writing different text types. Since story-writing is still demanding for Chi Fu students, teachers attempt to integrate different elements like teaching a variety of time markers as often used in stories, dialogues writing including punctuation use, use of interjections to express different feelings of the speakers, onomatopoeia to make the stories more lively. Lesson plans and materials will be shared in the sharing session.

In this sharing session, teachers from SKH Chi Fu Chi Nam Primary School will help teacher participants to gain understanding of how students develop their writing skills; identify strategies to promote writing; explore techniques and materials to stimulate students’ thinking; and learn that becoming a competent writer involves knowing and understanding the forms, functions and features of writing; and understand how writing should be integrated in the English lessons. A number of other cases of how teachers attempt to improve students’ writing will also be shared with teacher participants

References
1.The Curriculum Development Council. (2004). English Language Education KLA: English Language Curriculum Guide (P1-P6). HKSAR: The Education and Manpower Bureau.

2.Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority. (November 2011). Territory-wide System Assessment 2011. Report on the Basic Competencies of Students in Chinese Language, English Language and Mathematics Key Stages 1-3.

3.Weaver, C. (1996). Teaching grammar in the context of writing. English Journal, 85(7), 15-24.

4.Weaver, C. (2007). The Grammar Plan Book: a guide to smart teaching. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

How Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) promote understanding of reading texts in GE lessons

Ms KWOK Wing Ki, Judy
(Senior School Development Officer)
Ms YU Pui Ying
(Tung Wah Group of Hospitals Tang Shiu Kin Primary School)

What comes to your mind when you plan your reading lessons? Do you plan differently when you handle passages in the textbook and materials from other books? Some teachers tend to focus more on vocabulary and key structures when they teach textbook materials; and more on concepts (e.g. book concept and story structure) and reading skills when they conduct Reading Workshops. No matter what emphases you prefer at the initial stage of teaching (in both GE lessons and Reading Workshops), your students need to have a global understanding of the text before they can proceed to other focus.

At this stage, you may need to employ a wide repertoire of teaching strategies to guide and scaffold the reading process. Contextual factors like students’ interests, their language competencies, and difficulty level of instructional texts may affect your choice of teaching strategies. Given the same reading material, the teaching strategy you used in a class with a majority of good readers will certainly be different from what you used in another class with struggling readers. However, you should consider the intriguing relationship between texts and readers as well. When facing unfamiliar and highly challenging text, good readers can become struggling ones. The exact opposite may happen to struggling readers. It is highly likely that in certain contexts, given less challenging text and more scaffolding, struggling readers can become fluent ones. Hence teachers should not conclude too early that certain teaching strategies are only appropriate for strong readers.

Recent studies show that good readers are active readers. Pearson et al. (1992) have identified, among good readers, certain important thinking processes. It includes using prior knowledge to make sense of new information; asking questions about the text before, during and after reading; drawing inferences from text; and monitoring comprehension. Further research (Dole et al, 1991, Duffy and Roehler, 1991 and Smagorinsky & Smith, 1992) points out that learners cannot acquire active reading process subtly, they need explicit teacher-led demonstration. This active reading process needs to be taught at an early stage; and it needs regular practices and a lot of reinforcement before achieving any degree of automaticity. In this aspect, the message to educators is clear: active reading is important to fluent readers and emergent readers alike. Hence, teachers should not compromise the process. They may adapt the content by reducing the length or by simplifying the text, and/or provide more scaffolding during the reading process.

What is Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA)?
Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) (Stauffer, 1968) is one of the many possible comprehension strategies that can be used to promote active reading process. It aims to engage readers in an active thinking process whilst reading. This process includes using prior knowledge to make sense of new information; making predictions before reading; asking oneself if the predictions match with the text whilst reading; and using information from the materials to prove or disprove one’s own predictions. This strategy is highly versatile, it allows adaptations and can be used for teaching real books (in the Reading Workshops) as well as passages in the textbook.

DRTA involves mainly three procedures: predicting, reading and proving. Details are as follows:
1.First, teacher encourages students to predict by presenting them with graphics, title/subheading and/or introductory paragraph;
2.After readers have made their predictions, they are asked to read to a predetermined point in the text;
3.Then readers have to check the accuracy of their own predictions. They need to use information in the text to prove or disprove their predictions. The whole process continues until the entire text is finished.

Different from the conventional practice when teachers controlled the reading process, DRTA encourages students to take control of the reading process.
Why DRTA?
Most teachers in Hong Kong are familiar with a range of reading strategies and activities, which can be applied at different stages of reading. For example, teachers frequently use brainstorming and visual presentations like video and photos in the pre-reading stage; reading aloud and guiding questions in the during-reading stage; role play, readers’ theatre and retelling in the post-reading stage.

DRTA, like shared reading and supported reading, is an example of general teaching strategy, which can be applied at different stages of the reading process. It is grounded on the interactive theories which suggest that reading involves more than recognition of printed words. It is both a top-down process as well as a bottom-up process. Readers, in the reading process, generate hypotheses or predictions about the reading material (top-down) as well as making use of graphic information and application of various skills to understand the text. Hence, DRTA aims at guiding readers to predict before they read, think whilst they read, and reflect on their own thinking/predictions.
Teachers at T.W.G.Hs Tang Siu Kin Primary School are going to share with the audience the experience of using DRTA in a P.6 classroom. They will share with the audience the lesson design, adaptations they made to the teaching procedures and texts; and teaching episodes.

Teachers have used this teaching strategy to teach a range of materials in the textbook: namely narrative and information texts (categorization based on the Curriculum Guide). Teachers have found that for predictions to work well in class, students need to be sensitive to text features and its discourse. For example, students need to know that newspaper/magazine articles are about stories of real people and place; and reporters may want to put across certain messages to their readers; hence their predictions should be logical and rational. Yet, when they interact with narrative texts, they are allowed to be creative and imaginative in their predictions. Also, they need to apply the concept of story grammar including characters, setting, problem(s) and solution(s) in the thinking process.

Teachers have used DRTA in different ways when handling familiar and unfamiliar topics. For familiar topics, only key words and title are given as prompts to facilitate predictions. For unfamiliar topics like poverty and problems around the world, because learners usually lack interests or ideas or vocabulary to express themselves, teachers scaffold more before asking students to do predictions. Photos, title, subheadings and introductory paragraph are used as inputs and/or prompt to activate students’ schema. In addition, in classes with great student diversity, teachers used other strategies like mixed ability grouping, reducing lengthy reading text into manageable parts and reading aloud to scaffold the thinking and reading activities.

The presenters will share with the audience the procedural knowledge, their pedagogical considerations and reflections. They will critically evaluate this strategy. Firstly, they will examine the quality of students’ predictions. Initial findings show that students’ predictions can be of two types: namely experience-based predictions and knowledge-based predictions. Text-based predictions refer to those ideas that students generated based on information from the text. Experience-based predictions refer to those ideas that students got from their prior knowledge and experiences. Both types of predictions are of equal value in students’ thinking process. However, teachers have reflected that their feedback to these two types of predictions should be different, and that they should encourage learners to include both types of predictions in their thinking process.

Secondly, teachers believe that this strategy can help their students interact with the text actively. When students have the confidence and purposes to read, they have strong intention to read for meanings. In such case, it is not difficult for them to get the main ideas of the text. However, teachers have found that there are many details which students may ignore or overlook in the reading process. Teachers need to be aware of that and use explicit instructions and conventional methods like guiding questions or comprehension exercise to probe, clarify or check understanding.

Finally, teachers will compare DRTA with KWL*, another commonly used reading strategy among Hong Kong teachers. It is hoped that through this kind of comparison, audience can have a deeper understanding of DRTA in relation to another reading strategy; and most importantly, teachers will become more conscious of their considerations when making pedagogical decisions.

(*For details on KWL (what I know, I want to know, I have learnt), please refer to “2008 Journey on Learning in Action - Changing Practice, Changing Minds” in the sharing session titled: Reading information texts with joy and tear. Powerpoint can be retrieved from http://www.edb.gov.hk/tc/edu-system/primary-secondary/applicable-to-primary-secondary/sbss/school-based-curriculum-primary/professional-sharing/journey-ss/2008.html

References
1.Dole, J. A., Duffy, G. G., Roehler, L. R., & Pearson, P. D. (1991). Moving from the old to the new: Research on reading comprehension instruction. Review of Educational Research, 61, 239-264.

2.Duffy, G. G., & Roehler, L. R. (1991). Teachers’ instructional actions. In R. Barr, M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, & P. Pearson (Eds), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2, pp. 861-884). White Plains, NY: Longman.

3.Pearson, P.D. Roehler, L. Dole, J., & Duffy, C. (1992). Developing expertise in reading comprehension. In S. Jay Samuels and Alan E. Farstrup (Ed.), What Research Has to Say about Reading Instruction (pp. 145-198). Newark, Del.: International Reading Association.

4.Smagorinsky, P., & Smith, M. W. (1992). The nature of knowledge in composition and literacy understanding: The question of specificity. Review of Educational Research, 62, 279-306.

5.Stauffer, Russell G. (1968) Teaching Critical Reading at the Primary Level. Reading Aids Series.. Newark: Del.: International Reading Association. (Free full text can be downloaded from website at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED075790.pdf.)

Catering for the needs of low achievers in the writing classroom

Ms CHAN Yeung Ming, Eve
(Senior School Development Officer)
Mr YU Tat Chi, Ms LEE Pui Fan, Ms LAM Yick Kiu, Ms CHIU Lai Wan
Ms PO Mei Ling , Ms KAM Lai Ming, Ms LAU Chuk Kwan
(TWGHs Wong See Sum primary school)

Today, learner diversity is getting more attention from Hong Kong teachers. The recently introduced small class teaching policy, the inclusive education, the increasing number of South-Asian students and newly arrived children from China are current contextual forces shaping most schools’ ecology in which students of diverse academic needs are found. All these realities have put Hong Kong teachers under extra pressure to go beyond the one-size-fits-all teaching. They need to think about what they can do to help different groups of students.
Using graded worksheets is a traditional practice to cater for different learners’ diverse learning needs. However, over the years, most teachers have been skeptical about its effectiveness. Teachers are not convinced that graded worksheets with less content and lower standard can help struggling, in-between and advanced learners. After some research and study about the topic and having the faith that academically low achievers can still learn in classrooms, though at different paces or need different teaching and learning pedagogical practices, teachers of Tung Wah Group of Hospitals Wong See Sum believe that a focus on different strategies in the classroom would bring about more effective and fundamental changes in students’ learning. The first step they took is to look at students’ learning in the writing classroom.

Research (e.g. Beecher and Sweeny 2008 P.516; Tomlinson 1999 P.15) often groups different differentiation strategies into content, process and products. Teachers found this categorization helpful. However, teachers also realized that an understanding of the interplay of these strategies in the classroom context, rather than seeing them as separated skills to be used before, during and after the writing class, is just as important. Also, the implementation of all these strategies has not been studied thoroughly in local primary school context. Teachers believe that the classroom, where the process of teaching happens, should be a real focus to investigate how different teaching and learning strategies can be used effectively to cater for different learner needs.

Curriculum Content
To cater for the varied student needs, flexibility of curriculum content is important. Facing students who cannot catch up with the standard writing curriculum, teachers’ professionalism to unearth the root of the problem, identifying the missing building blocks and working out possible solutions to narrow the gap between students’ current level and the desirable goal is fundamental. Teachers in the school noticed that most weak students, from P.3 and P.6, were still struggling with writing simple sentences using the basic patterns when they were asked to write simple stories. Teachers could have ignored the students and continued the standard curriculum. However, understanding this missing block was fundamental to writing skills, teachers chose to intervene. Reducing the number of words in the writing task was not their option. Instead, teachers intervened by rephrasing the adult-only rule Subject + Verb + Object to become Noun + Verb + Ideas. Teachers were amazed that this simplified children-friendly rule could help students to write grammatical sentences quickly. Table 1 below shows the sentences students can write with the rule Noun + Verb + Ideas in which Ideas can be noun phrase, adjectival phrase, prepositional phrase and adverbial phrase.

Table 1
Noun	Verb	Ideas
Mary	is	a student. (noun phrase)
She	is	hard-working. (adjectival phrase)
She	studies	at the Hong Kong Primary School. (prepositional phrase)
She	reads	very quickly. (adverbial phrase)

After students have mastered the {Noun + Verb + Ideas} pattern, teachers can stretch their knowledge of sentence patterns by introducing to them Ideas can be further divided into nouns, action details, places and time and combining them would make more interesting and detailed sentences possible. With these fundamental sentences, students could write stories with a proper standard. Although it took some time to teach students concepts of nouns, verbs, or adjectives, teachers agreed that the process was very valuable and meaningful to students’ learning.

Table 2
Noun	Verb	Ideas
Noun	Verb	Noun	Action Details	Place	Time
A grass-hopper	sang	some songs.
A grass-hopper	sang	some songs	beautifully	on the tree.
A grass-hopper	sang	some songs	beautifully	on the tree	every morning.
The ants	moved	some food.
The ants	moved	some food	busily	under the tree
The ants	moved	some food	busily	under the tree	every morning

The experience has provided teachers with another perspective of catering for different learner needs. They realized that trimming down or lowering curriculum content may not be the priority when it comes to helping the less-achieving students. Instead, teachers should strive to have deep understanding of where their students are and be flexible and creative in curriculum content design as Tomlinson (1999 P.2) puts it, “In differentiated classrooms, teachers begin where students are, not the front of a curriculum guide” .

Process
It is common sense to most teachers that clear and solid learning goals can help students to learn. Teachers from the school also found that purposeful repetition of the learning goals at the beginning, middle and end of the writing lesson can help students with an array of needs to understand what they are learning. This is particularly necessary to students who usually have rather short concentration span. Integrating goals into multi-sensory engaging tasks during the writing process and the self-editing part at the end of the writing lesson would avoid boredom among students brought about by mechanical repetition.

Most research would support that tasks requiring high-level of participation and motivation (Lynch and Warner 2008) from students are effective to cater for different learning needs. In the actual writing classrooms in the school, teachers witnessed that authentic, engaging and challenging input could keep students stay on task and develop their understanding of writing skills. In P.3 writing lessons, students were excited being able to touch and move word cards with nouns, verbs and adjectives, discuss with classmates their categories and to make grammatically correct and meaningful sentences. Interesting Power Point slides with appropriate questions also helped less able P.3 students to visualize and imagine development of a story. In P6 writing classrooms, a discussion on how to help characters in a story to overcome problems would help to engage students’ minds. A simple role-playing activity could have significant impact on students’ understanding of how and why dialogues should be used in story writing. A Power Point presentation with access to You-tube would allow students to see, hear and feel how similes can be used to compare real songs made by a real bird, a music box and a singer. All these multi-sensory activities help teachers to engage students through body movements, senses activation and imagination. Their experience tells language teachers clearly that in a writing classroom, vocabulary and sentence patterns should not be the only input that students can access to. An enriched classroom with multiple tasks helps students of different abilities to perform in paper-and-pen tasks.

Group work is an indispensible strategy to help cater for learner diversity in the writing classroom. The peer-to-peer talks can facilitate the idea generation and sharing among all ability students during the initial writing stage. The peer comments and suggestions are essential in the actual writing and editing process. However, teachers in the school found that shallow application of the co-operative learning strategies would not be effective to promote learning among students. To facilitate real ideas exchange between students, teachers should make sure that the turn-taking process is in place in every group and students have the co-operative attitude to help group mates express and learn. Also co-operative learning terms such as round-robin and think-pair-share-square have misled some teachers to believe that co-operative learning only means 4-student work. However, teachers found that pair work is as effective as 4-student group work if used purposefully and skillfully. Pair work guarantees high participation from less-able to more-able students and is necessary when a new concept or difficult writing skill is taught to students.

Sensible and reasonable scaffolding is necessary to help cater for learner diversity. While it is known that scaffolding can help students learn, teachers also realized that scaffolding can be class-specific and across skills. More-able class teacher would opt to use different thinking level questions to guide students to write stories, teachers in less-achieving classes could use nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs as the starting point. Teachers also noticed that more students could write better when speaking is integrated into the pre-writing stage.

Careful scaffolding also means teachers have time to regulate and monitor students’ learning progress in the classroom. Teachers in the school noticed that reserving time to check students’ learning progress in the whole-class or small group writing sessions is a vital assessment-for-learning strategy. Peer-to-peer sharing, such as partner talks in which students tell each other what they have learned and peer-editing aloud at the end of a writing class are impactful and yet easy strategies to help students to recapitulate their learning.

Giving students timely feedback is a strategy that Hong Kong teachers should develop further. Substantial research has shown that timely teacher feedback in the classroom is one of the most effective teaching pedagogies impacting learning (Hattie 2007). Teachers can do timely small group feedback when students are still engaged in their writing with their group members. This is the very moment teachers can identify a less able student making a worthwhile contribution to learning and give the student the individualized encouragement he deserves. Teachers can also do quality instant whole-class feedback when they compare and contrast students’ work. Less-achieving students could benefit from teachers’ focus on spelling and basic sentence patterns. For more-achieving students, feedback on ideas and complex sentence patterns would be inspiring. Yet, to some teachers, giving instant feedback in the classroom is risky. It is because this kind of feedback implies immediate professional judgment of students’ work regarding content and language. This is daunting as teachers are not omnipotent. It took some time for teachers to master how this pedagogy works effectively and benefits students.

Product
It has been a common practice that evaluation criteria on writing are kept to teachers only. Students only know how their work would be judged after teachers give them back their work. Teachers in Wong See Sum Primary School, however, found that telling students the assessment criteria before and during the writing process is a useful strategy to cater for learner diversity. A clear list of criteria helps students to understand the pathway to success. As explained by Black et al (2003 P.49), “It is very difficult for students to achieve a learning goal unless they understand that goal and can assess what they need to do to reach it.’ Also, students’ final writing could be important feedback information. Target error correction and good writing sharing are useful practices to help average and less able students to excel further. Analyzing and appreciating classmates’ final products enable students to avoid mistakes classmates made and set higher targets for themselves.

Table 3 below is a summary of the strategies teachers have attempted to help students in the writing classroom.

Table 3
	Strategies attempted to cater for learner diversity in the writing classroom
Curriculum content	Achievable goals to individual classes when necessary
Process	Explicit teaching with clear goals
	Design authentic and challenging activities or tasks requiring active participation and high-level engagement from students
	Form effective groups to facilitate peer-to-peer help
	Deploy scaffolding to facilitate teaching and learning in reasonable steps
	Check and regulate students’ learning in group and whole-class sessions
	Give timely feedback to facilitate learning in group and whole-class sessions
Product	Make sure students understand assessment rubrics
	Design assessment criteria to meet students’ learning needs
	Recognize students’ achievement through good writing appreciation
	Identify students’ weaknesses through target error correction

After observing students’ learning in different writing classrooms, teachers agreed that their mind-set about how students learn is vital for maximizing students’ talent. Teachers’ acceptance of student differences and their enthusiasm to understand student needs would be pre-requisites. Also teachers realized that many existing classroom teaching and learning pedagogical strategies, such as group learning and scaffolding, have impact on different kinds of students. Teachers could make better use of these strategies to help less-achieving students apply them more skillfully and sensibly. Last but not least, teachers have learnt that catering for learner diversity is a long-running task requiring their willingness to have continuous collaborative professional dialogue, whole school support and comprehensive curriculum planning. Catering for learner diversity should not be an individual’s effort.

In this sharing, teachers will share with participants the actual classroom experiences they have gone through using the different strategies to cater for learner diversity in P.3 and P.6 classrooms. Classroom videos, lesson plans and student work will be shown to help participants develop better understanding of the whole situation. It is hoped that teacher participants could equip themselves with some strategies from the sharing and adapt them for use sensibly to meet the learning needs of their students.

References
1.Beecher, M. & Sweeny, S.M. (2008). Closing the achievement gap with curriculum enrichment and differentiation: One School’s story. Journal of Advanced Academics Vol. 19 pp. 502-530

2.Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B., & Wiliam, D. (2003). Assessment for Learning: Putting it into Practice. Berkshire: Open University Press.

3.Hattie, J. and Himperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Retrieved from Review of Educational Research. http://rer.sagepub.com/content/77/1/81.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc

4.Lynch, S. A. & Warner L. (2008). Creating Lesson Plans for All Learners. Kappa Delta Pi Record. Fall 2008. P.10-15.

5.Tomlinson, C. A. (1999). The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners.Alexandria: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

Weaving thoughts into action – creating space through a curriculum initiative

Dr TSE Kwok Keung, Ernest
(Senior School Development Officer)
Ms NG Ching Ha, Ms FUNG Shuk Man
(Choi Wan St Joseph’s Primary School)

An Anecdote to a Curriculum Initiative
English Enhancement Grant Scheme (EEGS) as a curriculum initiative to raise language proficiency of primary students in support of the MOI fine-tuning policy provides primary schools with the opportunity to acquire additional resources to address specific areas of concern identified in their SWOT analysis in their application proposals. The EEGS drew interest from local primary schools and the majority of schools submitted their application over the past two years. EEGS as provisions to schools to renovate selected areas of concern in the English KLA curriculum require at least 2 critical aspects of development: teacher professional development to sustain the efforts, and tangible ‘products’ and evidence of student learning.

The English Enhancement Grant Scheme has been implemented in Choi Wan St Joseph’s Primary School (CWSJ) since 2010 September and significant changes in both teaching and learning are emerging in the school. In retrospect, teachers at the school identified from the SWOT analysis that students had problems in writing cohesive passage. Though they were given regular writing practices, they had problems in organizing ideas in a coherent way. They were short of vocabulary, weak in developing and elaborating ideas, and unable to express connected ideas grammatically. All pointed to the weaknesses identified in the annual TSA reports on students’ writing performance.

On reviewing the teaching of writing at the school, teachers noted that they spent much effort preparing students to write to topics. Plenty of writing exercises were given to students. Teachers were extremely busy marking one composition after another. But students’ compositions were always covered in red marks, thus creating frustrations for both teachers and students. Teachers regretted that they lacked time to sit back and reflect on the curriculum and their own teaching practice. The support of the EEGS gave the school a golden opportunity to create space for the panel of English language teachers to examine the issues and deliberate upon both teaching and learning in the writing curriculum. In the EEGS proposal, they identified three general directions for the curriculum initiative:

1.Curriculum development - renovating the teaching, learning and assessment in the writing curriculum
2.Student learning - improving students’ reading and writing proficiency
3.Teacher development – building up their capacities as curriculum developers

The 3 necessary components for a curriculum initiative: directions, tools and space proposed by Marton (2000) are taken into consideration in the development of the writing curriculum. Drawing on our school-based curriculum development experiences, we consider that for the curriculum initiative to be viable and implementable, general and specific directions must be conceptualized from the onset of the development. Theoretical tools, conceptual tools should be used to explore the subject knowledge, pedagogical reasoning, and student learning and cognition. And analytical tools should be employed to identify the methods in analyzing student outcomes. Regarding space, participants should have the time space to engage in meetings and data analysis, cognitive space to think and reflect on data, open space to enhance critical inquiry, collaborative space to nurture trust and learning together, and public space to facilitate building a community of practice. Taking the necessary components into consideration, the school formed a core group comprising of the panel chairpersons and level coordinators to start off the development tasks. Time space has been created for the core group with the recruitment of an extra language teacher who will take up part of their teaching load.

Developing the Writing Packages
At the onset of the curriculum renovation last year, the core group teachers examined the practice in the teaching of writing. They noted that all writing tasks were topic based. Content, titles, writing skills were built around modules in textbooks. However, teachers seldom linked reading input with the writing elements. There was neither a horizontal nor a vertical writing framework. There was not a strong scaffold of language input to help students cope with their writing tasks either.

To address the pitfalls in the old writing curriculum, one language teacher from each level was invited as the core member of the development team. The core team met regularly in studying the designs and reviewing the strategy or skill focuses for each level in the school based curriculum. Core members developed a better understanding of the strategies and skill focuses for different levels. The rationale of design and implementation procedures was brought up in planning meetings by the core members who would explore with colleagues the design and its application in the writing lessons, thus creating a cognitive space to reflect on the design and examine the implementation and conduct analysis of student performance in the writing process.

Carl (2006) stated that reading development does not take place in isolation; instead, a child develops simultaneously as reader, listener, speaker, and writer. Integrating reading and writing has multiple benefits for the development of literacy. Taking the findings from research studies into consideration, teachers at CWSJ mapped reading and writing skills for each grade as guidelines for teachers. Figure 1 shows the development process for the writing curriculum. Students’ language input, reading texts, writing contents, writing skills focus, are all put into thought before shaping the writing packages. The reading inputs and writing inputs are closely connected. Students were exposed to the text type and its key features before they were asked to write it. Detailed scoring rubrics have been introduced as assessment tools for writing.

Figure 1 Weaving thoughts into Action in consideration the 3 components of a curriculum initiative: Directions, Tools and Space

Picture: 3 components of a curriculum initiative: Directions, Tools and Space

Working in line with the school annual development focus, the writing packages have to cater for learners’ diversity. For each writing package, the learning materials were categorized into three different levels. It is the most challenging job for teachers. The differentiated learning materials include readings, vocabulary, language structures, and write frames or graphic organizers for the writing products.

In Key Stage 1, core group members developed a close link between the writing packages and the course book. All the vocabulary items and target structures in the course books were taught in the process. Students have the foundation knowledge to do the activities before writing. To build up writing confidence, students are led through reading, speaking, listening, group writing and small writing before individual writing. Hoch (2003) suggested that writing is an extension of listening and speaking for a second language learner. Hudelson (1989) shared the same viewpoint with Hoch, he stated that all the language processes are interrelated and students become more able language users when they are asked to use both oral and written language in varied ways and for varied purposes. Yet, it is a challenging job for teachers to incorporate these pre-writing activities in such a limited number of teaching lessons.

In Key Stage 2, P.4 to P.6 writing packages are to be developed in 2011 to 2012. But there is a big difference between the two key stages. With more complex content and language structures, demand on coherence, fluency and transition, an effective writing assignment should engage students in a series of cognitive processes such as reflection, analysis and synthesis so that students can transform the reading materials and use the right language structures in the writing context. Time cost is great but it helps the designer plan the writing materials and teaching processes more precisely and scrupulously.

Creating space for teacher development – from isolation to collaboration
For teacher development, the EEGS provided monetary grants for the school to recruit a regular teacher to take up the teaching loads for the core group. The grants created time space for teacher development. A core group was set up and individual group member was responsible for designing writing materials for each level. The materials will then be critically examined in the core group meetings. A school-based learning community gradually emerged to promote professional capacity of the core group members. Through weaving thoughts into action, they are challenged critically on the design and feasibility of the learning materials and the teaching plans. With such an open space
in verbalizing thoughts behind the writing packages, a collaborative and open culture has emerged. To satisfy the funding criteria of the grants, 8 writing packages were committed to be produced for each level within two years from 2010 to 2012. The core group has opportunities to review the school-based curriculum collaboratively and comment on the design of the writing materials in regular meetings. It promotes collaboration and cooperation among the group members. The core group seeks comments from English teachers of the levels before the implementation of the writing program. Teachers shared their experiences with each other to stimulate changes and make amendments to the writing materials. The design rationale of the writing packages were briefed clearly and explained thoroughly. All teachers participated in the process of making and refining the learning materials and teaching plan and they cultivated an open attitude to accept changes.

Creating success-oriented experiences for students – From anxiety to confidence
In the past, students were allowed to write at home so they got support from family or private tutors. The real writing ability of individual students was not reflected. After implementing the new curriculum, students showed change in their writing practice and attitude and the majority of them attempted to write with confidence on their own with supportive writing processes and activities in the writing lessons.

Students improved in writing skills as the materials in the writing packages are structured with the four integrated skills. Before producing the final draft of the writings, students experienced vocabulary building through reading authentic materials and books and practicing speaking and using the target languages. These are the prerequisite steps in writing the final draft. Reading, speaking and writing are deliberately linked in each writing package. Students benefited not only from writing but also the reading, speaking and listening skills throughout the writing process.

Out of the expectations of the core group members, students also nurture a cooperative learning atmosphere through learning activities. The writing packages coincidently serve the purpose for students to equip with those generic skills through the writing process. Students’ generic skills like cooperative learning, collaborative learning and creativity develop naturally in activities. Students feel free to speak up in the speaking activities as they notice that group mates are available to help. They sometimes get ideas from the group members or other groups as they tour around the classrooms. They produce writing in groups and they share the responsibilities. All these activities enhance students’ generic skills in a natural way. In the end of year survey on their views on writing, students believed that the writing program built up their confidence. It created a safe environment for them to learn to write.

Sustaining what has been attained
To sustain the initial success experienced in the writing program, teachers needed to address limitations identified in the design. Students were given more opportunities to write extended tasks to the topics that they experienced in the writing packages. Regarding catering for learner diversities, teachers discovered that they needed to take into considerations students’ personal factors, learning ability, interests, and communication styles rather than relying solely on the differentiated worksheets. They all came to realise the importance of effective teaching processes, accessible learning activities, regular checking for understanding and timely feedback in the teaching of reading and writing. Teachers understand that the teaching of the writing process is complex and it involves the integration of the four skills and the writing strategies such as drafting and editing, proofreading and revising, re-reading and revising and, more importantly, student-teacher conference in different stages of writing. They recognized the need for teacher learning in the curriculum development process. All these factors need to be considered in future endeavour on new curriculum initiatives.

In this presentation session, the planning and implementation of the writing packages and the problems that the core group encountered will be addressed. The presenters will also discuss how teachers changed their beliefs in terms of teacher development, curriculum development and students learning. They also experienced positive changes in teaching and the learning culture and team spirits. Last but not the least; the limitations of the writing packages and the links between the writing materials and the internal and external assessments will be deliberated for considerations when implementing a curriculum initiative.

References
1.Carl, N (2006) Because Writing Matters: improving student writing in our schools/ National Writing Project and Carl Nagin. USA: Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint

2.Cooper, C. R. and Odell, L. (1999) Evaluating Writing: The Role of Teachers’ Knowledge about Text, Learning, and Culture. Urbana Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English

3.Hoch, F. (2003) Strategies for Helping English Language Learners throughout the Writing Process. Retrieved from http://www.learnnc.org/Index.nsf/doc/write-es10603?OpenDocument

4.Hudelson, S. (1989) Teaching’ English through Content-Area Activities. In P. Rigg and V.G. Allen (eds.), When They Don’t All Speak English: Integrating the ESL Student into the Regular Classroom. Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English.

5.Marton, F. Afterword: The lived curriculum. In Adamson, B., Kwan, T. & Chan Ka-ki (Eds.) (2000) Changing The Curriculum: The Impact of Reform on Primary Schooling in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp 277-292.

The Magic of Words: enhancing pupils’ vocabulary building strategies

Ms CHUNG Chui Ngor, Jenny
(Senior School Development Officer)
Ms YU Ngan Kwai
(Buddhist Chan Wing Kan Memorial School)

What does it mean to know a word?
One of Richard’s (1976) assumptions on “what does it mean to know a word?” is that he identifies word knowledge as knowing many of the different meanings associated with the word. It is generally agreed that knowing how to use the word in different contexts are important to help pupils read and write.

A widely accepted distinction related to vocabulary knowledge refers to lexical "receptive knowledge", which involves the ability to understand a word while listening or reading, versus "productive knowledge", the ability to use a word in speaking or writing (Nation, 2001, p. 25). As a rule of thumb, the receptive vocabulary is at least twice the size of the productive vocabulary.

Lexical studies suggest that some words are more frequent than others, therefore more useful for second language learners. Recent research has suggested that it is better for learners at the beginning of their second language acquisition journey to focus on learning the most frequent words first, that is the High Frequency Words (HFC). The focus of lexical research on beginning ESL learners is not on average vocabulary size, but on learning the "right words".

What are the problems of the Hong Kong pupils?
In the course of English language learning, most of the primary pupils in Hong Kong are confronting problems in vocabulary learning and thus reading comprehension.

As evident in the Territory-Wide Assessment (TSA) reports on Basic Competencies of pupils in reading from 2005 to 2010, for example, primary 6 pupils were frequently found to have the following difficulties.

1. interpreting unfamiliar words or expressions from context
2. extracting specific information from a text where a greater reading load was required
3. using supporting details to deduce main ideas
4. distinguishing between a noun and a verb when looking up meaning in a dictionary
Vocabulary knowledge seems to be closely related to pupils’ ability to read in a second language. Although reading comprehension is not determined by vocabulary knowledge alone, it plays a pivotal role. Laufer (1998) points out that the greatest lexical obstacle to good reading is insufficient number of words in the learner’s lexicon.

One of the most common strategies for acquisition of vocabulary is extensive reading. There is a general consent that through extensive reading, vocabulary could be naturally acquired. However, many researchers have observed that learners cannot be expected to ‘pick up’ substantial vocabulary knowledge through extensive reading without teacher’s explicit teaching. Some empirical evidence also points out that there is actually a low extent of vocabulary gains from L2 extensive reading. Despite the disappointing gains of vocabulary in extensive reading, Meara (2002) argues that more vocabulary could be learnt if the same text is read several times. It is claimed that the number of encounters required to learn a new word vary between 6 and 20 (Zahar, Cobb & Spada, 2001).

What happens in BCWKMS?
The less able pupils always failed in dictations and tests. Some of these pupils have great difficulty in remembering what the new words mean and how to pronounce them. Some of the teachers believe that a more direct and quicker way to learn unfamiliar words is to offer L1 translation. Although teachers encourage pupils to learn more vocabulary by checking meaning of unknown words from dictionary, it does not seem to help pupils learn the unfamiliar words, especially when these words are presented in a new context. It is found that pupils check every unknown word with a bilingual dictionary and they tend to take the first one as the meaning of the new word. This means that most of the pupils do not know how to select the appropriate meaning that is relevant to the text.

In the analysis of pupils’ performance, teachers found that they have difficulty in identifying the key words and reference words. Pupils do not know how to use vocabulary building skills such as word formations or word associations to tackle unfamiliar words or make linkage with the text. This might be related to how the pupils learn the new words. Very often, pupils learn the key vocabulary items or unfamiliar words in isolated contexts, resulting in a merely rote-memory and Chinese-English translation. That may explain why pupils have difficulty in recognizing the new words they have learnt when the new words appear in a different context with a different meaning. As reflected in some of the reading and writing tasks, the majority of the pupils had difficulties in decoding meaning of the reading texts or they lacked sufficient vocabulary to express their ideas.

How is vocabulary acquired and learned?
The common approach in vocabulary teaching is to convey meaning to pupils with visual aids or explanation in English. In the teaching of concrete vocabulary items, visual aids such as pictures and realia are useful to convey the meaning. Hunt and Beglar (1998) believe that associating a visual image with a word helps learners remember the word. It is especially more effective to young pupils at KS1. They can easily get the meaning of the new words. When the vocabulary items are more abstract, Gairns and Redman (1986) believe that explaining the meaning of the new words could be more helpful for pupils to grasp the meaning. The translation to L1 is frequently used as well. It appears that it is convenient and immediate to translate to L1 as pupils understand the meaning of the words in one instant. However, the disadvantage of over-reliance on translation has been pointed out by Prince (1996). If pupils keep using the mother tongue to learn L2, they may not develop the necessary knowledge to transfer the knowledge in a new context. This means that the translation approach in vocabulary learning does not contribute to helping pupils apply the new words in a different context.

Fountas and Pinnell (2001) have put forward some strategies for learning new words. Phonemic strategies, morphemic strategies and linking strategies are used to design the learning materials.

In using phonemic strategies, similar to phonic skills, it is important to develop in pupils an awareness of the basic patterns of English. For example, pupils can read or understand some words by sounding out them in words such as splash, crash, bump, ting etc. Most of the pupils in Hong Kong have learnt to relate letter to sound, and sound to letter at KS1. They have also learnt the basic English conventions to decode words using a left-to-right analysis of letter-sound relationships.

The morphemic strategies are referring to using stand-alone morphemes to be combined together to add meaning to the word, for example, in affixes (prefixes, suffixes) and inflectional endings, such as interested and interesting (_ed, _ing). This is similar to the syntactic strategies laid out in the English Language Curriculum Guide (ELCG) (CDC, 2004). Pupils study the language structures and identify unfamiliar words by attending to the spelling patterns and identifying the root words to help them interpret meaning. They need to think what they mean with morphemic strategies.

As regard to the linking strategies, it is closely related to using word formation and word association as recommended in the ELCG on vocabulary building strategies. Pupils learn to use what they know about a word to figure out a new word. Searching for connections between words is not a simple matter of looking for ‘words within words’. The connections include any part of the word and look at it in different ways, or connect different aspects of words. For example, affixation, compounding conversion and derivation are different kinds of word formation. Synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, collocation and lexical sets are referred to as word association.

When pupils read a variety of texts within their range of control with teacher support, they have the opportunity to integrate new words with their prior knowledge. They may meet the word several times in different written contexts, and this repetition is helpful. More importantly, pupils need to encounter words in meaningful contexts rather than simply working to memorize them. Grabe (2008) put forward some principles for L2 vocabulary acquisition and some are implicit in Nation and Newton’s features of good communication activity. Vocabulary is learnt incrementally through multiple exposures in multiple contexts. The more intensely vocabulary is processed, the better it will be learnt. Vocabulary is learnt better through spaced exposures rather than fewer massive exposures. Learning requires cycling and this is essential in vocabulary learning. Pupils need to become active collectors of words because meta-cognitive awareness enhances learning.

On the one hand, teachers need to find ways to present words or word combinations in clear and varied contexts, to practise them in a number of ways, to create tasks in which pupils need to have a good grasp on the word combinations and do interesting things with them. On the other hand, pupils have to take responsibility for their own learning and thus become fully aware of the importance of recording, sorting and using words.

How does a vocabulary building programme work in BCWKMS?
Pupils in primary five and six participate in the tryout. The tryout aims to investigate the problems of vocabulary learning and teaching as well as to design learning materials to help pupils infer meaning from word part clues or context. Needs analysis is done through semi-structured interview with pupils and teachers’ observation to find out how they perceive vocabulary learning. The progress of pupils’ learning will be analyzed through student work, lesson observation and interviews to inform teachers. Some of the lessons will be video-taped for analysis with teachers. Learning tasks and quizzes are developed. Pupils’ performance in the learning process will be discussed in the Collaborative Lesson Planning (CLP). More importantly, by developing the learning materials and analyzing pupils’ performance with teachers, it hopes to explore some innovative vocabulary development strategies to help pupils learn better. In the process, the knowledge and skills acquired in vocabulary learning will help pupils apply vocabulary knowledge for communication.
Guiding questions for evaluation are as follows:

1.How well do the vocabulary learning materials devised help teachers to incorporate vocabulary building strategies in their lessons?
2.How effective is the tryout in helping pupils to comprehend what they read?
Although pupils need to learn vocabulary from reading in context, it is understood that those who most need to expand their vocabulary are likely to be those who are most reluctant to read. They do not know how to derive and connect meaning while reading. Reading by itself will not provide the degree of vocabulary growth necessary and so is teaching vocabulary in isolation. Therefore, explicit and direct instruction is necessary to help pupils learn how to learn words which can enhance the quality and quantity of vocabulary development.

From the review of teachers in BCWKMS, the most common problems displayed by their pupils are:
1.difficulty to infer meaning of a word from context or from word part clues
2.unable to select the appropriate meaning that is relevant to the text
3.unable to apply the new words in a different context

Most pupils are not aware of the fact that it is possible to understand new words without being told what they mean. In the tryout, the results indicate that the importance of vocabulary building strategies should not be overlooked; there should be conscious instructions in the rules of word formation, word associations and word derivation etc. Most of all, these strategies should be taught as an integral part of the General English programme to help pupils attain independent reading. The sharing session will present the efforts of teachers at BCWKMS in helping pupils develop their vocabulary building strategies. The devised materials will be displayed to give teachers references on the design of the programme.

References
1.Curriculum Development Council, (2004). English Language Education Key Learning Area. English Language Curriculum Guide (Primary 1 – 6). Hong Kong: Government Printer.

2.Fountas, I C and Pinnell G S. (2001). Guiding Readers and Writers (Grade 3-6): Teaching, Comprehension, Genre, and Content Literacy. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

3.Gairns, R. and S. Redman. (1986). Working with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4.Grabe, W. (2008). Reading in a Second Language: Moving from Theory to Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

5.Hunt, A. and D. Beglar. (1998). Current research and practice in teaching vocabulary. The Language Teacher, Vol. 22 (1): 7-11.

6.Laufer, B. (1998). The development of passive and active vocabulary in a second language: Same or different? Applied Linguistics, 19:2, 255-271.

7.Meara, P. (2002). The rediscovery of vocabulary. Second Language Research, 18, 2: 393-407.

8.Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

9.Prince, P. (1996). Second language vocabulary learning: The role of context versus translations as a function of proficiency. The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 80: 478-493.

10.Richards, J. C. (1976). The role of vocabulary teaching. TESOL Quarterly 10, 1 (1976), 77-89

11.Singleton, D. (2000). Language and the Lexicon: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

12.Zahar, R., Cobb, T. and Spada, N. (2001). Acquiring vocabulary through reading: effects of frequency and contextual richness. Canadian Modern Language Review, 57, 4: 541-573.

13.Zimmerman, C. B. (1997). Do reading and interactive vocabulary instructions make a difference? TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 31 (1): 121-140.

From understanding to renovating – Optimizing the KS1 English reading and writing programme

Ms WONG Kit Mei, Gladys
(Senior School Development Officer)
Ms YANG Shi Chip, Ms WONG Yuet Yi , Ms CHIA Yuk Pun
(Ho Ming Primary School, Sponsored by Sik Sik Yuen)

Teachers, have you ever made the following comments?
“We are very hard-working teachers and have designed so many worksheets for our students. The worksheets cover reading, speaking, listening and writing and the questions resemble the format of the TSA. Yet, many students still do not do well in the exams. We have done our part! What else can we do to help?”

If the answer is yes or you have been frustrated with your students’ performance though you have done a lot to help, it is high time we saw what had gone wrong in the learning and teaching process. Have we done the right things to make learning effective? Have we done the things right? The teachers of Ho Ming Primary School have been undergoing vigorous reflections in the past four years on their school-based English curriculum development. They started off with similar grievances and confusions. The grievance, the confusion and the frustration caused by the unsatisfactory student performance in both internal and external assessments embarked Ho Ming’s journey to search for the solutions. At the outset, they want to understand the problems and set off by looking into the process of learning.

Tracing back their learning experience as students, it was not unusual for teachers to glorify the respect paid to their teachers. Listening quietly and following the instructions to complete the assignments was the usual learning atmosphere. The English classrooms were always filled with inch-thick grammar exercise books, which were full of mechanical drills of the target structures. There was a strong belief that these drills would help students form ‘good habits’ and they would be able to apply them in real life. This audio-lingual method, which is characterized by the use of extensive drillings of the target grammar structures to facilitate memorization of the forms, did produce a certain number of ‘successful’ learners in the past. However, not all learners benefited this way. The huge number of failure and unsatisfactory student performance forced the teachers of Ho Ming Primary School to reconsider their belief and assumptions that constant drilling on the forms alone would enhance students’ English proficiency. They began to seek reference from research findings on how students learn.

Piaget’s views (1972) on knowledge acquisition and Bruner’s cognitive theory (1966) inspired the teachers to re-consider the process of learning and shed light on what they can do to help students learn effectively. Based on his research on child development, Piaget pointed out that children had continuous interaction with the environment and encountered different problems in the process. Learning then would occur when children searched for solutions to the problems. They were constructing knowledge in this problem-solving process. Bruner (1966) shared similar views on how knowledge was learnt. He regarded learning as an active, social process, in which students formed new ideas and concepts based on their current or previous knowledge and experiences. The knowledge or schemas then formed a cognitive structure in the learners’ mind that helped them organize and make sense of these experiences to form new concepts. In other words, learning instead of teaching is the key word in the whole process of knowledge generation. Teachers, who had once been seen as transmitters and controllers of knowledge, need to change to play the role of facilitators. According to Bruner, teachers should ‘try and encourage students to discover principles (i.e. to construct knowledge and use the knowledge to solve problems) by themselves’ (Bruner, 1960). To do this, teachers need to select or design learning tasks that are related to students’ life. Scaffolding the learning is very essential to help students construct knowledge. The curriculum should be organized in a spiral manner so that students’ prior knowledge could be activated. What Piaget and Bruner advocated in the last century is primarily a learner-centred approach!

When it comes to language learning, we find the learner-centred approach did have great impact on learning English as a second language in Hong Kong. In his book, Task-based Teaching, Nunan (2004) pointed out that it is very important to design a learning task based on the learners’ previous experience because ‘intellectual growth occurs when learners engage in and reflect on sequences of tasks.’ Language teachers should ‘encourage the transformation of knowledge within the learner’, ‘encourage learners to participate actively in small, collaborative groups’ and ‘encourage self-directed rather than teacher-directed learning’. His ideas echo Bruner’s and Piaget’s views on the roles of learners in the learning process, i.e. it is the learners who construct or transform knowledge based on past experiences. The learning tasks here provide authentic contexts and meaningful purposes for the learners to use the grammar knowledge to get things done. When they get things done or solve the problems, students are generating new knowledge. Nevertheless, Nunan was not confident that such ideal mode of task-based learning could be realized in the ESL classrooms though many Asian countries have injected a strong learner-centred tone in their curriculum documents.

Keeping these theories and advice in mind, Ho Ming teachers began their work on renovating their KS1 English programme. A departure from the past practice was to enhance the learner-centredness in developing their English curriculum. The entry point was to find out students’ previous knowledge. This was done at the beginning stage when learning tasks were designed. As previous knowledge is so essential in the knowledge-construction process, a careful scaffolding of tasks is becoming more important in helping students to apply what they have learnt, i.e. the vocabulary and structures, to complete a task. The task scaffolding in Ho Ming Primary School appeared not only in learning modules but also in a balanced and spiral curriculum. Teachers would like to share with the audience on the three levels of work done in the past four years with special focuses on the development of a school-based reading and writing programme.

Activating learners’ prior knowledge is important. Getting to be informed about their past knowledge is equally important!
Ho Ming teachers began to work for quality tasks. But before that, they met problems at the outset to get to know what their students’ previous knowledge was. They found that students’ capacity was always under-estimated. This often resulted in students getting bored in the lessons and gradually losing interest in learning. In order to get themselves better informed, Ho Ming teachers designed diagnostic tasks to identify students’ previous knowledge. For instance, a diagnostic writing task about self was used to find out what vocabulary students had learnt, their abilities to form grammatical sentences and how well they could organize ideas into coherent paragraphs. To teachers’ surprise, students had retained much more knowledge than they had expected. Most of them were able to form simple sentences about themselves. They knew very well what to put in the description and organize these details in logical order. They could spell correctly most of the words they used, like ‘big’, ‘eyes’ and ‘play’. This valuable information triggered teachers to adjust their teaching plans to focus on revisiting the vocabulary students should know in writing about a person, especially the verbs and how these should agree with the subjects. Another focus was on the development of ideas. Finding that many students failed to elaborate their ideas, teachers suggested various ways to develop an idea and devote much teaching to helping the students to learn from each other in the post-writing activities. Besides diagnostic tasks, teachers will share with you how they discern their students’ strengths and problems through studying student work and analyzing their performance in tests and exams, and how their findings from the analysis impacted on their teaching.

Realizing Task-based learning in the English classrooms - Scaffolding the learning tasks to help students construct new knowledge
As previous knowledge is essential in facilitating knowledge construction, teachers decided to strengthen task-based learning in the curriculum design and implementation. Careful scaffolding would enhance the interconnectedness of the learning tasks. Hence, students were helped to build knowledge step by step. This was especially important for Ho Ming students as many of them came from families that offered very little support in English learning. In this regard, teachers will share with you their module plans, the way they organized the tasks and integrated the development of reading, writing, listening and speaking skills into the modules.

The careful scaffolding also enabled the students to consolidate their learning after school and do revisions for their exams. Teachers found that even the KS1 kids could complete the consolidation worksheets on their own at home while being able to attain good performance in internal assessments. Teachers will share with you the use of ‘Magic Notes’ (a learning log book), class work exercises and free writing to help the Primary One and Two students to consolidate their learning.

Building a balanced and spiral English curriculum
A number of learning modules had been developed over the years to accommodate the learning of the language skills and knowledge. Authentic contexts were integrated for students to apply these skills and knowledge. Nearly all the writing tasks were revised to allow students to apply their ‘current knowledge’, i.e. the vocabulary and key structures they learnt in the module to form sentences and texts. Past knowledge was also revisited to enrich the content of their writing. Students were found performing very well in their writing exam.

The student could write three paragraphs about the picture. He demonstrated the correct use of pronouns like ‘he’ and ‘his’ to refer to the boy; and ‘it’ and ‘its’ to talk about the dog and good subject-verb agreement, e.g. ‘Its eyes are big’ and ‘He has a small nose.’ Besides, the student could use many of the target vocabulary and structures learnt in the Primary One modules. How could this be done? Teachers of Ho Ming Primary School will share with you how they realized Nunan’s principles of task-based teaching (2004) in their design and scaffolded the writing tasks in all the modules to help students recycle and use the target vocabulary and structures to create their own writing.

Besides writing, teachers made use of the English Enhancement Grant to develop a school-based KS1 Reading Curriculum. The principles of a spiral curriculum experimented in the writing programme were adopted. They devised a framework on the development of various reading strategies across the 3 levels. There were clear stages of development to incorporate most of the reading strategies. For instance, in helping students to construct meaning from texts, the P1 students learnt to work out the meaning of unknown words by recognizing the root word like ‘teach’ in ‘teacher’. P2 students would work out the ‘suffixes and prefixes’ like ‘helpful’ and ‘helpless’ that would change the meaning of the root words. When P3 students came across a compound word, like ‘classroom’, they learnt to ‘form new words’ using the same base word, e.g. adding ‘bed’ to the same base word, ‘room’, to form ‘bedroom’. In the presentation, teachers will share with you the implementation of the reading curriculum. It was found that not only the students but also the teachers learnt more effectively if their previous knowledge was activated. For instance, it was expected that teachers would find it difficult to understand some of the reading strategies. Therefore, the core team organized workshops, in which teachers were prompted to make use of their past experience to interpret the reading strategies. As illustrations, video clips will be used to show how teachers facilitated a shared understanding and application of the skills in the English classrooms.