High-quality whole-person education, diversified teaching cultivates temperament, and "artistic excellence" stimulates creative thinking

Yuen Long Long Ping Estate Wai Chow SchoolFocus on developing students’ diverse potential and provide students with different learning channels through diversified activities, allowing each child to build a confident stage and show off their talents based on their personal strengths. The school has a strong cultural and artistic atmosphere. In addition to rich art education courses and extracurricular activities, it has also actively participated in off-campus activities such as the "Partner Art Project" and the "Hong Kong Campus Arts Ambassador" in the past. Every year, the school organizes "Art Day" and "Art Recess Carnival" for students to increase students' exposure to art and culture. Principal Zheng Tinghui believes that art education can effectively cultivate children's self-creation potential and create a happy and diverse growth path. "People not only need to develop on the road of knowledge, but also need to further grow in character, emotion, social or spiritual life. Art education can harmoniously integrate the elements needed for growth. Therefore, the school carefully establishes art education to cultivate students to become people who are good at thinking and have aesthetic ability."

Balanced Curriculum Development and Art Integration into Campus

As face-to-face classes have fully returned to normal, Principal Zheng has led the teaching team to innovate the school curriculum, integrate class hours, resume interest groups, and resume the annual "Arts Day" as a prelude to various activities to help students integrate into campus life and encourage them to re-engage in school learning. On the day of the "Arts Day", the school also invited Ms. Cheung Sze-wing, Director of Arts Education Development of the Education Bureau, to deliver a speech. The Chinese Music Band and the Jazz Band also performed at the school to celebrate. At the same time, the school has set up different art workshops to allow students to understand various art styles and factions and master more artistic expression techniques.

Principal Zheng: "The school views Art Day as an extension of the school-based curriculum. Rather than a one-time art activity, we hope to deepen art education in the school through Art Day, combine interdisciplinary learning elements, and add STEAM-related knowledge so that students can apply what they have learned in class and understand the truth that 'art comes from life.'" Children are all born artists, and they love it. Painting and making different toys by hand. The teaching team believes that art education can not only improve students' creativity and communication skills, but also cultivate their sense of beauty and cultural awareness. It also follows the natural development of children, allowing them to gain pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction from participating in art activities, so that students can fall in love with learning and learn to continuously learn, think, explore, innovate and adapt.

Study the arts of many countries and establish an international perspective

The school cleverly combines elements of Chinese culture and art. Through the "Art Day" activities, students can learn about traditional Chinese musical instruments and music styles, and experience the traditional ink artistic conception of Chinese calligraphy and painting, so as to consolidate students' learning of national conditions and deepen their understanding of the motherland. In "The Music of Silk and Bamboo", the school specially invites the Chinese orchestra to perform at the school, allowing students to experience and listen to ancient Chinese music first-hand, and understand the timbres and playing methods of flutes, cymbals, dulcimer and drums. Through the ensemble, students are led into the poetic and picturesque ancient Chinese style, cultivating students' interest in and appreciation of Chinese music. In addition, the school has specially set up art projects such as "Ink Painting on Paper Fans" and "Cantonese Opera Experience Activities". The former teaches students the basic ink painting techniques and the "blank" characteristics of Chinese art, and then allows students to draw patterns rich in Chinese cultural imagery on paper fans; the latter allows students to understand the characters and famous plays of Cantonese opera through the appreciation of Cantonese opera. In order to enhance students' understanding of the city at their feet, teachers also specially selected photos for students to observe famous buildings in Hong Kong and use "tape art" to post pictures of beautiful Hong Kong buildings.

At the same time, in addition to art activities that combine Chinese culture, the school also pays attention to the integration of multiculturalism, so it has set up a "Jazz Fun Workshop" to introduce Western music so that students can understand African music and culture through animation; it also introduces "polka dot art" and details the creative story of Japanese national treasure artist Yayoi Kusama, so as to broaden students' international horizons and build their appreciation of diverse arts.

Emphasis on "hands-on" and cultivating a sense of beauty through reflection

Principal Zheng quoted the words of Michael Young, a well-known British education scholar: "What determines education in the new century is not teaching, but learning." Therefore, the school realizes that in the face of students with unlimited creativity and independent learning habits, it should actively cooperate with them and deepen the effectiveness of "flipped learning" in the classroom. In view of this, the teaching team has incorporated a large number of "learning by doing" elements into teaching to encourage students to reflect on what they have learned, even during the "Arts Day". On that day, the teacher carefully designed many workshops, such as teaching students to conduct sand painting training; designing heartfelt cards through scraping; in addition, they also used cut-and-paste art, using rubbing sponges to draw, and even led students to make simple models using colorful clothespins; folding aluminum strips into 3D sculptures, etc. - allowing students to understand By learning various art knowledge, combined with STEAM education, they understand the characteristics of different materials and art processes, and at the same time try different art forms, such as printmaking, ink painting, origami, sculpture, etc., and finally complete reflection worksheets to establish their positive attitude towards continuous exploration and experimentation.

Principal Zheng said with a smile, "Art education attaches great importance to creativity and execution. It can not only cultivate students' aesthetic awareness, but also allow them to constantly think of innovative ideas in the process. It can be said to be the beginning of the maker spirit. Therefore, we firmly believe that holding more "learning by doing" learning activities can help children establish the maker spirit and creative ideas of "if you can think of it, you can make it". "

Set up a "parent booth" to jointly build parent-child education

School is a testing ground for children to learn knowledge, build social skills, and enter a small society; as for home, it is an important cradle for giving children love and care and building moral character and empathy. Therefore, Principal Zheng and the teaching team attach great importance to home-school cooperation and hope to establish a complete and comprehensive growth environment for students. The school regularly publishes the "School News" and also records art activities such as "Art Day" in the "Art News" to facilitate students and parents to understand the school's educational development and recognize their children's artistic achievements. Teachers will also introduce different local art groups in publications, print games related to art, introduce recent art activities, etc., to encourage parents to promote art in family education.

In addition, in order to enhance parents' participation in the school and establish a good relationship of mutual assistance and coordination, the school specially set up a "Parent Volunteer Art Booth" on the "Art Day" to invite parents to the school to use adults' creativity and art knowledge to design interesting and novel activities and workshops for students. This shows parents' support for art education, deepens the home-school cooperation relationship, consolidates communication bridges, strengthens parents' understanding of school operations, and jointly establishes a consistent home-school education.

Ground painting combines educational concepts to create an artistic atmosphere

The school building has a strong artistic atmosphere and colorful decorations. You can see students' art works in different corners and floors of the campus. There is also a 17-meter-long large-scale floor painting in the open-air square. The floor painting was designed and painted by the charity organization "Hong Kong Habitat for Humanity" and the school's students based on the concepts of "Value our variety" and "Strength with Actions". It is intended to express the school's teaching philosophy of cultivating students' diverse development and value education.

In addition, the school also regularly holds different art exhibitions and workshops, such as the recent "Fluid Painting Workshop for Teachers". During the event, the principal personally led the teaching team to learn fluid creation, so as to feel the nature and uniqueness of art, strengthen group relationships, and allow teachers to temporarily withdraw from the tense teaching work and learn to relax through artistic creation, so as to better feed back to students' teaching work and improve the effectiveness of learning and teaching.