Primary school. Big Family Establishing Inclusive Education to Celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the School

Kam Tin Mung Yeung Public SchoolThe school has a long history. Since the opening of the school building in 1953, the school has adhered to the spirit of the school motto "Loyalty, Diligence and Simplicity", committed to developing education and educating talents, promoting an inclusive culture within the school, and providing a caring learning place for students. As we enter the 70th anniversary of the school, the school sponsoring body still firmly believes that "everyone can learn and everyone can become a talent." As long as we provide a comprehensive and balanced education to the next generation, we can unleash their potential and contribute to tomorrow's society. Therefore, Principal Zeng Zhuolong and his education team continue to use love and care as the educational philosophy, and design school-based curriculum with students as the center. They also keep pace with the times and establish inter-disciplinary interactive Guangxing STEAM education. With the help of rich co-curricular activities in the school, students can find their personal ambitions, build up their interests, and develop a dazzling future.

Ancient school building actively optimizes complete equipment

Principal Zeng lamented that it has been 70 years since the school opened. After continuous additions and optimization projects, the school's teaching facilities are no less than those of urban schools. What's even more rare is that Mengyang is surrounded by big trees, with hemp stone as the wall and a gabled roof. It still retains the simplicity and elegance of the year. This allows students not only to grow up in a rural environment, but also to learn from nature and receive enlightenment from teachers and nature.

In order to allow the next generation to grow up in a comfortable and innovative learning environment, the school has made good use of resources in recent years, using the Quality Education Fund to renovate the original music room into a multi-purpose science and innovation room. It has also renovated the computer room, added new computers, and added smart whiteboards to all classrooms in the school in line with e-learning. In order to comply with the education trend, it also makes good use of different electronic teaching aids to improve teaching interactivity. At the same time, Mengyang also successfully applied for more than NT$2 million from the Quality Education Fund to build a campus TV station, striving to introduce a new learning experience to school students and give them a taste of the fun of filming programs and producing radio dramas.

International learning environment: emphasis on improving bilingual skills

Mengyang has a diverse student body, and teachers and students have worked hard to create an international campus with rich cultural context, so that students of different races can have fun and learn from each other through daily campus life, while creating a good international learning atmosphere. The school actively promotes cultural inclusion and creates a caring and inclusive atmosphere. It holds a "Cultural Inclusion Day" at the end of each year, allowing students to wear the costumes of their respective ethnic groups and return to school. Through performances, game stalls and handicrafts, the school enhances students' understanding of the cultures of various countries and promotes racial integration. At the same time, the school also organizes different language activities for students, including “Storytelling”, “Let’s bake a cake”, “International Bookmarks Exchange”, “Gardening Fair”, “English Drama Training” and “English Day”, etc., to enhance peer exchanges and establish cross-racial friendships, so that students can build bilingual confidence and equip themselves with biliterate and trilingual skills needed in the future.

Excellent teacher-student ratio and adequate student support

The school not only attaches great importance to teachers’ educational philosophy, but also attaches great importance to the quality of teaching in the classroom. Therefore, Mengyang advocates small class teaching, and the teacher-student ratio is better than that of kindergartens, reaching 1:8. The teaching team also attaches great importance to communication. Main subjects such as Chinese, English, Mathematics, and General Studies will hold joint lesson preparation meetings at least 4 times a year. Through joint lesson preparation and peer lesson observation, cross-subject cooperation is promoted, so that teachers in the school can understand the growth needs and learning difficulties of different students, and provide personalized and appropriate learning support and care.

"School-based curriculum is the backbone of teaching, so the school actively applies expert opinions and continuously optimizes curriculum materials based on theory to improve the effectiveness of learning and teaching. In addition, in response to social changes in the 21st century, Mengyang has made drastic changes in recent years to increase the number of "hands-on" activities in the classroom (learning by doing) elements, and focusing on general knowledge, breaking the old tradition of one-way teaching by teachers, instead allowing students to lead learning through different learning experiences, establishing a culture of peer collaboration and communication to promote cooperative learning, increase classroom discussion and reflection. Finally, the school has also adjusted the proportion and methods of assessment and silent reading to create a low-pressure and efficient learning environment so that students can enjoy learning and have the ability to learn and innovate in the 21st century, cultivate the spirit of pursuing knowledge, and establish a foundation for lifelong learning. The school specially sets up Wednesday extracurricular activity classes on Wednesdays. By organizing learning activities in various learning areas, such as children's painting, juggling, rhythm music, table tennis, paper clay and English drama, students can broaden their learning horizons, cultivate positive values ​​and attitudes, achieve balanced development, and practice holistic education.

Finally, the school does not forget to support students with different learning needs. It not only hires additional teachers to provide separate group teaching for main subjects, but also organizes different intensive tutoring classes and after-school homework tutoring to ensure that every student can learn according to his or her ability and learning progress. During the epidemic, Mongyang also adhered to the purpose of "continuing learning even when classes are suspended" and insisted on providing students with a variety of online tutoring classes, language classes, speech therapy services, online e-learning courses, and online extracurricular activities. With its balanced and systematic curriculum design, the school has achieved good results in its secondary school allocation results over the years. Last year, the satisfaction rate of students who were assigned to the top three choices was as high as 97%, which is higher than the level in Hong Kong. Many graduates have been assigned to prestigious schools in the region based on their ideal results.

Make good use of e-learning and deepen blended learning

The school's curriculum is comprehensively designed, requiring students not only to learn knowledge in traditional subjects, but also to have good Chinese, mathematics, and innovation abilities. Therefore, the teaching team adopts a rigorous attitude, adapts to the learning content of different subjects and student abilities, enriches the classroom teaching model, and matches it with appropriate teaching materials and e-learning, so that students can have the learning and innovation abilities of the 21st century and establish a foundation for lifelong learning. In daily classes, teachers at the school make extensive use of "Kahoot!" and "Padlet" as teaching tools, which not only increase classroom interaction, but also encourage students to respond to questions, making it easier for teachers to design extended learning based on their performance. The epidemic has also deepened the foundation of blended learning for teachers and students in schools. Teachers and students are familiar with using different electronic learning platforms, such as "Mentimeter", "Kahoot!", and "Padlet" for learning and teaching. School teachers have also learned to record teaching videos to replace traditional paper-based homework. Because the video content is lively and interesting, it is deeply loved by students, which greatly increases students' learning motivation.

Creating a new generation of innovation and technology, STEAM knowledge is perfectly integrated into the curriculum

The teaching team understands that innovative development is a new way out for future society, so the school has also kept pace with the times and designed a brand-new "Learn by doing" curriculum. It also promotes detachable STEAM activity courses, such as "AI Robot Class", "VR Programming Class" and "STEM Pioneers", etc., allowing students with potential to participate in activities together to further enhance their exploration of technology and the development of mathematical and logical thinking. In addition, the school also uses reading learning to encourage students to read popular science experimental books and online materials in Chinese and English to receive first-hand new knowledge, and then conduct theoretical verification experiments under the leadership of teachers, so that they can experience the rigorous spirit and novelty of scientific inquiry.

Science and life are closely intertwined, so the school has also pooled its efforts from various subjects to integrate STEAM education into different courses. For example, the school's Chinese department has cooperated with the "New World of Science and Technology" unit to conduct STEAM teaching, and demonstrated the functions of the Mengyang robot "Kebby" to students in the science and innovation room. Students were allowed to use different explanatory sentence patterns to try to organize and summarize the functions of the robot, and uploaded it to the Padlet platform to share with the whole school. In addition, the Chinese language teacher also used its functions as a model to ask students to conceive new intelligent robots for the school, and also introduced the appearance and functions of the robots through different writing techniques. Last year, the music department also combined the perspectives of science, technology and mathematics to guide students to discuss and appreciate music, and guided students to make a "hairpin thumb piano", allowing students to personally understand the intensity of vibration through hairpins of different lengths, and thus understand the high and low sounds produced by the hairpins.

"Through the consistent STEAM curriculum design, the school integrates elements of mathematics, physics and science into the teaching of different subjects, and also adds programming content to the school-based curriculum to cultivate students' inquiry and problem-solving abilities. In addition, the school also holds "STEAM Week" every year to improve students' mastery and interest in technology through unique learning activities. In the future, the school will recommend potential students to participate in off-campus competitions, allowing them to showcase their personal talents in the competition and share STEAM with the outside world. I hope they can grow from practical experience, set their future goals, and become experts in scientific and technological innovation in the future,” Principal Zeng added.

School spirit is pure and simple, promoting values education

Mengyang has been using the slogan "Little School, Big Family" for many years. The school emphasizes a caring culture, focusing on the support and care of teachers, students, and students. It also encourages students to participate in various activities and competitions. It is expected that through enthusiastic service or active participation, students can discover their own character strengths and develop them, build self-confidence and positive thinking, and learn to face adversity and overcome difficulties.

In order to further create a positive campus atmosphere, the school has set up growth courses and built a positive education learning resource library so that different subjects can apply positive teaching materials according to their content and integrate positive thinking into campus life. For example, the Chinese subject teacher will classify the Education Bureau's "Chinese Classical Sentences" by various themes and promote it through in-school calligraphy competitions; the visual arts subject will also use the Chinese subject's "Chinese Classical Sentences" to carry out artistic creation activities of Chinese classics to deepen positive values ​​at all levels; and moral education and civic education classes will also incorporate elements of positive education and design learning activities based on life events and related values ​​to deepen students' adherence to positive behaviors and attitudes. In addition, Mengyang also uses the electronic reward system to encourage students to establish a good attitude towards life, appreciate and strive for good academic performance, and learn to appreciate themselves and others. "The school has been organizing different positive education activities in the past, such as 'Raising Positive Stars', 'Positive Stars at Home' and 'Positive Ambassadors', etc., so that teachers and parents can explore students' individual character strengths together, and also encourage parents to learn to appreciate their children's strengths and strengthen their positive behaviors so that students can grow with love and support," added Principal Zeng.

Strengthen home-school cooperation and serve as a bridge for family education

In order to enable students and their parents to establish a good parent-child relationship and thrive in love, the school has been collecting opinions from parents through parent-teacher associations, and regularly organizes parent workshops and invites education experts to the school to share educational information with parents.

In addition, Mengyang holds a graded parent-teacher meeting at the beginning of each school year. Before the meeting, a school-wide questionnaire is distributed to understand students' reading habits, eating habits, exercise habits, homework performance and learning situation at home, so as to work with parents to support students in improving their living and learning attitudes, and to open communication channels so that parents can better understand their children's behavior in school and establish close home-school cooperation.