Carefully designed, careful teaching, confident application of English

Sau Mau Ping Catholic Primary School Based on the teaching purpose of love and enthusiasm, we cultivate students' balanced development in "spiritual, moral, intellectual, physical, social and aesthetic" aspects. The school focuses on cultivating students' English ability, actively constructs English context, and emphasizes communication and interaction between teachers and classmates. Principal Ye Chunyan is committed to increasing students' interest in learning English, maintaining a positive and positive attitude towards learning, and laying the foundation for English in a relaxed and interesting atmosphere. The school focuses on curriculum planning and diversified activities to not only consolidate students' English foundation, but also help them build their confidence in using English. In recent years, students have achieved satisfactory results in their secondary school allocation, and have been admitted to schools such as St. Kitty's Girls' School, Holy Word Secondary School, Lam Tin St. Paul's Secondary School, Kwun Tong Maryknoll College, Precious Blood Hong Kong English College, Shun Lee Catholic Secondary School, and Kwun Tong Government Secondary School.

Construct an English learning atmosphere. Listen more and speak more to build confidence.

The school provides rich and diversified English activities, creates a good English learning atmosphere, and gives students opportunities to communicate in English to promote the overall language development of their classmates. For example, the launch of the English musical "A Midsummer Night's Dream" not only allows students to understand Shakespeare's classic works from the dialogues and characters during the drama training process, and learn the words and phrases in them, but also creates opportunities for them to communicate in English, speak English boldly on the stage, and build self-confidence. The school also arranges a post-examination activity for fourth-grade students - English rugby courses. The Hong Kong Rugby Association appoints foreign tutors to the school to teach students non-bump rugby, so that they can understand the basic knowledge of sports and practice teamwork spirit in an all-English context, so that they can use English freely. Director of the English Department, Director Xie Shanrong, pointed out: "The students used English to interact with the instructor during the learning process, and they all said that they benefited a lot."
At the same time, the school also regularly holds "English Days", arranging morning meetings, announcements, etc., all in English. It also arranges for students to report on stage, play English games, and coordinate English activities in different seasons to create an immersive learning atmosphere and encourage students to apply their English knowledge. For senior students, the school offers public speaking classes so that they can dare to speak publicly in English in front of an audience and improve their conversational skills.

In recent years, the school has launched an elite English class for junior primary students, allowing students to develop their interest in English from junior primary school and strengthen and consolidate their English foundation. Curriculum Director Cui Shantong said: "We hope that students can use English in real learning environments. Although English is a second language, by immersing students in the English context from the first grade, it will help them gradually adapt and connect to the English courses in primary schools."

Comprehensive reading plan to broaden learning areas

Developing reading habits is an integral part of language learning, so the school actively promotes reading programs and specially launches the "Books and Beyond Reading Club" Reading Programs. This activity is targeted at students in grades three to six, encouraging them to enrich their personal vocabulary by reading various picture books. Life education elements will also be incorporated into the classroom, allowing students to improve their English proficiency while establishing positive values. The plan provides additional Interactive Story Telling for fourth-grade students. Through role-playing, games, classroom sharing and reports, etc., students can flexibly apply the knowledge they have learned, strengthen their English conversation skills and confidence, and learn more English words through reading books. For sixth grade students, teachers provide them with training on English listening test skills to prepare them for early transition to middle school. In addition, the school provides students with an electronic reading platform so that they can break through space constraints and read books in different fields outside school to deepen their knowledge and cultural connotation.

Extracurricular Extended Learning Primary One International English Course

In addition to regular class hours, the school provides students with comprehensive classroom hours as an extension of regular courses. Earlier, the school arranged for two teachers to go to the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to continue to learn and improve their professional skills, learn more diversified teaching strategies and teaching techniques, and conduct teacher training workshops to lead the teaching team to strive for excellence. The English teaching team learned about the "20 Perspectives" teaching strategy implemented by Dutch universities, and started from 20 learning perspectives such as environment and measurement to design a primary one international English course for students as an extended teaching for first-year English subjects. The primary one international English course has a comprehensive class on wild animals and pets, using thematic teaching. For example, if students are asked to design an ideal home for animals, the school will use the "See" - "Think" - "Wonder" thinking mode to first let the children understand the things they see in front of them, and then guide them to think about the relationship between the ecological environment and animals, and advance the teaching content step by step.

At the same time, the school attaches great importance to training students' listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, and makes good use of resources to purchase audio books. It is hoped that students will develop independent thinking skills and broaden their learning horizons after reading. During the course, students will practice conversational skills and lead them to describe different body parts of animals after observation. In addition, students in the class will use environmentally friendly materials to create an ideal home for small animals and write articles about it. Director Cui said: "We allow students to create diverse creations, and we do not expect students to be all the same and extend the themes taught by the teacher." The children were very engaged in these six classes and enjoyed learning.

Interdisciplinary learning English combined with value education

Principal Ye advocates interdisciplinary learning and cultivates students’ ability to apply different knowledge. The school will combine different subjects with English learning, such as value education, national conditions education, etc., and arrange appropriate content to use English as the language of instruction. The school vigorously promotes interdisciplinary learning activities, such as arranging collaborative teaching between English and General Studies to teach topics such as Chinese herbal medicine and life education together. Not only that, the English subject group has also integrated the five core values ​​of Catholicism into the teaching content. Through the English subject development plan implemented by the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, the school allows students to read English versions of religious stories about the five core values. While students understand religious knowledge, they can also learn English from the stories and improve their reading skills.

Big data assists teaching and electronic platforms improve learning efficiency

The school makes good use of electronic platforms to assist English teaching, making the classroom more interactive and promoting students' independent and diversified learning. Students can watch videos of flipped classrooms through electronic platforms for preview. Director Cui said: "The school attaches great importance to students' preview before class, and also emphasizes independent learning and personalized learning." The teaching team will assign students three different levels of difficulty, namely high, medium and low, according to their personal abilities, learning process and characteristics. Teachers make good use of the data analysis function in the electronic platform to understand students' mastery of the topic before class. If most students have a sufficient grasp of the topic, they can deepen and explore key points of knowledge during class to improve teaching effectiveness. On the contrary, if students encounter learning difficulties, teachers can make adjustments and follow up on their learning difficulties and progress in class. When students finish a unit of course, teachers can use the system to make summative assessments and use the "wrong question bank" to review difficult points for them in a targeted manner. They can also follow up on classmates' test performance through the platform. At the same time, teachers can use electronic platforms to teach English grammar and make good use of resources to consolidate students' knowledge points, communicate and interact, or organize English activities.

Act as a learning facilitator, encourage and accompany students to grow

Principal Ye shared: "Some students showed off their fluent English in front of the whole school during the morning assembly. The reason why students dared to show themselves publicly was because of the positive influence of teachers." Students cannot learn English without the support of teachers. Principal Ye believes that teaching a second language requires especially the teacher's affinity, because students will inevitably encounter different difficulties when learning English. To cultivate students' confidence in using English, teachers need to give students enough encouragement and support during the teaching process, and provide them with learning support with a caring and patient teaching attitude.