Promote life education, discover character strengths, establish positive values, and give back to society in the future

Tai Po Old Market Public School (Plover Cove) Based on inspiring students’ potential, we are committed to providing high-quality whole-person education, actively promoting life education, continuously optimizing various school-based curricula, designing diversified teaching materials, creating meaningful situations, and connecting students’ life experiences to stimulate their interest in learning and then apply what they have learned in their daily lives. Principal Ye Yizhao believes that knowledge and experience are inseparable. He leads the teaching team to provide students with a full range of learning experiences to help them find their own strengths and apply them. This allows students to control their own learning process, not only improves their learning autonomy and becomes active learners, but also achieves the goals of "unity of knowledge and action" and "integration of learning and application".

Pay attention to values education, school-based life education plan

Values education is an important element of whole-person education, and schools attach great importance to the cultivation of students' values. Principal Ye Yizhao said that the school infiltrates positive values ​​​​in different subjects and teaching activities from grade one to grade six to help students establish positive values ​​​​and attitudes. This school year, the school implemented the "School-Based Life Education Plan" in grades four to six, systematically planning life education and career development courses, and integrating values ​​into different learning activities. In the plan, from a vertical perspective, fourth-year students start from themselves, explore their own character strengths, affirm their self-worth, and cultivate feelings of caring for those around them; fifth-year students are equipped with soft skills and understand the characteristics of each job position through participating in campus work experience, cultivating the values ​​of respect and gratitude; sixth-year students conduct career exploration, chart a future path, and further increase their sense of belonging to the community and country.

Treasure Lake Adventure Tour Gamified Learning Experience

Principal Ye Yizhao said that stimulating students' curiosity is an important element. Therefore, in the "School-Based Life Education Program", students become adventurers and embark on a three-year adventure journey on the "Treasure Lake Explorer". During the process, students participate in different "adventure" activities, bravely overcome many difficulties, draw energy from the experience, and thus equip themselves with soft power. To this end, the teaching team specially designed a "Treasure Adventure Card" in which students go through seven different tests. After each test, students write down their findings and turn on the "password" prompts. Students follow the prompts to find the location of the "treasure". The school uses games throughout various activities to stimulate students' curiosity and sense of involvement.

Informed action and life education plan, emphasizing action and practice

The "School-Based Life Education Plan" is promoted with an "informed and action-oriented teaching model". The curriculum is linked to the overall development direction of the school. Through growth courses and learning activities, students understand their own character strengths to achieve knowledge-based education. Through different practical activities, they gain insights from doing and achieve emotion-led actions. In the process of action, positive elements are integrated to strengthen positive energy and achieve action-based education. Each learning activity is closely linked, and the activities are carried out in an "experiential learning model" to strengthen the practice of action, especially the connection between the school and the community, so that students can affirm their self-worth and contribute to society.

The "School-Based Life Education Plan" for grades 4 to 6 starts with the "Life Warriors" sharing session, allowing students to understand that everyone is unique and has their own strengths, how to accept their shortcomings, and to maintain a positive and optimistic attitude and positive thinking when facing challenges. In addition, the school also responds to the story of "Life Warriors" through school-based growth courses, guiding students to reflect, understand and appreciate their own strengths, equip them with soft skills, establish positive interpersonal relationships and a growth mindset, and face the future with optimism.

Treasure Lake Explorer ‧Adventure tour for all ages

The theme for the fourth grade is "Baohu Explorer - Elderly and Young Inclusive Adventure Journey". Students explore the needs and characteristics of the elderly from their personal lives and learn how to care for others. In addition, students can experience it first-hand through adventure activities. Finally, students organize an event called the "Elderly and Younger Integration Carnival", inviting the elderly in the area to the school to participate in activities they have prepared for the elderly, such as booth games, campus visits, musical instrument performances, etc. Students can show their strengths and hold different service positions, display different character strengths, practice caring actions, and cultivate values ​​such as respect, bravery, care, and gratitude.

Treasure Lake Explorer‧Campus Adventure Tour

The theme of the fifth grade is "Baohu Explorer ‧ Campus Adventure". Through the "Life Monopoly" activity, the real social situation is simulated, allowing students to experience the characteristics of work and explore their own strengths. Students learned more about their personal characteristics. Later, they participated in the "Baohu Career Fair", where a group of parents acted as assessors. The students went through different tests and applied for different jobs in the school, such as teachers, co-workers, snack bar employees, secretary office employees, etc. Finally, students are assigned to different jobs within the school and participate in the "Be You for a Day" activity to experience the characteristics of each job position, thereby cultivating values ​​such as respect, responsibility and gratitude.

Treasure Lake Explorer‧Community Adventure Tour

The theme for the sixth grade is "Treasure Lake Explorer - Community Adventure Journey". In addition to the "Life Monopoly" activity, the school holds a "Career Sharing Session" for students, inviting people from different professions to the school to share. It was seen from the activities that the students were very engaged and asked many career-related questions. The students had a clearer understanding of their career development direction, and explored their own learning and development goals based on their personality strengths. Practice is an important element of the project. Sixth grade students need to self-recommend themselves to be little tour guides, leading students from other areas into the community to introduce the history and characteristics of Tai Po, so as to cultivate the values ​​of respect and gratitude.

The school implements a life education plan and implements the educational concept of knowing and doing. In addition to absorbing knowledge through activities, it also drives students to reflect, cultivate students' values ​​such as perseverance, respect for others, benevolence, courage, responsibility, and gratitude, and practice them in life.

Explore character strengths and learn to appreciate each other

Principal Ye pointed out that the curriculum design and school-based counseling activities of the growth courses are in line with the annual development priorities. Students' learning experience is more focused and more effective in helping students grow and cultivate correct values and attitudes. The growth courses for grades one to three start from an individual perspective. Students start by understanding their own strengths. In addition to appreciating themselves, they also need to learn to appreciate others, communicate with others, and get along with others. The topics of the growth courses for grades 4 to 6 meet the growth needs of students, such as peer relationships, the power of the Internet, etc. Through self-examination and peer observation, students can further explore their more prominent character strengths and talents, equip themselves to participate in work experience activities, and apply them in daily life.

"Class" is an important learning base for students. At the beginning of the semester, each class carries out class management activities to strengthen the sense of belonging to its own class. In addition, in order to deepen students' understanding of character strengths, school-based tutoring activities are mostly conducted in the form of exhibitions, film sharing, challenge arenas, etc., allowing students to learn from experience and improve learning effectiveness.

Parental cooperation and support to discover the bright spots of children

Principal Ye pointed out that parents play a very important role in the growth of students. Therefore, the school attaches great importance to parent education. With the cooperation and support of parents, it can achieve twice the result with half the effort, and positive values ​​and attitudes can take root in the hearts of students.

One of the purposes of the "School-Based Life Education Plan" is to strengthen parent education, allowing parents to enter the classroom, cooperate with the school's direction, and extend school learning to home. In the process of promoting the plan, the school mobilizes the power of parents to host booths, serve as evaluators, share careers, etc., which can not only enhance the parent-child relationship, but also discover the highlights of their children and increase their sense of identity with their children.

Baohu Parent-Child Reading Club combines life education with each other

The "Baohu Parent-Child Reading Club" is an important platform for schools to promote parent education. The school actively establishes close ties with parents. Through parent-child reading activities, knowledge is transformed and transferred to the parents' level. The knowledge learned in school can be practiced at home. The activities of the reading club can build a bridge to closely link the cultivation of values with the family and continue them.

The school just held a firefighter real-life library activity this school year. A parent who is a firefighter shared his journey of becoming a firefighter, leading the children to have an in-depth understanding of the working environment and daily life of firefighters, as well as the difficulties faced in the process of fighting fires, and to bravely face every difficulty. Through the personal experiences of parents, students can learn about the perseverance and great sentiments of firefighters.

The Firefly Reading Club allows parents and children to go into nature together, appreciate fireflies embellishing the dark earth with their own light, explore the lives of fireflies, and reflect on how humans should cherish, care for, and be grateful for the beauty of nature. Through a series of reading club activities, the school combines life education with students to encourage students to reflect and cultivate positive values.

Through home-school cooperation, the school transfers the values ​​​​constructed in the curriculum to the family level to achieve "unity of knowing and doing."

Close ties between home and school enable primary school freshmen to engage in happy campus life

Parents' cooperation can help students adapt to campus life as quickly as possible. During the summer vacation, the school invites primary school freshmen and their parents to the school to understand the school's overall development direction and school-based curriculum. It also arranges primary one adaptation courses to allow children to experience primary school campus life early and get to know different teachers and classmates.

The school is a caring place and has a "Big Brothers and Big Sisters" matching program. The older brothers and sisters take care of new members of Primary One. The Big Brothers and Big Sisters welcome them with homemade gifts, take them to the library to read with them, and play games with them. This allows Primary One students to feel valued, get involved in campus life more quickly, adapt to primary school life, and build a sense of belonging on campus.

The school will also hold parent forums in the first month of school. In addition to sharing the school's annual development focus in the auditorium, Principal Ye also arranges for parents to enter the classrooms in different grades and classes to share with class teachers and teachers on matters related to the adaptation of Primary One.

The school will also hold a "100-Day Banquet" on the 100th day after the primary one students arrive at school. On that day, the parent-teacher association will prepare a stall for the primary one students, carefully design different gifts, and arrange for students, parents and teachers to take photos to record the beautiful moment. For parents, seeing their children grow up in school for a hundred days is a very touching thing. Through communication and collaboration between home and school, a good foundation has been established for children’s future primary school life. Schools and families can work together to allow children to thrive in a pleasant learning environment.