High participation, high appreciation, high presentation, creating context and enjoying learning English

TWGHs Lo Yu Chik Primary SchoolWe understand that in order for students to learn English well, they must first develop an interest in English learning. The school has designed a variety of courses and activities for this purpose, covering drama, recitation, public speaking, etc., allowing students to apply what they have learned in a real language environment. Principal Wang Jieming pointed out that the school emphasizes the teaching philosophy of "high participation, high appreciation, and high presentation" and aims to provide diversified learning experiences so that students can experience a sense of success and satisfaction in the process of participation, presentation, and recognition, thereby building interest and confidence in English, and flexibly applying what they have learned in their future lives.

Diverse learning experiences to enhance interest and confidence

The school is committed to designing a variety of English learning activities to create an English learning atmosphere and enhance students' interest in learning English. For example, the school holds an "English Fun Day" every year, allowing students to participate in English booth games and watch performances by English theater troupes to increase their exposure to English. In addition, the school also organizes English activities to cater to different holidays, such as holding a "Halloween Party" on Halloween, allowing students to learn English vocabulary related to Halloween in a pleasant festive atmosphere. At Christmas, the school will hold the "A Letter to Santa Claus" activity to create an interesting context and encourage students to use the writing skills and vocabulary learned in class to write English postcards to Santa Claus.

The school also trains students to serve as English ambassadors, leading students to play English games with foreign teachers during lunch. It also trains senior students to serve as "Reading Buddies" to accompany junior primary school students in reading English picture book stories. The school hopes to demonstrate the English talents and leadership skills of upper primary school students through these service learning, and through peer influence, encourage students to use more English and improve their self-confidence.

In addition, foreign teachers are also actively organizing English activities to create an English context. For example, the midday English radio broadcast "English Radio Broadcast" is launched to train English ambassadors to perform English broadcasts, giving students more opportunities to demonstrate their English speaking skills, and students who listen can learn daily English expression skills.

In addition to on-campus activities, the school also held an exchange group in Singapore this year, allowing students to try to communicate with locals in English, using language as a bridge to experience other countries' cultures and broaden their international horizons. Through these rich and diversified English learning activities, not only do students have more opportunities to participate, but more importantly, they feel that English learning is not limited to the classroom, but should be integrated into life and be useful.

Taking care of learning diversity and improving and consolidating English learning

Students have different English abilities and different learning needs. In order to implement the concepts of high participation, high appreciation and high display, the school has implemented a series of learning and teaching strategies to take care of students' learning diversity and allow students with different abilities to develop their strengths. For students with excellent English performance, the school provides gifted courses, such as training and competitions in English drama, English recitation, and English public speaking, to further enhance their abilities and confidence. In addition, the school also offers Cambridge English classes and arranges for students to take external examinations. By giving students more opportunities to demonstrate their learning achievements, we can enhance students' sense of achievement and further strengthen their English abilities.

Over the years, the school has led students to participate in the primary school English group competition of the "Hong Kong School Drama Festival". Principal Wang pointed out: "Our English drama team is all trained by a team of experienced teachers in the school, because the teachers are more familiar with the students' abilities and personalities, and there is a better understanding between teachers and students, so that the trained The process is more efficient, and we hope to enhance students' interest, confidence and expression ability in learning English through drama activities. "The students have lived up to expectations and have won many awards in the drama festival over the years. Last year, they won six major awards including the Screenplay Award and the Director Award. They once again set a new record for the school's best results and deserve recognition.

For students with less ability, the school will provide them with additional learning support, such as pre-school tutoring classes, which use "small class" teaching to help them improve their learning ability. In addition, the school also offers special English reinforcement classes for newly arrived students to help them gradually build a solid foundation in English. Through comprehensive learning support, students can recognize themselves in their continuous progress, thereby stimulating their learning motivation.

Make full use of English class time to strengthen language and general skills

In terms of school-based curriculum, the school attaches great importance to the development of students' language skills. Therefore, English subjects have more class hours than other subjects, allowing teachers to be more flexible and flexible in designing classroom activities, and giving students more opportunities to participate in interesting classroom activities. Teachers focus on incorporating cooperative learning activities into classroom design to enhance English communication and collaboration skills through student-student interaction.

In addition to using textbooks for the junior primary curriculum, the school has also joined the Education Bureau's Primary School Literacy Program (PLPR/W Programme), which is taught by foreign teachers and local teachers in collaboration. Through reading picture books and stories, reading and writing, the school helps students lay a solid foundation for reading and writing. At the upper primary school level, schools implement a school-based reading across the Curriculum (RAC) curriculum, which integrates reading materials and interdisciplinary activities into the topics to broaden students' reading horizons and enable them to integrate knowledge and skills from different disciplines to achieve mastery.

In addition, the school also designs different school-based teaching materials to improve students’ writing skills. For example, the learning tool "Word Bank" designed by the teaching team not only collects enrichment words according to the topics, but also includes words commonly used in compositions to expand students' vocabulary database and achieve the effect of strengthening English writing skills.

Promote diversified learning courses and implement the concept of interdisciplinary learning

In order to cope with the diverse development of students, the school conducts multi-learning classes every Friday afternoon to carry out cross-curricular theme learning activities covering multiple subjects. The English Department also produces reading teaching materials and designs special classroom activities in line with the learning themes. For example, the fourth grade studies the theme of "Old Hong Kong". In the English class, students study and discuss topics related to Hong Kong in the old days. English and general knowledge teachers collaborate to allow students to read English articles about Hong Kong history to understand life in the past. Students are also required to interview their elders at home in English to understand their elders’ past life experiences, and finally write a report to share their learning results. In order to enhance the interest of learning, schools will also hold nostalgic game days to allow students to experience toys and games from Hong Kong’s past, such as jumping out of airplanes and jumping on elastic ropes, so that students can deepen their knowledge of Hong Kong history through interesting activities.

Cross-curricular theme learning activities also cover STEAM elements. For example, in the Primary 6 cross-curricular reading theme "Inventions", students read English chapters related to inventions and designs to understand the production processes of different inventions and how they can help solve life problems. In order to encourage students to care about society and use their creativity, teachers encourage students to design an invention that can help solve life difficulties and describe its function in English. Teachers will share students' inventions to online education platforms to showcase students' learning results, enhance their sense of accomplishment, and promote peer communication.

Establish reading habits and encourage independent English learning

In order to encourage students to read and establish reading habits, the school actively promotes various activities to cultivate a reading culture. For example, the English Department cooperates with the library to organize the "Themed Reading Month" every year to enhance students' reading interests and abilities. In order to further create a reading atmosphere, in addition to the library, classrooms and auditoriums also have reading corners with interesting storybooks to promote reading culture and attract students to read. In addition, the school also purchased the English electronic reading platform Raz-Kids for students to cooperate with the school-based "Reading Award Scheme" to increase students' reading volume and continue to cultivate good reading habits.

In addition, the school also hopes to cultivate students' independent learning abilities through e-learning. Teachers use Google Classroom to create an electronic teaching material library for each unit, providing multimedia videos, reading materials and other resources on related topics, and setting preview and extended learning tasks to build students' self-study habits and abilities.

Interesting bridging teaching materials to accompany children’s steady growth

Thanks to the strong support of Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, the school sponsoring organization, the joint school English team composed of its affiliated primary schools has designed school-based bridging textbooks for primary one students to use, including English picture book stories recorded by foreign teachers for prospective primary school students to read during the summer vacation to cultivate their interest in English reading. In order to guide Primary One students to establish good reading habits from an early age, the school also implements the Primary One Reading Companion Program, which allows foreign teachers to read English books with students in early reading classes and teach basic reading skills to consolidate their reading foundation. The school has also designed an English review booklet for Primary One students, with interesting illustrations and electronic learning resources (such as self-study videos, etc.) to help students consolidate their basic knowledge of English so that they can adapt to future English learning. The school plans to use the teaching materials with reading pens so that students can listen and read at the same time to cultivate their independent learning habits.