This week I began my placement in Jockey Club Primary School teaching Grade 5 and 6 classes. Although I had prepared well, to be honest it has been quite a challenging and different experience to the placements I have had in the past. It took a little bit of time to adjust to teaching students who only use English as a second language. The teaching approach and style in my lessons therefore is more formal than it would be back home with the focus mainly on comprehension skills, language skills, vocabulary and grammar instead of a more cross-curricular approach which I am used to in the Northern Ireland Curriculum where English for example would be taught alongside history or geography.
I have become very aware that with some teaching periods lasting only thirty-five minutes it is quite hard to get a full lesson completed with the class. Back home when we are teaching we are encouraged to begin with an introduction in our lesson to “set the scene.” However, due to the time constraints, it is a matter of getting started straight into the lesson, after a brief introduction, and getting the content covered quickly with the students.
A particular difficulty of having some single periods is that the time constraint makes it challenging as a class teacher, to ensure that all the children are following and achieving the success criteria of the lesson. In both my classes there are one or two pupils who are not familiar with or confident in using English and I have found it demanding to keep them engaged and focused throughout the lesson. With classes of 32 students it is difficult to spend time individually with children who need more help and encouragement. Obviously this links back to the need for differentiation, which as I mentioned in my blog last week, doesn’t seem to be as fundamental in the Hong Kong education system as it is back in Northern Ireland.
I have detected in my English lessons that the students don’t seem as confident or willing to interact and participate in teacher-led class discussion compared to my previous experiences back in Northern Ireland as the students seems to be more shy and afraid of giving a wrong answer. To overcome this, I have tried to integrate as much partner and group work as possible into my lessons so that the students, in particular the weaker pupils, are interacting and practising their English with one another instead of just listening or responding to the teacher. The overall English ability of the class is very good; however, there is a noticeable and distinct difference in motivation between the higher and lesser ability students. Often when you ask a weaker student a question or if you try to interact with them they will ask their friend (who is better at English) for help in Cantonese. I feel that trying to break down this barrier and instilling some confidence and motivating the weaker students to learn English will be one of my biggest challenges in the remaining weeks.
During the week we were also asked to do an English activity each afternoon with the Grade 3 students because soon they will have to complete their TSA (Territory-Wide System Assessment Tests) English test. This basically involves a formal oral test where the children are shown a picture and they have to answer questions about it, using sentences and developing their answers as much as possible. I was extremely surprised by the use of vocabulary, thinking skills and confidence which some of the children displayed at such a young age. So much so that I think their answers would be just as good as any student of the same age back home!
The pupils seem very excited to have some guests in the school and the head of the Parent Teacher Association appears very keen for the student teachers to visit some of the children’s homes and participate in some organised trips with the pupils providing them with opportunities to improve their English. Overall it has been a really interesting first week and I am looking forward to the two weeks of teaching placement again after Easter despite the increase in workload!
Outside of school this week we managed to meet up with Claire Annett and Clare Beacom who came into Hong Kong to visit for the weekend. It was nice to be able to catch up and hear all about their personal experiences in China and it seems as if they are also having a great time. Hearing them talk about China makes it sound very different to Hong Kong, so much so, that I am tempted to go and visit them. Depending on my workload over Easter and how much I can complete of my remaining assignments I hope to maybe get the opportunity to go to Guangzhou for a few days and see what it is like for myself!
Tomorrow evening we are flying out to Vietnam to stay in Hanoi and hopefully visit Ha Long Bay which I am particularly looking forward to. I will be updating you on our travels in my blog next week.
Until next time...
Joi Gin (Goodbye)
Michael
No comments:
Post a Comment