3rd Class K & L

The 3^rd week Class K & L is extraordinary. 

I would like to share these moments from my classes.

One boy arrived 5 minutes before class, while I was writing the heading “Stationery”.

“Will you kindly write the following eight items on the blackboard please?”

He grasped the blue pen and wrote swiftly.

These words caught the students’ attentions. They started to guess the meaning, and tried to pounce each items.

"Correction fluid, pencil sharpener, hole punch…"

I asked them to take out their pencil case and checked whether they got these items. Then I explained in Chinese, said it in English and invited the class to join me.

Next class L is a small group with fours students. We sit in half circle and started with the stationery vocabulary. Then I read through the passage with them, so they get the meaning, pronunciation and usage. I invited them to read loudly too. After thorough understanding, they can answer the questions confidently.

I believe these series of classes boost their confident in learning, combined with the 'hard skills" learnt in day school plus their hard work, they can tackle exam and keeping learning. I long for such guidance when I was their age too. Let’s motivate! 

Jack LEE Hoi Leong 

A great start - Class H&J

Dear all

    I have started my 2 classes (H&J) last Friday. Here's my feelings on teaching that I would like to share with you.

   Before starting the lessons, I did the the reading practice once and tried to anticipate the difficulties that students might encounter. I used the question-answering skills that Mr. Wong taught us and marked down some personal ideas.

  In order to let my students familiarize with each other, both of my classes started with a 10 mins warm-up greeting session. Firstly, I introduced myself and wrote my name on the white board. Then I asked their name and wrote them on the white board as well. After that, I randomly assigned a name to a student and told him/her to use at least one word out of 5W+1H (Who, What, When, Why, Where, How) to make a question with the name. For example, if the name assigned is "Mary", the student could ask "Mary, how are you? Who is your favourite idol?" Of course, Mary had to answer the question. Students found the session quite interesting and it raised their motivation to the lesson more or less.

   After the warm-up activity, I began to teach the practice. Since I have done the practice earlier, so I understand that it would be important to identify the type of questions. I taught them the question-answering skills by identifying the questions into 4 types- Right there, Think and search, Author and you, On my own. Besides, I gave them some tips about how to read the passage and answer the questions efficiently. For instance, reading the questions first instead of the passage.

   In general, my lessons went well and all my students performed quite active. So to speak, it was a great start and I hope all of you had a great start too.

Carol

It was a pleasure teaching classes G and I last evening.  Most of the students arrived in time.  Thrusting to acquire new knowledge, the students were aspirational, attentive, responsive to questions and active in discussion.  That being said, about one-third of the students was less competent and hence required more encouragement or attention.  The teaching materials were suitable for class I students who were more competent.  However, the teaching materials for class G students were a bit too advance.  I was not able to finish all the teaching materials for both classes due to the time constraint but the main theme of the article was discussed and certain key vocabularies were explained.  Real life examples of English usage were particularly appealing to the students because they understood English is an important tool for them to communicate, pursue higher education and work.  I ran out of time and was not able to sing a song with them.  Instead, I told them I would try to sing Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” with them next time as a takeaway.

Wilson OR 

There is no Wifi available at Pui Shing, as confirmed by Ah Sze. However, the matter was resolved as Mr. Wong had allowed me to use the desktop computer mounted on the teacher's desk, which is connected to the electronic white-board and also provides access to the Internet. In other words, if you can remember the Youtube links for individual songs, you can play them for sharing with students in class. Yesterday, as I was running out of time for both classes (B&E), I didn't have the chance to play any songs. I will, in the coming lessons, try to use the last 10 mins or so to play a song which is considered of some relevance to and hopefully could facilitate my personal coaching/self-esteem building work. One of my selections is Frank Sinatra's "My Way" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELpRwoRb1fA ). It is hoped that even if the students would forget all of the vocabulary or grammar we've taught them with the lapse of time, they might still remember some of the melodies/lyrics and thus the experiences/values we've shared with them.  

I welcome suggestions of other selections being added to this blog for sharing among tutors.

Henry Tong    

A tutor has asked me if wifi is available in the classroom at Pui Shing so that he can play a song from Youtube to sing with the kids. Yes, it is available but you have to get the password from the TA onsite first.

Many thanks for the sharing by Jack. I hope other tutors can also share their approach, reaction and feedback of students so that we can learn from other's experience to enrich and improve our teaching and handling of kids skills.

Gifted & Sincere Students - Sharing on 1st Lesson of Class K 11/4 (Sat)

I’m surprised with the students: they are brilliant, passionate and motivated.

This is Class K, came with 10 energetic Form 1 students, with 2 boys and majority were girls. 

I started the class with a brief introduction: my career, the reason I teach and the way I learn English as a junior secondary student. Then I began the class with interactive exercise: The Matching of animal names and pictures. As Mr Wong mentioned the students pay more attention to pictures than text, and this stirred their motivation to learn. They filled the classrooms with answers and questions quickly. Most of the answers were matched quickly. For the blanks, I demonstrated an interactive method for them to look up, from the encyclopedia everyone can access ubiquitous – “Googling”. Instead of search the direct English-Chinese meaning, I encouraged them to look up on the image. This caught their attention and motivate them to dig deeper of the definition of words. I guided them through on my phone and encourage them to search when they encounter new words, hope they memorize new vocabularies and building a word bank.

Next I talked about the reading passage. I focused on the reading skills share by Mr Wong such as look up the answer directly (according to line 4) and “author and you”. Finally I handed the time to students and asked questions eagerly, from the vocabulary and the method to master English. I recommended they keep reading in English as a habit, from the topic of interest. Lastly I suggested they can taste the standard of DSE, by tuning the radio or replay form RTHK, to practice listening in real situation. Combining exam skills and learning English voluntary, I believe they are building confidence and growing up as cheerful teenagers.

Lee Hoi Leong (Jack)

Tin Shui Wai Project (Q&A)

Hi All. This is a blog page where you can edit and ask questions on it. Admins of the TSW project like Mr Daniel Mak will later on reply on this blog to give an answer to your question.