The Period of Collaboration (2015-2017)

The journey began when I got an offer as an ESL teacher from English First, a world-renowned education group based in Sweden, a country famous for its student-centered K-12 education system. After struggling for about two months observing teachers down-the-hall, attending routine workshops, and learning by doing such as managing classes of early learners, preparing related lessons, assisting co-teachers, I started to take initiative in incorporating my interest with students’ into lesson planning, and adapting or creating new activities depending on the context. I think my practice have shown consistent evidence for the IB pedagogy on the transdisciplinary nature in language teaching, especially project-based learning with differentiated rewards designed for topics in the curriculum, serving multiple purposes such as provocations, project models, positive reinforcement, and more opportunities for the drill of productive skills. The hands-on approach has been well developed since then.

EF 50th Anniversary Party

ef 50

Based on my childhood experience with my mom who taught me how to make origami toys, I understood that students would love this hands-on approach, so I incorporated it into lesson planning, which aimed to develop children’s understanding of lines and symmetrical shapes, related to story characters and new vocabularies such as animals, clothes and home furniture. Sometimes parents would help their small children with some steps. They were always welcome to attend our classes and activities. The involvement of parents faciliated student learning and built a strong connection among students, parents and the school. I would say the humanistic approach I have adopted based on students’ interest, agency, self-efficacy, and the learning community has prepared me to “internalize” IB methodology, according to my IB instructors.

Origami Animals for Puppetry Theater and Rewards (2-4 years old) (Literacy, Natural Science, Math)

Puppetry theater

Movable Origami Monkey for Grammar Drill (6-7 years old)

The project was developed for both receptive and productive skills. Students learned to say the prepositional phrases and sentence patterns of positions while being engaged with the movable origami monkey. Grammar has been the most painful learning experience for early learners with their logic thinking still developing, so the hands-on transdisciplinary approach fostered students’ interest in learing grammar, avoiding the most-used tedious drills. When students completed their own projects, they practice productive skills with a sense of achievement boosting their self-efficacy, and in turn, enhancing their agency.

mobile monkey

2D Shapes Developed into 3D Projects (3-5 years old)

The projects were for an unit of 2D shapes from Journeys , a famous reading program for grades K-6 published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In order for preschoolers to inquire about the shapes and their attributes with a hands-on approach, I developed the projects as models for students to talk about what they could build with the shapes, connecting with their prior knowledge of flowers, arts, handicraft (wind chime), and robot toys.

3d shapes

Children’s Day Gathering

Families were invited to join our celebration of Children’s Day that has been the happiest day of children in the year. Shows were put on in an exhibition style. All children learned something from the center, and their parents felt very proud of it.

Children Singing English Songs on the Stage

https://pan.baidu.com/s/1LXhS6ScQ6OhYoupzj9k7Cg?pwd=sav3

Weekly Life Club

Teachers take turns to host the life club in different themes at the big kitchen with a projector, a screen and a host computer, so that students could take related classes and prepare snack food.

Apart from my major responsibility to deliver innovative classes to early learners, I shared my ideas of teaching with colleagues through small talk, workshops and teaching materials archived in our class portfolio. I was also a problem solver, for example, covering sick colleagues’ classes on short notice with equal quality and impression on students whom I met for the first time (because the students recognized me on the street). I think it took courage, flexibility, charm, and improvisatory quality to tackle emergency like this. Being sort of a tech geek, I also helped setting up a home router for a new comer from the USA.

As an empathetic teacher, I extended concerns for low-achievers and trouble makers by listening carefully to them, responding actively, and helping individual students with their social and emotional well-being. This, I suppose, is the epitome of inclusive education.

My Critical Reflection on a 5th Grader Overwhelmed by Cram Education

https://pan.baidu.com/s/1LTXqtBOOvCCep9WqgiRDnw?pwd=ckg2

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