The RCEF Blog 博客

In collaboration with the principals of Guan Ai School, RCEF started a Teachers Sharing Platform this semester. The purpose is to encourage teachers to record their reflections on some part of their weekly teaching. They are given a general template to fill out which asks three questions: “What was the purpose of the lesson and how did you prepare?” “What happened in class?” and “What problems did you encounter and how would you change things in retrospect?” During the meetings, they share and discuss these with other teachers in the platform.

The first meeting took place on March 26 after classes were over at 7:30 PM. All of the teachers chose to participate in the platform but three were missing at this meeting. RCEF also invited two daike teachers from Zhaizi Village elementary school, a nearby public school. A brief report of the meeting and some teachers’ sharing follow.

The proceedings were a bit stiff at this first meeting. Teachers spoke and no one except me and Jiang Peng asked questions during the formal sharing time. However, we did decide to change the format of the next meeting to have more discussion and to adjust the written template. We may ask the teachers to share their general conclusion or “take away” first and then the details of the lesson, followed by feedback. (I think we should also have snacks next time to make the atmosphere more relaxed and enjoyable). After the “formal” part of the meeting was over, teachers stayed around to chat about what was said and give advice. The two daike teachers from Zhaizi also said they wanted to come back often to learn from Guan Ai teachers. As recent graduates of Yuncheng Normal Academy, they are still struggling with the classroom management problems of new teachers and feel that they can’t try out the “quality education” teaching methods because their students get too out of control.

Principal Sun, who teaches third grade Chinese (yuwen), took the lead. She brought up a textbook lesson about the first time selling things in a market. She asked the students how they would describe their vegetables if they had to sell them in the market. For example, she encouraged them to yell out and use evocative phrases like: “Tomatoes, tomatoes! Red and round!” She then invited 2 students up to pretend they were at the market. One was the seller and the other the buyer. They bargained over price. Some students were not tactical and kept lowering their price when the buyer countered. Principal Sun reminded them that the seller should try to sell at the highest possible price and that s/he needed to convince the buyer it was worth it. This entire process took about four class periods. For homework that weekend, Principal Sun told them to ask their parents to take them to the market. Their job would be to do the bargaining. On Monday though, only about seven students out of over thirty had actually done so. She said this is because many parents aren’t willing to take their kids to the market and perhaps didn’t understand the meaning of the assignment. (From talking to some parents, I also know that they are reluctant to go shopping with their kids at the market because the kids will always want them to buy things for them.) However, one student who did the lesson remarked that “this kind of homework can really exercise our abilities!”

In a related activity to the textbook lesson about the first time selling things, she wanted students to really have a “first time” experience doing something. She invited a student’s grandmother into the classroom to teach paper cutting. The grandmother had never taught a class before but her method of going around to groups of students to guide them in cutting a heart worked well. The students really enjoyed it. Then Principal Sun asked the students if they could cut anything else. One of the students turned his heart into a face with eyes and a mouth. Other students started to copy him and the in one small group, students began making up a story about their cuttings. Principal Sun heard this and wrote their names up on the board as “authors.” When the other students in the class saw this, they also wanted to make up stories and quickly formed spontaneous small groups to do so. In the end, they shared their stories with the class and wrote some of them on the blackboard in the school yard for the rest of the school to read.

Wang Laoshi, the 语文 (Chinese) teacher of the larger second grade class, described a textbook lesson called 《我不是最弱小的》 (“The Smallest One”). It was about a little girl whose mother and brother gave her their coats during a rainstorm because she was the “smallest, weakest” one. However, the little girl then saw a flower wilting in the rain and she covered it with her coat, proving that even a seemingly small person could find things to help and protect. Before reading the lesson, Wang Laoshi asked the class, “What does ‘the smallest one’ mean?” Students said that Meng Yuan, one of their classmates of tiny size and quiet voice, was the “smallest, weakest one.” “Are you?” Wang Laoshi asked Meng Yuan. Meng Yuan nodded. However, after the lesson, when asked again, Meng Yuan said, “No, there are still first graders smaller than me!” So the class agreed that they could help and protect first graders.

Geng Laoshi, a first- and second-grade math teacher, described a lesson teaching the concept of centimeters to her first-graders. She said, “You’ve been friends with your desk all year. Do you know how long it is?” The first graders used their arms to show the teacher. “What else can you use?” she asked. Some students immediately used their hands or pencil cases or other school supplies to measure. When they came up with different answers, Geng Laoshi asked why the answers were not the same. They learned that measuring needed uniform standards. So then she showed them a measuring stick and together they counted the number of centimeters in one decimeter. Some of the students then pointed out that the first joint in their fingers was about one centimeter long. In the end, she asked what kind of unit a centimeter was. They couldn’t remember whether it was length or weight. So she said, “Hello students! I am your friend Length Unit. Do you remember me now?” And so they all said, “Length unit!.” She feels that they have firmly grasped the concept of a centimeter now.

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