The RCEF Blog 博客

Seven teachers from the Yuncheng Preschool Normal School came to visit Guan Ai School on September 27th. (A “Normal School” means a school that trains teachers, in this case to teach in preschools.) They included several artists, a calligrapher, a singer and a professional emcee. The guests went to different classes to teach [...]

In the previous post, I wrote about how RCEF designed special tests in Math, Science, English, Language Arts, and Social Studies for students. Our goal was to measure their skills beyond the textbook. Below are some examples of questions from the Social Studies test.
What do you think is the most important of China’s ancient [...]

Historically, education in China has been very exam oriented. In the past, the main goal of many scholars was to pass the imperial exam, which would allow them to become civil servants. Nowadays, schools and teachers have their eyes on the university entrance exams （高考）. This focus on exams starts at first [...]

Sigh! it’s that time of the year again. Final exams are just three weeks away and Guan Ai teachers have pulled out their secret weapon…… practice tests. Starting from about two weeks ago, various practice test vendors started visiting the school. They would come on their motorcycles, on which were bundled heaps and heaps of [...]

Third grade social studies teacher, Sun Huiguo, recently taught a great lesson on map-making and directions, with little help from the curriculum or textbook. In a unit on “My Family”, one lesson is devoted to the geographic location of students’ homes and directions for getting there. The textbook asks students to draw and [...]

Principal Sun of Guan Ai School and I attended the Second Conference of the Community of Excellent Schools. The Community is a loose network of schools around China that have been inspired by the legendary Dulangkou Middle School and are drastically reforming their schools.
Many experts and famous educators made speeches at the conference, but presentations [...]

The government launched curriculum reforms several years ago. The curriculum reform promotes more student-centered teaching in which students are supposed to play a more active role in learning. Publishers have changed the way textbooks are written to facilitate this. There is less text that directly spells out the knowledge students are supposed to learn, and [...]

One of the biggest challenges I face teaching in China (also my biggest pet peeve) is what I call “school talk”. It seems that students enter a completely different state of mind when they cross the threshold of the classroom. They cease to use common sense or basic logical thinking, and instead devote their brain [...]

Do you know of good Chinese cartoons or movies for children? What were your favorite movies or TV shows when you were growing up? Let us know!
As you’ve read in Diane’s post about Guan Ai’s afternoon activity groups, we are instituting a bit of fun time at school everyday. Before, they were [...]

中文翻译在英文后面。这是在山西永济进行的RCEF 2008 暑期支教项目一系列活动之一。This is one of a series of posts chronicling the RCEF 2008 Summer Volunteer Program.
Sun Pengpeng and Jiang Peng have been leading the Community Research module at Nan Zheng Primary School. Both the older and the younger classes get two class periods in a row everyday for doing their research projects. [...]