Making social studies more relevant for rural students
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 describe the [...]
A look into the Community of Excellent Schools
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 challenges of teaching the new science curriculum
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 [...]
“School talk” — My biggest pet peeve
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 [...]
Call for good Chinese videos for Children
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 in class from [...]
Nan Zheng Students Investigate their Village
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. [...]
A Rural Teacher’s Reflections on SVP Training
下面这封信是一位农村教师参与今年支教培训后写的感想。他去年全程参与了RCEF的暑期支教项目，今年参加了支教项目培训以及培训后的图书阅读交流会。他任教教的学校是2007年暑期支教项目和图书室与阅读项目的项目点。
A rural teacher wrote us this letter sharing what hehad learned and his suggestions for RCEF after participating in the 2008 Summer Volunteer Program training and the Libraries and Reading project seminar. He participated in the 2007 Summer Volunteer program, and the school where he teaches is an RCEF partner for our Libraries and Reading [...]
Third day of teaching at Wang Zhuang School
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. 中文翻译在英文后面。
Sun Laoshi, the principal of Guan Ai, took me to Wang Zhuang Primary School on her motorcycle. We each sat in on two lessons, and then listened to the volunteers talk about their day’s teaching over [...]
