The RCEF Blog 博客

Students at Guan Ai take exams twice a semester, a mock at half-term and a real one at the end of term. While these exams do a decent job of tracking progress of students, they do have their inadequacies. Much of the content on the exams can be mastered by repeating similar questions ad nauseum [...]

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 grade, or even [...]

Ron Sung is a full-time Teaching Coach at Guan Ai School. He is from the United States and earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin. After graduation he held a position as a middle school math teacher in Oakland before deciding to join RCEF. He now works with the Science and [...]

Teacher Sun was really hesitant when I first suggested this project. In high school my physics teacher made each student make their own guitar and play a song. I figured Guan Ai elementary school student groups should be brilliant enough to make an instrument that could at least play some notes here and there. In [...]

Teacher Yang has never really been too comfortable teaching science. At heart she’s an English teacher, and she always seems a bit hesitant to explain some of the more challenging science concepts in class. But when I bring up science projects for her students to do, she’s always more than eager to try them out. [...]

I brought lots of glass bottles to the science experiment class because I thought that plastics bottles would be easier for the students to knock over. Ron Sung watched the class and offered some suggestions for improvement. He asked me, “How do feel the class went?” I said, “Not too bad, though perhaps a little [...]

For the Guan Ai 4th graders’ lesson on masted ships, Teacher Sun decided that the best way to learn about how masted ships function, students should build their own boats and find a way to make them work. The 4th grade Chinese language text required students to know the vocabulary of a masted ship’s parts, [...]

Over 300 million Chinese citizens are smokers. According to a study reported in the British Medical Journal, 75% of Chinese men smoke and nearly 50% of them will die from smoking-related illnesses if present smoking levels remain unchanged. The problem is especially pronounced in rural areas. According to Professor Teh-wei Hu at the University of [...]

The challenge: Create a structure capable of supporting weight. The rules: Use only disposable chopsticks and rubber bands. Timeframe: Three class periods (40 minutes each) Awards: Structural Award – the structure can support the most weight Teamwork Award – every group member actively participates in the project Environmentally Friendly Award – the structure uses the [...]