“The present of teachers is the future of students.” Teaching quality is closely related to students’ future. A noble teacher is like a flag and a lamp which lead and light up the path of all the students’ healthy growth. The achievement of education is bound up with the leading role of backbone teachers of all branches.
In WUIS, we have thorough teachers’ professional development and a team of accomplished teachers. Teachers’ professional development is always placed as one of the key priorities among education and teaching work. In order to promote the teachers’s professional development and improve teachers’ level and abilities of education and teaching, WUIS Primary School’s annual activity of mature teachers’ demo lessons was held as scheduled.
01 The Chinese demo lessons are filled with fun and delight, which presented us with different writing skills. Ms. Chen Yiwen stimulated students’ interest with pictures and focused on individualized ways of expressing. Ms. Ma Li brought the method of Mind Spokesman into her class, helping students to write about characters’ mental activities. When the students’s sparks for ideas are lit up, writing is no longer a no-way-to-start puzzle for them.
02 The Maths demo lessons is well combined with WUIS’s philosophy. Students’ motivation and initiativeness are fully aroused. Mr. Zhao Yunbao and Ms. Jiang Xiaomin well prepared and designed their lessons. Based on the teaching philosophy of WUIS, they tutored students to do hands-on practice, independent exploration and cooperative communication. The teachers give more time to the students to let them solve problems by themselves. This encourages and respects students’ individual thoughts and helps to improve students of all levels.
03 Ms. Amy and Ms. Una’s Topic demo lesson started by arousing students’ interest with a series of music clips. They led students to discuss the concept of “evacuation” together. Then they organized role tasks for students to make deeper analysis about what to do and how to do it under the situation of evacuation. This granted every student an opportunity to become the main part of learning and practically join the lesson.
04 Ms. Tamara’s ELA shows respects and tolerance to students’ difference. She added multi-disciplinary teaching methods to her lesson and helped students to learn through different dimensions. Students love this lesson and can develop better abilities to learn in this type of lesson.
05 Ms. Hazel’s reading lesson was full of childish fun. This picture book teaching was based on a story. It’s about a dinosaur who modified animals’ hair styles to help them to gain happiness. She helped students to gain the reading strategy of problem and solution. She designed a variety of class activities closely related to teaching objectives. Also she kept encouraging students to think and achieve more advanced way of thinking.
Ms. Yuki’s demo lesson achieved cumulative progression. She started the lesson with an open-ended question of CHOICE and led into the topic of this lesson – what road to follow. The whole lesson focused on teaching objectives and led students to follow the clues and do prediction, also helped them to practice summarizing the story. Ms. Yuki gave full play to students’ main-part role, carried forward the story plot under a great atmosphere, and cultivated students’ skills of thinking.
06 P4C of Grade 4 was begun with a warm-up game. Students should not only finish their tasks through cooperation but also observe and spot problems using metacognitive ability. Philosophizing language was well used in class and it offered support for students to communicate and think effectively.
07 Mr. Louis and Ms. Xu’s Art lesson was themed on the artist Matisse’s paper-cut creation. This lesson used a lot of conductive qustions and team work to stimulate students’ creative thought and cooperation ability. As a result, every student could actively join the class activity. Potentially students could develop their ability to make artistic appreciation by professional art language and create their own artistic work. The observers could see the infinite possibility of student’s creative ability.
08 Mr. Barnard and Mr. Dennis’s PE lesson was handball throwing training. It’s carried forward based on game competition. As one of Wuxi United pioneer courses, PE lessons attach great importance to cooperative and rule consciousness. Teaching methods focus on team work. It leads cumulative progression related to the teaching objectives and let students enjoy the fun of sports in games.
As the saying of Hsun Tzu goes, “Never stop learning.” Learning is a lifetime thing for teachers. This year’s mature teachers’ demo lessons present us not only WUIS teaching philosophy but also the rigorous attitude for teaching and diversity of teaching method. It has also showed a high ability of teaching reasearch and design. We believe such teaching seminar is and will always be a good way of encouraging our teachers’ lifelong learning and improving teaching quality.
