The Young Teachers’ Teaching Competition was successfully

Education is a journey toward beauty, and classrooms are fertile ground for growth. Recently, the Young Teachers’ Teaching Competition was successfully held at Wuxi United International School. Based on classroom routine management, the competition focused on four core teaching pillars: Student-Centered Learning, Formative Assessment, Students’ Thinking Development, and AI Integration. Teachers demonstrated their professional strengths, presenting wonderful lessons that are warm, in-depth, and dynamic.

The classroom is the main arena of teaching and learning, and sound routine management ensures effective learning. In the competition, teachers exhibited strong classroom organization capabilities: smooth transitions between teaching sessions, flexible control of student activities, and well-developed learning habits including listening, expressing, and cooperating. From lively rhythmic activities in lower grades to group inquiry in higher grades, all classes proceeded in an orderly, focused, and positive atmosphere, providing solid support for the implementation of Student-Centered Learning.

“Student-Centered Learning” was the core concept of the competition. Every teacher stepped back to truly return the rights of questioning, inquiry, and expression to students.

In her lesson *The Spray*, Ms. Su Yuwei guided students to experience the naughtiness and loveliness of spray through role-play and reading activities. By comparing sentences, she helped students understand the effective use of modifiers and improved their language perception. Ms. Zhang Ye led students through a complete inquiry process: Conjecture – Experiment – Verification – Transfer, constructing a “Three-Degree Classroom” with warmth, depth, and breadth. She focused on the essence of knowledge to deepen thinking and guided knowledge transfer to real-life application. Ms. Maggie guided students to compare ways of schooling in different countries in authentic contexts, promoting cross-cultural understanding and opinion expression. Ms. Wei Ziyun organized discussions based on student-voted questions and applied the SPEC thinking tool to guide students in viewing issues dialectically and from multiple perspectives, fully returning expression opportunities to students.

The classroom was no longer a solo performance by teachers, but a real home ground for students.

Assessment aims not at certification, but at improvement. Formative assessment ran through every class, becoming an important driving force for student learning.

Ms. Chen Yushuo observed students’ color application and creative performance in real time, provided instant feedback and guidance, and helped students shift from planar thinking to three-dimensional thinking. Mr. John Zhao offered real-time feedback on movement standards, cooperation, and safety. Ms. Cai Jianing integrated assessment into singing, rhythm matching, instrumental ensemble and other activities, effectively stimulating lower-grade students’ participation and confidence.

A timely affirmation and a specific suggestion clarified students’ learning paths and filled the classroom with a sense of security and growth.

An excellent lesson not only delivers knowledge but also nurtures thinking. Teachers elaborately designed question chains and activity chains to guide students from superficial understanding to in-depth thinking.

Ms. Shi Yan cultivated students’ logical thinking step by step, progressing from single classification to hierarchical classification.

Students analyzed through questioning and constructed through exploration; sparks of thinking kept bursting out in class.

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping the educational ecology, and teachers at Wuxi United International School have actively embraced this transformation.

In *Interesting Life in Space*, Ms. Chen Jiahui introduced AI astronaut learning companions and interesting space videos, greatly inspiring students’ inquiry interest. In the ELA “Fractured Fairy Tales” writing course, AI served as an intelligent partner for students’ creation. Dr. Stuart guided students to use AI tools to generate text fragments with different story developments or conduct instant adaptation demonstrations of traditional fairy tale plots, helping students quickly compare multiple reversal possibilities. AI does not replace students’ imagination, but inspires more diverse creative ideas, enabling technology to serve authentic language expression and creativity, and endowing classrooms with new vitality in the integration of humanities and technology.

AI is not for technical showmanship, but for meeting real learning needs. Proper integration of technology makes classes more vivid and efficient, and provides more possibilities for personalized learning.

Each competition marks a step of growth. Empowered by the five dimensions, young teachers have honed themselves and shined brilliantly, while gaining nutrition from mutual observation and communication. In the future, Wuxi United International School will continue to deepen teaching practices, taking routines as the foundation, students as the core, assessment as the mirror, thinking as the key, and technology as the wing, making every lesson a wonderful journey of mutual growth for teachers and students.