In order to help new teachers grow and create effective lessons, the New Teacher Demo Lesson activity has recently been held in Wuxi United International School.
In the early stage of the activity, the teachers elaborately designed the lesson plans, made beautiful teaching aids, and worked together with the teachers of the teaching and research group to finally show us plentiful terrific and distinctive lessons. Students enjoyed a lot in the wonderful classroom atmosphere, with analysis and communication, feelings and experiences and laughter and surprise.
The Chinese Group
Xu Yiping, from Grade 1 Group, taught the picture book “Little Green Wolf”. She captured the characteristics of the children at younger ages, who like listening to stories, and told the picture book story vividly. Using the reading strategies of “guessing” and “deduction”, she captivated the children’s attention consistently. The children’s reading interest was stimulated while the reading methods were taught.
Li Ping, from Grade 2 Group, taught the fable story “Narrow View”. The class reading training was quite solid and meticulous. She accurately grasped the keywords and her method guidance was very effective. Through the beautiful paper slips and pictures, her diversified teaching forms easily let the children integrate into the textual situation. While reading the language of the story, they explored the moral and talked about their thoughts according to their life experience.
Miao Jialin, from Grade 4 Group, taught “The Bridge of Hometown”. Her lesson was vivid and visual due to the detailed description and pictures. Miss Miao accurately grasped the requirements of the teaching materials, and achieved the precise teaching aims. Through flexible and diverse teaching activities, students can appreciate the charm of the language.
Lu Chunyan, from Grade 5 Group, taught “My Wildlife Friends”. Through the method of group learning, she started with the two aspects of animals and scientifically and reasonably interpreted the long text. Finally, through the debate, the atmosphere of the whole class was brought to a climax. And the children were still longing for more discussion after class.
Han Ji, from Grade 6 Group, taught “The Elk”. There were various forms of activities, such as cooperative discussions on “identifying the elk”, “competing for a commentator”, “explaining questions and answers”, and “comparison of pictures and texts”. These activities became more difficult step by step, allowing students to internalize the language, while cultivating their thinking abilities and guiding them to understand the meaning behind the language. Thus the activities helped students establish correct values.
The Maths Group
Through the visual demonstration of teaching aids and multimedia, the teachers helped students establish the presentation and well developed the students’ imagination and space concept. In order to prepare a good class, it is necessary to fully understand the teaching materials, deeply study and carefully analyze the textbooks. Only if the key points and difficulties of the textbooks are grasped accurately, can the teaching tasks be better solved. The lessons of the three new teachers were fully prepared. They grasped the requirements of the textbooks, and the entire teaching plan was effective and natural, leading to the climax.
一、Thought-provoking lesson design
Lead-in is an important part of a lesson. A good opening can stimulate students’ interest and inspire thinking. Jiang Liting’s lead-in part showed a variety of circles in life, which made students deeply feel that the circle is “the most beautiful one of all plane figures”. It not only attracted the attention of the students, but also brought relaxation and pleasure to the class, so that students can quickly get involved in her teaching activities. A good teaching situation can be more effectively linked to the teaching contents and promote students’ understanding. Shen Dan set the paradise activities that students are interested in as the teaching situation. The whole lesson was full of fun and the students’ enthusiasm for learning was high. Organized activities in class and students’ operational experience help students generalize and extract the information when making comparison of graphics. Also they help students understand the characteristics of different graphics, and learn the property of graphics. In the inquiry of the ray and the line, Xu Yining continued the previous learning style. The students’ existing knowledge, the “line segment”, was used as the growth point of the teaching. By guiding the students to intuitively feel and observe the description, and summarize the characteristics, they gradually completed the cognitive construction of graphics.
二、The diversity of teaching methods
During the teaching process, they used others’ successful teaching methods for reference. Shen Dan guided the students to experience the process of counting and dividing and consolidated the application of the ten method. Jiang Liting instructed the students to find the inherent features of the circle in the folding and drawing. Xu Yining deepened the students’ understanding of line segments, rays and straight lines in the drawing and comparing. At the same time, almost every teacher noticed the timely evaluation and incentive evaluation. They consistently praised and encouraged the students. These seemingly insignificant evaluation can arouse no small emotional waves in the students’ hearts. It has also had a positive impact on the improvement of the teaching effect of the entire lesson.
三、Good at guiding students
In the teaching, more emphasis is placed on the cultivation of students’ cooperative awareness. It not only cultivates the students’ ability to think independently, but also avoids the blindness of cooperation and discussion, and truly applies the group cooperation into practice.
四、The continuous improvement of teaching mechanism
In such teaching activities, the three teachers’ class language, teaching organization and attention to the students were constantly improving, thus creating a good atmosphere for the children’s learning.
The English Group
Gu Yuchen’s lesson was about “asking the way”, which leaded to the directional prepositional phrases involved in the process of asking for directions, such as “Turn left/right, next to, near, and opposite”. The teaching objectives were clear and the teaching key points and difficult points were obvious. Also, the target phrases were introduced in a variety of ways. The form was fascinating and stimulated the students’ interest, which was in line with lower-grade children’s learning and development characteristics and was well-practiced. Finally, through the main line of Judy’s thief hunt, the entire target contents were connected. During the process, the practice of knowledge integration was carried out and the students’ learning was evaluated. In the teaching, her tone was natural and friendly and she had good interaction with the students. The students’ learning atmosphere was rather strong. The group cooperation and the pair cooperation can be carried out in an orderly manner according to the teacher’s instructions. What’s more, the students can help each other, listen to each other and evaluate themselves. As a new teacher, she can earnestly implement each teaching step, respect the characteristics of children in the lower grades and skillfully design class activities. She transformed passive learning into active learning and stimulated students’ interest.
ELA
The ELA teachers work extremely hard in preparation for their classes and the open lesson was no exception. It was clear that a lot of thought had been put into the objectives for each lesson, with the age and ability of the children in mind. The new ELA teachers had meticulously planned the content of their lessons to ensure the children were making maximum progress in the forty minute time slot. The lessons we observed were high in energy and all children were extremely well behaved and engaged in all tasks they were set. In Grade 1, Miss Renéé’s presence in the classroom captured the children’s attention immediately as she taught them a wonderful phonics lesson. In Grade 3, Mr Andrew helped the students to create a ‘story mountain’ after reading a very exciting mystery story set in Cairo. In Grade 4, Miss Sharon showed her great relationship with the children as they began to write their own poems using onomatopoeia. In Grade 5, Miss Tamara began preparing the children for their upcoming ISA exams while ensuring the children were interested in the topic and learning lots of new vocabulary. We are very happy with our new ELA teachers as these lessons were typical of how they regularly teach and we are sure they will continue to teach in this well-structured, engaging, progressive style.
Wuxi United International School has a strong emphasis on inquiry-based learning, and this features heavily in our Science lessons. Students develop their Scientific Inquiry skills from a young age, gaining hands-on experience and testing their theories.
In Grade 1 Ms. Jessica and Ms. Zoe delivered a highly engaging and student-centered lesson, where students were exploring which materials were absorbent or waterproof, and which would float or sink. The students first made their predictions, and then got to test their theories for themselves. The students were truly fascinated by their findings and made the first, tentative steps into becoming true Scientists. Ms. Jessica and Ms. Zoe guided them through the process, ensuring that they were asked challenging questions and made to think deeply.
In Grade 3, Ms. Sophia and Mr. Andrew delivered a lesson on the major muscles of the body. Students learned the names of the muscles and also explored their functions. Students had a lot of fun creating their own exercises for each muscle, and demonstrating it for the rest of the class. This lesson really reinforced the key knowledge that students will need as they learn more about the functions of the skeletomuscular system, and engage in a series of experiments into how this system works.
It was truly great to see the students so engaged in their learning and so eager to gain new knowledge and skills.
The Bilingual Group
Ms. Beth designed the teaching activities according to the psychological characteristics of children for her art class “The Magic Chair”. She made her lesson fun through the activities. She set up challenging games as a way to break through the difficult points of teaching. By introducing Van Gogh’s work “Chair”, the students’ art aesthetic ability was cultivated. At the same time, they learned art knowledge and skills. Together with the teacher, they explored the structure and the perspective in the painting step by step. The key and difficult points were broken through easily. She laid emphasis on stimulating students’ creative enthusiasm and artistic creation abilities through encouraging and guiding. Children’s different art works were presented and the students became the dominant role of the art class.
In the PE Co class, Mr. Christo and Mr. Howard combined the semester teaching plan with a progressive teaching method. In the 40-minute PE lesson, the students continued to master the complex motion techniques such as catching, passing, and running base. At the same time, through the efficient organization of group competitions, the teaching was carried forward. It stimulated students’ enthusiasm for learning, cultivated students’ inquiry learning and teamwork spirit. It also enabled children to enjoy the health and happiness brought by sports while learning sports knowledge and skills.
We are a young team. However, we are also a team that strives to forge ahead. We have reasons to believe that such a harmonious and enterprising team will continue to improve and develop. They will compose more new chapters in the future.