长三角中小学英语教学动态与热点专题研修活动

------心得体会

Student-centered classroom

    With the feeling of excitement, I, together with other 10 English teachers, went to Hangzhou for a four-day training.

    On the first day, Professor Liu gave us a lecture about Core Literacy of English learning-Interpretation and Practice. She was so dedicated that she had been giving the lecture for exactly 3 hours without having a rest, even drinking a sip of water. About her lecture, she was well-prepared. At first, she led us to a new modern area, which mainly deals with quantum computer and artificial intelligence. Driverless vehicles, self-service bank will be common all over the world. So the capabilities that future work needs are no longer the same as before. The three fundamental capabilities that future kids need are: creativity, criticial thinking, communication and collaboration. Under such a background, our education needs to face the future and focus on students’ development. As English teachers, we also need to help students to develop their abilities instead of only teaching them a number of vocabularies and sentences. Then she mentioned child psychology and emotional education which play an important part in developing students’ capabilities. At last, she presented 2 English picture books and a short story. She guided us how to teach these types of English lesson and introduced many good ways to help students interpret the pictures and texts. She also put forward some simple but effective questions which could help students understand the pictures and texts. These specific examples and practical methods are valuable for me. I really benefit a lot from Professor Liu.

    On the second and third day, 2 senior teacher trainers from Australian Phoenix Academy had a 2-day-workshop training with us. For workshop 1, it dealt with the practicalities of a student-centered classroom. Everyone of us participated actively in the discussion about five principles of a student-centered English classroom:1.Communication is the goal. 2.Each lesson has clear student-centers objectives. 3.Teacher acts like a facilitator. 4.The students are confident and comfortable in English class. 5.Teachers adapt material and approach to meet the needs of individual students(differentiation). For workshop 2, it worked in practice: student-centered productive skills lessons. During this session, one trainer gave us a demonstration of a speaking lesson, which is very interesting. We played the part of students and had a novel experience. The foreign teacher brought us much joy. We were relaxed and comfortable in such kind of class. Besides that, the 2 teacher trainers also introduced many interesting and effective methods in each step of teaching. These are very helpful for us. And we could even adopt some of them directly into our own class.

    On the fourth day, we had a classroom observation session. We observed 3 different lessons: 1.Read and write from Grade 4; 2.Story time from Grade 5; 3.A reading material from Grade 8. After observation, Professor Zheng made some precious comments. First, about pictures, she mentioned that the pictures in each lesson are so important. Pictures have lots of information, which can attract students ‘attention and help students to understand the text. Teachers should make good use of them. About text, when teaching reading or writing, we should take the text as a whole. We can’t explain or interpret each new word. That will interrupt students’ continual reading mind and confuse students. Teachers should handle the new words before or after the text. About atmosphere, no matter primary or middle school students, interest is the best teacher! As we English teachers, we need to create a relaxing and comfortable learning atmosphere. Try our best to get everyone involved in the class. Create more chances for students to speak.

After the four-day training, I was tired in body but energetic in mind. Even though the teachers are from different countries, they have one thing in common. That is student- centers classroom. The final aim of teaching is to make students learning possible. I’ll try to put the student-centered ideas into practice!

                          宣城市第四小学  盛书琴