Features of English Curriculum
Deployment of NET in school
Three NETs are employed to take up the following duties:
- Co-plan and co-teach with P1 to P6 local English teachers
- Integrate phonics into lessons regularly.
- Help to implement the PM reading scheme in P2-P6 year bands
- To enhance teachers’ professional development
- Share-reading with pupils during morning reading time once a week
- Pleasant chat with pupils during recess, & PM reading lessons.
- To organize activities for pupils in morning assembly and life wide learning periods
- Help implement English activities with local teachers.
Extensive Reading Scheme
1. The purpose is "reading to learn". Teachers encourage pupils to read books during PM reading lesson every week. When they finish reading the books, they need to complete the follow up activities such as writing simple book reports, designing book cover or bookmarks.We also have the Raz-Kids reading platform to encourage pupils’ independent learning and to cater student’s learning diversity. Teachers assign the storybooks to pupils according to their PM reading level. Pupils are required to read at least 1 story at home every week and finish the related exercises.
2. All 3 NETs are timetabled together to implement P2-P6 PM reading.
P2 – P3 PM reading classes:
- It enables pupils to read aloud with fluency and exposes them to a wide variety of books, and can involve pupils of all levels and abilities.
- Divide pupils into three ability groups according to their reading levels. Each group consists of 8 / 9 students. There are three stations (phonics station, guided reading station and online reading station) in a PM reading class. 3 teachers (2 NETs and one local English teacher) are in charge of the lesson with each one allocated to one station.
- It is a systemic approach to help pupils learn to read effectively. It enables pupils to develop skills in listening for explicit and implicit meaning; listen to and take part in the story; work with narrative texts with teacher support and give expression to their imaginative ideas.
Revise / learn the reading strategy through the graphophonic skill (e.g. phonics, blending, decoding, segmenting and word families) P4 – P6 PM reading classes:
- Introduce / review different text types (e.g. menus, journals, letters, reports etc)
- Revise / learn the semantic reading strategy through silent independent reading, read to a partner or teachers and read in a small group
- Revise / learn the syntactic reading strategy through doing relevant task sheets
- Group reading
- Pupils are divided into 3 groups according to their reading ability (levels 1-9, 10-24, 25-30).
- While pupils are doing their independent reading, one local teacher takes 6 pupils of one group to do group reading once a week.
- While pupils are doing their independent reading, one NET do the reading running record for students frequently in order to trace their reading progress.
Phonics Programme
The NETs have developed a phonic program for P1 to P6 pupils. The program is linked to the course book and the readers accompany it. A booklet with different phonic sounds and related tasks is distributed to every pupil every term.
Teacher Professional Development
- Relevant workshops about teaching and learning will be conducted for all English teachers.
- Every teacher is required to attend at least one English seminar / workshop held by EDB or other institutions.
New English Material Added to School-based English Curriculum
In order to raise pupils’ reading interests, sample readings of different text types are introduced in a booklet named “Text Type Booklet” for each year band. Interesting topics such as invitation cards, diary, birthday cards, songs, poems or plays etc. are included in the booklet. Also, the “Writing Booklet” of different text types for each year band is used to help students develop writing skills in the systematic way.
Peer Observation
- In order to encourage collaborative learning, four subject teachers of the same year band will prepare the lesson plan, design activities and discuss the teaching procedures together.
- Teachers observe lessons one another so as to learn and share teaching experiences from others. Every teacher needs to complete an evaluation form and give constructive comments after they finish watching lessons.
English Enrichment Activities
- Pupils are encouraged to participate in school activities at different time. Activities include: NET-Chat Scheme, Penmanship Competition, Speech Festival, English Day, Writing Competition, Life-wide Learning, Scrabbles, English Drama, Odyssey of Mind, Puppet Theatre & New Zealand Study Tour etc.
- Joining these activities not only can help pupils relax themselves and build up confidence in speaking English, but also enable them to apply English to their daily lives.
English Fun Day New Zealand Study Tour English Drama
Odyssey of Mind Puppet Theatre Life-wide Learning