The following is from Anqing Foreign Language School’s teacher Jin Sumei.
So as to promote the development and exchange of education and culture, the pairing development and common construction were initiated between Three-Star Junior High School in Grass Town of Tongcheng City and Anqing Foreign Language School. Following the Chinese and math departments, on 5th April, teacher Wang Yueling and I from Anqing Foreign Language School also headed for Three-Star Middle School to start the exchange learning in the English Department.
To begin with, everything seemed strange to us newcomers. However, with the warm reception and help of Principal Wang and many teachers from Three-Star Middle School, we gradually got familiar with this unsophisticated and warm campus. The children were not what we thought they were despite the fact that their school was located in the town area. To be specific, they had ardent love for photography in that their photography works were a feast for the eyes in the hallways and staircases. Besides, they had a variety of extracurricular activities, such as tours in the Culture Expo Park and Sunhe Ancient Town in addition to participation in all kinds of speeches, science and technology contests. Other than that, students studied earnestly and would always come and go in a continuous stream to ask teachers questions during class and noon breaks.
What should the school be like when she would spare no effort to develop students’ hobbies and interests, take great pains to go outside and accelerate the mutual learning& exchange among schools, put themselves out of the way to provide adequate learning opportunities for teachers and students to guarantee their logistic work? After arriving here, I figured I got the answers.
Everything was all set. We looked forward to the subsequent trip of exchange of ideas.
Mutual Improvement
In the next phase, we implemented the three-day course exchange activities with teachers from Three-Star Junior High School. Entering the classroom, we noticed that their teachers had already waited in the back row of the classroom. The first demonstration lesson was showcased by Anqing Foreign Language School’s teacher Wang Yueling with her grammar review lesson designated for Grade 9 students. Considering the boring studying of the attributive clause, Wang Yueling compared the concept of the antecedents to the three master and apprentices in the Journey to the West in a humorous way. Therefore, students felt fresh and positively answered questions, which contributed to an active classroom atmosphere before we knew the class was over.
Afterwards, teacher Wang from Class 1, Grade 8 of Three-Star Middle School and I showcased the heterogeneous forms for the same subject with the same task yet difficult approaches. When it came to the differences between present progressive and past continuous tenses, I adopted the conventional picture import method. On the other hand, teacher Wang had an unconventional idea by directly letting students do the actions in class. While students were performing the tasks, teacher Wang raised questions like ‘What is she doing now?’ ‘What was she doing when Wang Yang came in?’. Everyone was deeply impressed by the intuitive expressions, which enabled students to grasp the application of both the present progressive and past continuous tenses when they answered questions in the meantime.
After the public classes, in the conference room, we conducted communication and discussions towards the open classes. Every teacher learned from each other and the atmosphere was harmonious too...
With the conclusion of the conference, our itinerary drew to a close. During dinner time, the Principal of Three-Star Junior High School specially told the canteen to make us featured delicious food of Tongcheng cuisine. We gathered together, exchanged greetings and chatted cheerfully. I could not bear to part when I realized tomorrow’s departure.
In conclusion, thinking back then, the journey in Three-Star Junior High School in Grass Town left me two most impressive characters which were ‘Wen Nuan’ in Chinese as warmth in English. Meanwhile, I saw the education feelings rooted in the teaching staff in cities and towns. We already looked forward to the next reunion...