To deepen inter-school cooperation and facilitate the growth of future teachers, on November 19th, the School of Foreign Languages of Anqing Normal University organized 135 undergraduate students and 21 postgraduate students to visit our school for an English teaching internship, which not only provided a practical opportunity for college education majors to have direct contact with the frontlines of basic education, but also served as a vivid demonstration of our school's role in disseminating high-quality educational resources.
In the first place, at 9 o'clock in the morning, the trainee team arrived smoothly at our east campus. During the subsequent free tour session, the tidy and beautiful campus environment, the distinctive sports and cultural center, and the school history museum enabled the trainee students to appreciate the profound educational heritage of our school, setting a wonderful tone for the entire day's activities.
In the second place, in our school's lecture hall, teacher Wang Qing'an delivered an English observation lesson for the 10th grade students titled 'Your Life Is What You Make It'. Specifically, the class was centered around the theme of 'Volunteer Teaching in Rural Areas'. Through strategies such as 'skimming' and 'scanning', Wang Qing' an guided students to analyze the text and explore the life choices of the volunteer teacher Zhang Tian. Starting from topic introduction, moving on to text deconstruction, and concluding with a discussion on 'the value of life', not only did this approach enhance students' reading skills but also conveyed the core spirit of responsibility and commitment, which fully demonstrated the teaching wisdom of our school, combining 'language use' with 'education'.
In the third place, after the observation class, Assistant Principal Xu Zuitai presided over the evaluation of English teaching for the 10th grade students. Also, Associate Professor Wang Ping from Anqing Normal University, Doctor Zhao Qu and Assistant Principal Xu Zuitai jointly conducted a professional evaluation of Teacher Wang's class. What's more, at the event site, there was not only an in-depth analysis of the teaching process, but also an interaction and question-and-answer session between the trainee teachers and the lecturers. Besides, from 'Techniques for Classroom Interaction Design' to 'Strategies for Balancing Knowledge and Emotional Objectives', not only did this two-way communication expand the dimensions of sharing teaching experiences, but also helped novice teachers form a more concrete understanding of teaching design.
In the fourth place, following the engaging interactive session of comments, Assistant Principal Li Ping delivered a vivid and detailed introduction to the school situation for the trainee students, who took Anqing Foreign Language School's 'people-oriented and all-round development' educational philosophy as the main thread, comprehensively introduced our school's distinctive curriculum system, highlighted teaching achievements, and elaborated on the rich campus culture. Accordingly, through sharing of numerous vivid examples, the trainee students deeply understood the educational characteristics of our school.
In the fifth place, after the midday break, we welcomed teacher Wang Jiayin's English class for the 11th grade students, which focused on teaching with the theme of 'Conservation'. For instance, using the in-depth article 'Nature is Turning On Us' as the carrier, two progressive reading sessions, namely 'Quick Reading for the Main Idea' and 'Detailed Reading for the Details', were ingeniously designed. Furthermore, the problem chain from 'Why does nature attack us?' to 'How can humans coexist harmoniously with nature?' was constructed step by step, effectively training students' reading strategies and subconsciously awakening their environmental awareness and the concept of a human community with a shared future.
In the sixth place, the post-class English assessment and teaching research sharing session for Grade 11 students was chaired by Wang Qing'an, Head of the foreign language teaching research group of the Senior High School Department. Meanwhile, Associate Professor Wang Ping, teacher Xu Yaru and teacher Wang Qing'an jointly conducted a professional evaluation of the class, who believed that the highlight of this class lay in the way it integrated the activity levels of 'learning comprehension-application-practice-transfer and innovation' through contextualized teaching. On the other hand, students had high participation and sufficient depth of thinking. More remarkably, it's suggested that the forms of presenting the results of group exploration should be further enriched, with the generative interaction in class enhanced. Therefore, not only did the entire teaching research session clarify the design logic of high-quality lesson examples, but also provided a feasible path for the classroom practice of 'theme-based reading and value guidance in senior high school English teaching.
In a nutshell, this internship activity began amidst the beautiful scenery of the campus and concluded with the spark of communication. From the first glimpse of the campus in the morning light to the 'practical education through language use' practice of two English classes, the trainee students from Anqing Normal University not only felt the vivid pulse of education, but also anchored their youthful educational ideals in the real classroom soil. Additionally, the faint light of collaboration among schools will eventually illuminate the growth paths of more prospective teachers. More noticeably, may this educational warmth of 'inculcating virtue through literature and nurturing humanity through teaching' become the stars in their future teaching careers, making the original aspiration of 'cultivating students' burn even brighter in practice.