Yaumati Catholic Primary School (Hoi Wang Road)

1
Yaumati Catholic Primary School(Hoi Wang Road)

• Experience Sharing on
• Specialised Teaching in
• English Language in Primary Schools
• 19.12.2005 5.1.2006

2
Present Situations

• Most teachers teach only 2 to 3 subjects in 04/05
• There are 18 English teachers altogether
• It is a school policy to ask teachers preference
  for teaching duties for the coming year

3
Our Policies

• Management Team
• Review the overall allocation of teaching duties
• Bottom-up approach ask English teachers
  opinions about specialised teaching (ST) and
  willingness to be an ST teacher
• Strike a balance between willingness and
  possibilities

4
Our Policies

• Decision Making
• Confer with ALL English teachers to reach a
  consensus
• Resources biased towards ST ---
• Having 3 fully specialised and several
  partially specialised teachers in English for
  05/06

5
Our Strategies

• 3 teachers are willing to be fully specialized
  English subject teachers in 05/06
• Employ an additional teacher to take up about 30
  periods per week for creating space
• Resources are biased towards the 3 fully
  specialised teachers, panel chair and level
  leaders

6
Number of periods for fully specialised teachers

• Each fully specialised subject teacher takes up 3
  classes of English and one class period
• Each teaches 25 periods per week (3 classes x 8
  periods/class 1 period)

7
Number of periods for fully specialised teachers

• Most English periods are scheduled in the morning
• Have common free periods for meetings/ visits /
  attending professional development programmes or
  courses among the 3 fully specialised teachers

8
Other support measures

• Coaching from English Panel Chair and Curriculum
  Leader PSM(CD)
• All level leaders share responsibilities
• Each ST teacher focuses on some learning and
  teaching (LT) activities, e.g. verse speaking,
  singing English folk songs, writing, reading,
  speaking listening, seed projects / gifted
  education programmes, etc.

9
Implementation

• Avoid over-specialisation
• Implement specialised teaching at P1, P2 P4
• Not implemented at P3, P5 and P6
• To avoid possible adverse effects on
  student
• learning (implementation of TSA at P3
  P6
• submission of marks for SSPA at P5 P6)
• caused by teachers sick leave for
  extended
• periods / maternity leave

10
Benefits from specialised teaching

• More time for curriculum development in areas
  like reading, writing, speaking listening, etc.
  and collaborative lesson preparation

11
Difficulties

• Not enough resources
• Only one additional teacher can be employed in
  2005/06 to release the workload of English
  subject teachers

12
Difficulties

• Difficulties in teacher deployment owing to heavy
  workload of teaching 3 classes of English
• Is ST a 3-year policy only?

13
Possible Solutions

• Rotation of duties among teachers
• More extra resources ---EMB provides more
  teachers / funds / CEG etc.
• Utilize other resources ---NET(s) / parents /
  community / activity sub-contractors / publishers
  
• Better coordination in using English subject
  resources

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• The End