An alternative method to teaching here, from the Newspapers, translated…
The press conference yesterday invited a couple of the “entrepreneur teachers” to share their methods and experiences in teaching with the rest, the Department of Education hoped to spread the working methods of teaching using the online medium, to spread it to more teachers as well as those becoming teachers too.
“The children in the distant areas relied on the teachers to teach, but they’d become, too dependent, and would lose their drives to learn on their own”, the Tong-Men Elementary School instructor, Ge made the observations of the problems in learning that children in distant area faced, get out of the mindset of traditional way of education, allowing the kids to make mistakes, use their imaginations to solve the problems, and also used the charts method, to encourage more participation as well as discussions from the students, in just a year’s time, the improvements the students made are extraordinary.
Ge said, the families in the distant regions can only do so much, and the knowledge of the students comes from school, from before, he’d used very traditional methods of instruction too, spoke by the texts, and explained the concepts to his students. But, he’d found, that his students became, totally, depended on him to teach, just absorbed what he was talking about, lost their automated drives to learn, and, their thoughts became, more rigid too.
And so, Ge changed his methodology, he’d spent just half the class, lecturing, and the rest of the class periods, he’d had his students work on hands-on activities, to put what they learned in theory into practice. For instance, after his Chinese lessons, he’d designed a game, “Nine Squares”, and had his students compete for the answers, playing a game of bingo, and, when the boxes are filled up, they’d get rewarded.
And for math lessons, he’d used real life stories, to have the kids absorb the lessons through game, after he’d changed his methodology of teaching, the grades of his students improved greatly, and, the students all said, “the class is more fun now!”
The Department Head of the National Education University’s Science Education Major, Lu had devised a game, “Insect Monopoly”; to allow the kids, to enforce and add on to what they’d already learned from the texts, by playing the games, other than providing the materials, she’d also, involved herself in seeing this plan through.
She said, that in games, the kids want to win, that they will take with them the knowledge they’d acquired from playing the games, up their observation skills, as well as their analytical abilities too.
So, this, is what making learning fun is all about, think about it, which class would you rather be in: one with the instructor, in front of the podium, yapping, or, one with the classrooms, divided into section, with various hands-on activities that the kids can actually manipulate? This, is what these two instructors had done, made the classes come to life for the kids, so, they’re more into learning, because to them, they’re playing games, but in truth, at the same time, they’re also, increasing their knowledge base as well!
