Grant Scheme on Promoting Effective English Language Learning in Primary Schools (PEEGS) School-based Implementation Plan

Grant Scheme on Promoting Effective English Language Learning in Primary Schools (PEEGS) School-based Implementation Plan School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School (English) Application No.: A 019 (for official use) (A) General information: 1. No. of English teachers in the regular staff establishment (excluding the Native-speaking English Teacher): 18 2. No. of approved classes in the 2016/17 school year: P.1 P.2 P.3 P.4 P.5 P.6 Total No. of approved classes 5 5 5 5 5 5 30 3. No. of operating classes in the 2016/17 school year: (if different from the number of approved classes) No. of operating classes P.1 P.2 P.3 P.4 P.5 P.6 Total 4. Programmes/projects implemented or support service(s) in relation to English Language curriculum received in the past five years (more rows can be added if needed): Name of programme/project/ support service PLPR/W Programme 2012-2017 Focus(es) of programme/project/ support service P.1-P.3 1. To enhance the reading proficiency of students through a sustainable literacy programme with a focus on reading. 2. To support English teachers with intensive professional development linked to the curriculum. 3. The programme also provided teachers with directions and guidance for the teaching of literacy with a focus on reading as well as the tools necessary for the assessment of student needs and the knowledge of how they read. External support (if any) NET Section, EDB School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 1

(B) SWOT Analysis related to the learning and teaching of English: Strengths 1. Successful experience in doing school-based projects 2. Committed professional English panel team and teachers 3. Existing reading culture through buddy reading scheme 4. Parental support is relatively strong. Weaknesses Opportunities 1. Students and teachers are familiarized with English online programmes. 2. Learner diversity is addressed through tiered reading tasks 3. Writing skills are developed through intensive reading Threats 1. Some students lack interest in learning and reading English. 1. P.4 P.5 students do not enjoy English activities with ELTA. 2. Students need to learn how to organize and elaborate ideas for their writings. 2. Interface from our senior primary to secondary schools is not sufficiently linked and planted within our curriculum. 3. Writing tasks suggested in the textbooks are limited in both text types and cannot arouse students interest 4. P.4 P.6 curriculum is not coherent in design, of difficulties and implementation. (C) Measure(s) taken through the grant under the English Enhancement Grant Scheme for Primary Schools, if any: (more rows can be added if needed): Area(s) of Development Usage(s) of the grant Level 1. Implementation of a reading programme for P.4 1. Hiring an ELTA through service P.4 2. Implementation of a speaking programme for P.5 and P.6 provider to assist teachers in the P.5 P.6 lessons, train students with better 3. Create an English-speaking environment through the implementation of English English proficiency Ambassadors Programme, Speech and Presentation Competition and English Talent Quest P.2 P.6 4. Improve teachers skills on teaching reading and writing through teachers workshop (themes: Reading through Language Arts & Speech and Drama & Language Arts) 2. Hiring of service provider to provide workshops, lessons observation and demo. All English teachers School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 2

(D) Focus(es) of the school s proposed school-based English Language to be funded under PEEGS Proposed target area(s) of development (Please the appropriate box(es) below) Proposed usage(s) of the Grant (Please the appropriate box(es) below) (Please the appropriate box(es) below) (Please the appropriate box(es) below) Enrich the English language environment in school through - conducting more English language activities*; and - developing more quality English language learning resources for students* (*Please delete as appropriate) Promote reading* across the curriculum in respect of the updated English Language Curriculum (Primary) under Ongoing Renewal of the School Curriculum Focusing, Deepening and Sustaining (*Please delete as appropriate) Enhance e-learning in respect of the updated English Language Curriculum (Primary) under Ongoing Renewal of the School Curriculum Focusing, Deepening and Sustaining Cater for learner diversity with equal emphasis on more able and less able students in respect of the updated English Language Curriculum (Primary) under Ongoing Renewal of the School Curriculum Focusing, Deepening and Sustaining Purchase learning and teaching resources Employ full-time* or part-time* teacher (*Please delete as appropriate) Procure service for conducting English language activities 2017/18 (second term) to 2018/19 (first term) 2018/19 (second term) to 2019/20 (first term) P.1 P.2 P.3 P.4 P.5 P.6 Others, please specify (e.g. P1-3, P5-6): Strengthen assessment literacy in respect of the updated English Language Curriculum (Primary) under Ongoing Renewal of the School Curriculum Focusing, Deepening and Sustaining School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 3

(E) How to implement the proposed school-based English Language funded by PEEGS? (more rows can be added if needed) (1) Purchase learning and teaching resources to develop school-based teaching plan to promote reading across the curriculum and enhance e-learning at P.4 to P.5 Project Objectives Promote reading across the curriculum as well as enhance language output for our Primary 4 and Primary 5 students to ultimately enhance our school-based English curriculum through purchasing resources (by PEEGS) and development of our in-house teaching resources. 1. Review and enhance our existing English curriculum with new supporting resources in both reading and writing skills 2. Introduce and incorporate mobile blended learning to enrich our teaching pedagogy and arouse learning interests 3. Provide our teachers opportunities to learn, design and practise different teaching and learning strategies for incorporating reading across the curriculum into P.4-P.5 Feb 2018 to Jan 2020 Carry on for future years Feb to Jul 2018 Co-planning and development of resources supporting classroom teaching 24 cross-curricular e-books purchased for P.4 and P.5 respectively School-based reading across the curriculum, with 24 sets of lesson plans, learning tasks/activities developed per for P.4 to P.5 70% of P.4 to P.5 students confidence and skills in reading enhanced per year Assessment results on reading of over 70 % of students at P.4 to P.5 will improve. All the e-books purchased period will belong to our school and we will use them in the future years. All the teaching plans and related resources will be developed by our teachers. We will document them for other teachers and to revise in the future. Our teachers will develop new resources based on the e-books so we can have the skills and Co-planning and lesson observation will be conducted at each. Monitoring of the use of the e-learning resources developed under this project Reflection meetings for each for each term will be conducted to collect feedback and identify the areas for further enhancement of the resources and lesson design. Survey for students will be used to 1 The deliverables/outputs should be measurable and closely related to the purposes of related initiatives. 2 Sustainability of the initiative could be maintained through the knowledge transfer/capacity building of teachers and the utilisation of the deliverable produced. 3 Both qualitative and quantitative tools should be employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the initiative. School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 4

our curriculum and introduce e-learning into our classroom facilitation. Rationale When we reviewed our existing curriculum, we found that our reading curriculum which based on the textbooks and traditional readers could not arouse students learning interests and their exposure to English reading is relatively limited. Those contents are either out of learners interest, not connected to their everyday lives or do not prepare them for secondary schooling. Therefore, we would like to review and enhance our curriculum, especially pertaining to reading and the infusion of cross-curricular content. For this project, we will introduce the practice of blended learning to our classroom and home learning. Blended learning refers to learning or classroom facilitation that combines the best of online learning and face-to-face instructions to enhance learning. Using this pedagogy, we need to review which part of the curriculum, which content, which situation and which groups of students should adopt conventional classroom teaching or e-learning. Our strategy is to purchase resources and to develop our school-based teaching plan based on the purchased Mar to Apr 2018 Trial lessons in classroom and through self-learning Apr 2018 Lesson observation and reflection meeting Jul to Sept 2018 Revising our school-based teaching and learning resources Sept 2018 to May 2019 1 st year monthly lesson observation School-based teaching resources (lesson plans, vocabulary worksheets and e-learning resources on different apps), self-direct learning resources Our new school-based P.4 and P.5 cross-curricular curriculum will be integrated into our school-based English curriculum. 70% of students are more engaged in reading and are able to build connection between texts and their real life. 100% of students are exposed to more text types, cross-curricular contents and topics. 70% students are engaged in English lessons under mobile know-how to conduct any adaptations and refinement ourselves after the project period. collect their feedback on the contents of the e-books, their attitudes towards e-learning and their learning through flipped learning approach. Conduct a teacher survey and a group reflection meeting to collect teachers feedback especially their willingness to continue blended learning and the positive impact on learners reading interests. School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 5

resources. We aim to promote reading across the curriculum through various teaching strategies as well as introducing a new way of e-learning into our school. Our school has purchased tablets for mobile learning but we lack e-resources with suitable contents. Having access to these appropriate e-book resources will boost our capability to address our needs. Support from school to promote e-learning We have completed our Wi-Fi infrastructure under Wi-Fi 900 in 2015/2016 (Wi-Fi 100 Stage 1). We also upgraded our broadband internet speed to 1GB so the connection will be good to support e-learning in classrooms. All of our classrooms, the school hall and all the special rooms are covered with Wi-Fi. Other than Wi-Fi connection, there are 82 ipads (16 GB) and 2 tablet charging carts that can be allocated for this project. Mobile Device Management (MDM) provided by the University of Hong Kong is used to manage the ipads by the school technical team. Our school has also committed to purchase 2 Apple TVs for teachers to display students work easily. There are also 180 computers available. Sept 2018 to Jan 2020 Classroom use and self-learning for the 24 e-books per form Sept 2019 to Jan 2020 2 nd year bi-monthly lesson observation Jul to Aug 2019 Revising our school-based teaching and learning resources learning. Over 95% of students complete the e-books exercises and related assignments. 100% of teachers involved are equipped with skills and are experienced in designing school-based curriculum based on purchased resource and writing up school-based teaching plans. 80% of teachers involved have greater understanding and are more capable to apply blended learning, flipped learning and mobile learning for classroom facilitation. All e-books purchased are used at classroom facilitation and take-home learning. Teachers successfully develop lesson plans with appropriate School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 6

Details of the e-books to be purchased Primary 4 e-books The e-books proposed to be purchased will cover cross-curricular content with rich language features and multi-media enriched presentations. learning tasks and activities for each e-book and they are used, reviewed and enhanced so all the resources are ready for future use. 24 e-books (8 e-books per term x 3 terms) will be purchased. Our school has 3 examinations in one school year so our teaching schedule will be divided into 3 phases. All of the e-books to be purchased will be available as long as we like to use. Each year each P.4 student will use 24 e-books. 80 % of teachers involved are confident and equipped with skills to adapt and further develop any part of the resources to address any future needs. Domains to be covered by e-books: Technology Nature & Environment Culture of the world History Geography English Language Arts Primary 5 e-books The e-books proposed to be purchased will cover cross-curricular content with rich language features and multi-media enriched presentation. 80 % of the teachers involved will acquire knowledge/pedagogy of promoting reading across the curriculum. 80 % of the teachers involved will apply the new teaching strategies of promoting reading across the curriculum to English teaching at P.4 to P.5. School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 7

24 e-books (8 e-books per term x 3 terms) will be purchased. Our school has 3 examinations in one school year so our teaching schedule will be divided into 3 phases. All of the e-books to be purchased will be available as long as we like to use. Each year each P.5 student will use 24 e-books. Domains to be covered by e-books: STEM Environment Arts Social Issues (use of technology on human life, pollution and etc.) Music (Song, Lyrics) History Religion (Christian values) All of the e-books proposed to be purchased have to meet our school-based needs and cover different text-types (fictions and non-fictions). Examples of text types of the e-book proposed to be purchased for our Primary 4 and Primary 5 include (at least): E-mails Formal Letters Diaries or Journals School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 8

Short Stories Biographies Receipts and Procedures Discussion Book Review File Review Reports Songs Articles The resources will be used for our P.4 and P.5 reading lessons. Our teachers will co-plan and develop our school-based lesson plans for classroom facilitation based on the purchased resources. We will be able to reuse all the e-books and related resources after the completion of this project to sustain the teaching and learning benefits without any extra cost. The e-books will be stored at our department s resources folder under our intranet. For individual teachers, we may allow them to save at the Google drive but we have to consult our school s IT team for the safety procedure. We will purchase the resources after proper procurement exercises. School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 9

Using e-books Blended learning will be our strategy for applying e-books. Firstly, teachers will assign students to read some background information of the topics. Our teachers will develop and prepare a study note for each reader. The study note will contain some core vocabulary items related to the readers, some facts about the readers or the topic or the background of the readers. The study note is a pre-lesson note for students to pre-learn some vocabulary items about the topic or the subject. It also contains some relevant information so our students can study and read before the lessons. For students who are keen to learn more about the topics, they can read more and prepare themselves with more relevant language items and knowledge before the lessons. It is important because our students need more support to cope with the cross-subject topics and language features. This study note can be in note format and in Nearpod or Quizlet format so that students can pre-learn at home, which is also a practice of blended learning. Teachers will use the e-books purchased to teach in the classrooms. Unlike our traditional teaching methods, we will maximize the benefits of e-books by using their School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 10

special features such as audio, visual elements and some functions such as reading aloud for different reading activities. For reading strategy (both fictions and non-fictions), we will adopt the THINK LITERACY: Cross-curricular Approaches. It provides us the framework for: Getting Readers to Read Engaging in Reading (reading between the lines to infer meanings, identify important ideas and information, sorting ideas using a concept map) Before Reading (asking Questions, understanding the text) Reacting to Reading (understanding the Text, making Inferences, visualizing, making connections, thinking to read, etc.) Reading Different Text Forms After Reading (finding the main ideas, thinking about the text, drawing conclusion) During our co-planning meetings, we will also make reference to the resources we have from the e-books and the teaching aids provided to customize and develop our own resources (different learning tasks to support the reading process) to support the need of our students. For School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 11

example, we will have the following forms of learning activities and resources to be developed to support our facilitation: Question Sheet (before reading) Word Wall Concept map Game sheet Conclusion / Reflection sheet Both Sides Now (Support and Oppose) Classroom Facilitation Mobile learning & Flipped learning 1. The e-books purchased will be used in classroom teaching with tablets. 2. We will guide our students to read the e-books to understand some simple facts or the storyline. 3. Different groups of students will then be engaged in different activities (features) of the e-books. Our strategy is to accelerate capable students learning by making more connections and applications of the text to themselves and to the community while less capable learners will focus more on understanding and connecting the text to their everyday lives. 4. Less capable students will go through the readers School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 12

page by page with more teachers guidance to understand the text with the read-aloud function. There may be other activities to consolidate their understanding and build up their personal connection with the text. 5. More capable students will then progress to other tasks such as recording or retelling the story, drawing mind maps and more high-order thinking skills activities. 6. Our teachers will develop school-based teaching plans based on the purchased e-books to better cater for learning diversity. 7. To cater for learning diversity, we plan to structure our vocabulary, text features and grammar into different tiers. Different groups of learners will be suggested to focus on the same set of learning resources. Capable groups will be able to work on more challenging tasks and extended activities. We plan to practice flipped learning for some of the non-fiction e-books. Before the mobile reading lessons, students will be assigned with more learning tasks to pre-read and conduct researches before lessons. Those pre-lesson activities and learning will mainly prepare students with background School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 13

understanding, simple theme-based vocabulary items and arouse their interest of the topic. 8. Collaborative learning will also be applied. We will select 1 topic under one e-book (e.g. pollution) for extended group learning activities. Some groups will re-tell or record of the texts while some groups will publish their book review. Others will prepare a school poster to promote awareness of protecting our nature or write a list of actions to reduce pollution. Details of the printed readers to be purchased We will plan and decide the printed titles to be purchased. Since the printed titles will be used to support more capable learners, we will choose those books which are related to the topics or themes or text-types of our e-books. Capable learners can read additional printed books on the same topics to sharpen their language skills, deepen their understanding and connect their learned knowledge with their daily lives through reading extra printed readers. Those titles will be served as pre-lesson learning or post-lesson extension depending on the text types and topics. Teachers will also co-plan and provide some inquiry questions to the capable group to facilitate their reading. During classroom time, this group of learners School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 14

will share their ideas to other students and stimulate other students thinking. This could set out a good foundation for classroom learning. Using printed readers Printed readers with specified topics or subjects will be selected and purchased to extend our elite students reading horizon. This is one of the resources that can allow us to better cater for learning diversity. Our elite students can read more and enhance their reading skills through providing more high-order thinking tasks by teachers. As elite students are usually fast learners, reading extra readers can help them excel. Titles and copies of the readers proposed to purchase P.4-P.5: 17 titles x 36 copies Home-learning (e-learning and printed based learning activities) Home learning under this project has 2 meanings. First, to extend the learning from classroom to home. Second, to pre-learn and warm up before the lessons. Students will be assigned with extended learning tasks at home. They will be required to read the text aloud at School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 15

home to deepen their understanding of the text, practise pronunciation and learn about the expressions and different text features. This will then be followed by the recording of the text. For pre-learning at home, learners will be assigned to read some texts to know more about the background, fill in a form, look up dictionary for some subject words or research some relevant news about the topics. Follow up exercises will be provided. Some will be online exercises and some will be printed according to the topics, activities and students needs. Our panel chairs and the project team will design and develop them through our biweekly co-planning meetings. The project team includes the Vice Principal, 2 English Panel Chairs, 1 co-ordinator, English teachers and one support teacher. To better promote e-learning at our school and create a favourable e-learning activities, the e-books will be used in 3 ways; namely, listening to the story, participating in a recorded read-aloud process and completing reading comprehension tasks. To facilitate a better learning outcome, we will keep students read-aloud record at our department server so we can review, share among teachers and share with parents in the end-of-term School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 16

meeting. We will also listen to students recording of read-aloud regularly to help them improve their pronunciation, fluency and speaking confidence. Their performance will be monitored on a regular basis before the lessons by our core team members and teachers. For some of the e-books, we will also upload the learning tasks to different mobile apps for consolidation on targeted vocabulary items, text features and language functions. We hope to scaffold students learning through e-learning and develop their language skills by reading and other learning tasks. (2) Procure service to conduct co-curricular English language workshops to promote reading across curriculum for P.4-P.5 Objectives: To introduce a new teaching strategy from reading to text interpretation through conducting workshops To develop our students language skills from reading to high- thinking and applications of speaking, writing skills and other forms (multimodal texts) To learn, observe and integrate the new teaching strategies and skills into our school-based curriculum School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 17 P.4 1 elite group P.5 1 elite group and 1 average group Feb to May 2018 Co-planning Mar to May 2018 Workshops conducted Feb to May 10 sets of resource materials on reading activities per for P.4 to P.5 will be developed. Language activities on reading will be conducted for P.4 to P.5 students. 10 sessions will be conducted in 10 to 12 weeks. The developed workshop resources will be integrated into our school-based co-curricular activities and be used after the project period. Our teachers will learn through Lesson observation will be conducted by our Vice Principal and panel chairs. Demonstration lessons will be video-taped for our review. All the reflection will be documented in the Teachers Handbook for this project.

and classroom facilitation P.4 elite group, P.5 elite group and P.5 average group will be chosen because of the time limitation. These three groups are the class ability groups. The rest of the groups will be taken care of by our own teachers after learning the teaching skills. Our panel team believes teaching these 3 groups can generate different experience for our development and can best benefit the students. Details of the workshop The workshop will focus on different text types. The texts will be chosen from articles, short stories, letter, diaries, and e-mails. Rich features in terms of language and text with engaging stories or topics with different talking points will be used for in-depth discussion. The texts will be chosen by our school and the service provider for each. We will allocate co-curricular time to conduct the workshops on Tuesday afternoons (13:45-14:45). The workshops will integrate literacy, language and arts that aim to increase students confidence, creativity and motivation for learning and using language. For the workshops, we want to base on different texts, 2018 Workshops conducted by our own teachers School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 18 Publishing of students multimodal presentations of learning outputs (e.g. writing, video-recording of presentations or drama, presentations, drawings and etc.) to share with parents and the community. New school-based resources to be integrated into the curriculum or co-curricular learning activities. 70% of P.4 to P.5 students confidence and skills in reading across the curriculum enhanced Assessment results on reading of over 70 % of students at P.4 to P.5 will be improved by 2 years time. Over 70% students believe that they are more engaged in related co-curricular co-planning, implementation, review, lesson observation, sharing among teachers and reflection to enhance their capacity in reviewing and adapting curriculum in the future. This experience will help us to conduct any enhancement in the future. Teacher survey will be used to collect feedback from both observers and teachers for evaluation. Student survey will be used to collect their feedback on their engagement and perception of this new introduced teaching pedagogy. Comparison of scores and quality of writing pieces under the project year and from previous years.

like language art and non-language art. This can help us better prepare students for secondary school learning. Tentatively, we will use: Primary 4 - Narnia (Short Stories, involves History, Religion, Moral and Value and Arts) - The workshop will cover 1 text selected from language art (short stories or poems) and 1 from a non-language art (a news article, an editor s letter or a commentary). Primary 5 - A Christmas Carol (Short Stories, involves Culture of the World, History, Music, Moral and Values) - The workshop will cover 1 text selected from language art (short stories or poems) and 1 from a non-language art (a news article, an editor s letter or a commentary). Reading texts will be the used as the input. After reading, different strategies will be used to engage students to interpret the texts in various means including mini-drama, writing, speaking, presentation, drawing etc. We will publish their work after the workshop to English learning activities and show more creative ways of interpretation of a text and can build connection with a topic and text to everyday lives. It will be assessed by teachers review on students learning outcome. 80% of students are engaged in English learning activities at the workshops. Cross-curricular reading is promoted among the target groups and extended to expression (interpretation, writing, debate, presentation and the other forms of expressions). Students responses and their participation in different activities from teachers observation School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 19

share with other students, parents and the other stakeholders in the community. Learners with talent as narrators or illustrators will contribute their parts to enrich the outstanding writing pieces from the other students for the publication for each year online and in print. Teacher s participation Co-planning and observing lessons Our teachers will co-plan with the service provider, give input and learn from the process. They will also participate as lesson observers to learn and then develop the teaching resources and lesson plans for the other classes. After this project, our teachers will be able to conduct the same workshop with revised teaching resources. Panel chairs, P.4 and P.5 teachers and the instructors of the workshop will conduct co-planning meetings to choose reading texts and discuss the lessons. The service provider needs to customize their workshops cater for the students needs. 10 sessions of co-planning meetings will be conducted per form, each has 2 hours. After each co-planning meeting, they will develop teaching plans and teaching resources. Our panel chairs will review on the of difficulties and related activities and suggest for the further enhancement to build the finalized version. The teaching plans of the workshops are fully developed, used and enhanced. 100% of teachers integrate 100% of the resources into our school-based co-curricular workshops and implement the resources by ourselves after the pilot run facilitated by the service provided. 70% of the teachers agreed that the quality of students writing pieces is up to our teachers expectation. This evident should be support by our school-based assessment result. Reading activities infused into English teaching at P.4 to P.5. 100% of the existing English teachers who are assigned to teach this part of the School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 20

Service provider should send their NET teachers/ experienced English teachers to facilitate the workshops. Our teachers will sit in and learn from a lesson observer role and then have debriefing meetings with the provider for enhancement of lesson resources. Trial Run After the pilot run, our panel chairs, P.4 and P.5 teachers will customize the lesson materials and further enhance them into a new version so that we can run similar workshops at classroom within our school-based curriculum. The facilitator from the service provider will observe the same workshop conducted by our teachers and give feedback, discuss the possible enhancement or solution to overcome the difficulties and modify the lesson resources with the teachers together. Our teachers will then share the experience with all the other English teachers and also participate in the resources enhancement so that we can be equipped with skills for future enhancement. curriculum will acquire knowledge/pedagogy of conducting reading activities for P. 4 to P.5 per year. Evaluation meetings For the project evaluation, we will have 3 evaluation meetings. All the important feedback addressed and to be enhanced will be recorded in our Teacher s Handbook for this workshop. So, we can use the Handbook as reference to review our teaching and fine-tune teaching strategies every year. Key barriers for achieving our expected learning outcomes will be School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 21

identified. Teachers will work together to try and suggest some possible alternatives to overcome them in the following years. We will list out the rights to use the materials in the contract after the contract period. School Name: SKH Yan Laap Primary School P. 22