After much hard work and great efforts, Master Teachers and Researchers of the SCCL, with the support of collaborating teachers from schools, have produced a total of 3 teaching toolkits, which were published between December 2013 and February this year.

New Teaching Toolkits

 

1 "More Reading for More Fun" Teaching Toolkit
Authors:	Mr. Ang Swee Choon (Master Teacher, Ministry of Education), Mr. Mao Zhaohui (Singapore Centre for Chinese Language)
Experimental Teacher:	Ms. Dong Yaru (Tampines Primary School)
Publisher:	NTU-SCCL Press, 2014

 

Incorporating major theories from the field of education psychology, this package aims to help primary school students find fun in reading by providing teachers with effective teaching strategies for Chinese vocabulary acquisition and thinking skills development.

Based on Lorin W. Anderson's revised version of Bloom's taxonomy of knowledge, Chapter 1 of this package begins with a classification of vocabularies from a cognitive perspective. It then proceeds to propose 6 methods for the teaching of the various categories of vocabularies: 1) Explanation through Examples, 2) Show and Tell, 3) Comparison and Contrast, 4) Deconstruction, 5) Translation and 6) Demonstration by Performing. A total of 12 lesson plans, 12 PowerPoint slideshows and 12 worksheets are included in this chapter.

The second chapter focuses on reading strategies. Teachers are shown how to train students to look out for "5W1H" and "PEEL" when reading and, in the process, opportunities for "Thinking Transfer". 13 lesson plans, 13 PowerPoint slideshows and 16 worksheets are included in this chapter.

To help teachers better understand the theories behind the Toolkit, explanatory notes on design concepts and teaching approaches as well as selected research papers on the topic are provided in the CD for reference.

When students are equipped with better reading techniques, provided with more knowledge transfer opportunities and have less difficulty with vocabularies, they will definitely find reading less tedious and enjoy reading in time to come.

 

2 "Situational Exploratory Project Works" Teaching Toolkit
Editor:	Dr. Chin Chee Kuen (Singapore Centre for Chinese Language)
Authors:	Mdm. Gong Cheng, Mdm. Tay Boon Pei (Singapore Centre for Chinese Language)
Experimental Teachers:	Ms. Teh Sieu Ching, Ms. Chin Kah Ying, Ms. Ong Hui Min (Hua Yi Secondary School)
Collaborative Teachers:	Ms. Tan Mei Yin, Ms. Sha Bin (Hong Kah Secondary School)
Publisher:	NTU-SCCL PRESS, 2014

 

Developed by the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language, the "Situational Exploratory Project Work" teaching toolkit is designed for Secondary 1 to 2 Chinese language teachers. A product of a collaborative school-based research by SCCL and Hua Yi Secondary School, this toolkit provides teachers with useful supplementary teaching materials and can be used for a school-based curriculum.

By completing the self-exploratory tasks required in different project works in the toolkit, students will be able to practice and learn Chinese language in real-life scenarios. The toolkit comprises six projects and accompanying materials such as an essay on the theoretical framework, reading texts and lesson plans.

 

3. "From Reading to Writing" Teaching Toolkit
Authors:	Mr. Ang Swee Choon (Master Teacher, Ministry of Education), Mdm. Kwek Siew Hoon, (Master Teacher, Ministry of Education), Mr. Mao Zhaohui (Singapore Centre for Chinese Language)
Experimental teachers:	Ms. Ng Imei (Manjusri Secondary School), Ms. Hao Rui (CHIJ Secondary (Toa Payoh)), Ms. Huo Yajuan (Cedar Girls' Secondary School)
Publisher:	NTU-SCCL PRESS, 2014

 

Integrating a set of theories and strategies from the fields of education psychology and language pedagogy, this package aims to help teachers raise secondary school students' interest in reading and writing by providing them with effective writing teaching strategies that focus on developing students' reading, writing and thinking skills.

To help teachers better understand the theories adopted, the Toolkit has incorporated explanatory notes on the design concepts and the theoretical framework in the first chapter.

The second chapter elaborates on three categories of strategies for teaching writing: (1) "PEEL reading and writing strategy," which is effective in helping students understand the structure of a paragraph and identify the different types of sentences in the text. (2) "Strategies for Stimulating Critical Thinking Skills for Application in Writing ", which aim at stimulating students' critical thinking through reading, eventually enable students to generate more ideas and contents for their compositions, and (3) "Reading for Imitative Writing and Reading-Writing Integration Strategies", which focus on improving the structure and organization of students' writing.

13 lesson plans, 13 PowerPoint slideshows, 12 text structures worksheets and 2 research papers are included in the CD for reference. Once equipped with better writing techniques, complemented by effective reading and thinking skills, students will be able to generate more contents and become better in structuring their essays, and will eventually find writing easier and more enjoyable.