4/25 School Visit 中山女高

The class I observed was Stephanie's class, which is a math and science gifted class. It was a surprising experience which is far from my imagination, or say, my stereotypical impression. I used to believe that students who are good at math and science won’t be good at language learning, but what I used to believe is not true in Stephanie’s classroom.

At the moment I entered the classroom I could sense their friendly attitude and curiosity. We sat in the back of the classroom. The students turned to smile at us time after time, and this made us feel that we were welcomed.Stephanie asked us to introduce ourselves to the whole class before students give their presentation. It was a little funny, because we (student teachers) were shy and hesitated to go up stage to do the self introduction, instead, students are very breezy and curious about us that one of them even came to us and stretched out her hand to invite us! I was very impressive.

Next, Stephanie asked students to do their presentations. They were divided into several groups two weeks ago and started to do a lot of preparation work before they present it today. Each group had to choose a product and sell the product by auction online. Students took pictures of their product and designed powerpoint slides, and on the slides they listed the advantages of the product, the reasons why we should buy it, and the reasons why they make that price of their product. Finally, they had to go up to the stage and present it to the whole class in English.

As for their performances, first, I can see they really put a lot of efforts on this presentation. Each group had their own style of presenting their unique product. There is no need for them to emphasized how much time they spend on the preparation work, you just can tell from the design of their powerpoint slides, the funny and interesting elements they added in their performance, and the laughter and attention from other students as audience. They really did a great job!

Second, unlike my stereotypical impression of students in Taiwan, those kids were brave and willing to speak up English in front of their classmates, and especially for today, in front of a group of strangers (10 student teachers sitting in the back). Though there were some grammatical errors in their powerpoint slides and spoken language, those errors did not affect our understanding of their presentation. And Stephanie chose to ignore the errors so students could have their presentation not being interrupted. Averagely speaking, their pronunciation was pretty good, and I would say they speak English much better than our freshmen in Tamkang University. At least they were willing to take the risk, and this deserved to be encouraged!

Third, though there may be a lot of preparation work and a little stress for students, I thought they felt happy during the learning process. Every student was concentrated. I could tell from their facial expression that they expected to see other group’s product and performance, and meanwhile they also expected themselves to do a good presentation. They create a wonderful atmosphere for learning! While the presenting group were showing their product and persuading us to buy it, the rest of the students had to finish evaluation sheets to decide which product they want to buy the most. In this way, the best product and group was chosen.

After student’s presentation, Stephanie gave us a short demonstration how she started a new lesson. This new lesson was about Migration of Food. Stephanie raised several questions like: “What comes to your mind when we talk about French desert?”, or “How about American food?”. Students were willing to make a guess, and then Stephanie gradually led them to the topic they were going to learn in the following weeks. Actually, students were finding their way to what they are going to learn.

All in all, no matter it was students’ presentation or learning a new lesson under teacher’s guidance, this is a real student-centered classroom. I used to wonder how student-centered way of teaching can be practiced in a real classroom, and today, Stephanie proves it to me! I really learned a lot from this school visit!