School Visit: Macleod College

This is a large school focusing on the use of technology in learning. I observed a number of classes and I discovered that most of the teaching methodologies adopted are beneficial to students.

Small group learning is emphasized since teachers are able to spend more time on students to cater to their needs. When students have any questions, teachers can provide assistance for them in a relatively short period of time, so the students will not get stuck in particular areas. After figuring out solutions for their questions, they will become more confident and satisfied in their learning, which motivate them to work harder in future.

Another approach adopted is the use of modified texts, which means teachers have read through the articles beforehand, and then edit them so that the contents become suitable for their students to read. Apart from using easier languages to help students learn, teachers usually extract culturally-related texts so that students from different countries are provided with opportunities to expose to a variety of cultures and their horizon will be broadened.

It is appreciated that this school focuses on task- and student-centred teaching instead of teacher-centred one. As students are the active learners in classes, it is important for them to participate as much as possible in lessons. If teachers spend most of the time talking to the classes without requiring students to give responses, the students will not be interested in learning. As a result, off-task behaviour will appear which interferes with the lessons. In this school, after completing group tasks, students will be asked to comment upon their classmates’ performance first. After gathering all comments, they need to modify their original pieces of work and then submit the revised versions for assessment. Teachers will give them evaluative feedback and advise them to study the comments given by them and their classmates in detail for future improvement. In Hong Kong, this approach is not widely adopted, therefore it is recommended that local schools will take this into serious consideration.

All the teachers told me that they always walked around the classroom to monitor the learning situation and they stood at the central position of all students so as to keep a close distance with them. This is of utmost importance since teachers are able to offer instant help to them and their learning progress can be checked. For instance, teachers realize they have to slow down when most of the students cannot follow the content to ensure they get the messages.

This school boasts itself of the operation of open classes, which students from different classes gather in an area and attend lessons. This mode of learning helps sharpen their social skills since they can interact with others from different levels and they can learn together with their peers, which facilitates the learning progress. However, since the distance between the classes is relatively close, the students will easily be distracted by other lessons.

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