Te a c h i n g I n A B i l i n g u a l S e t t i n g
What does it mean to teach in a bilingual immersion
setting?
Pei Lu: When I first started teaching at an international school, I was unaccustomed
to my students’ learning approach. I wondered, “isn’t this just the vertical angles
theorem? Why do you need to see the proof if you can just memorize the result?”
But then, I had a change of heart. There is a lesson on friendship that I used to
teach in my class using a story about a wooden antelope a father brought from
Africa. The story highlights the value of the gift. But my students focused on the
value of friendship because to them this gift was brought back all the way from
Africa – a valuable gift with great significance. It occurred to me that education
should allow students to lead a better life and knowledge cannot be separated
from reality. From then on, I noticed that Western teachers phrased ideas into
questions instead of stating facts in their classes. This allowed their students to
reflect. This is also why my students did not accept my ideas at face value. So I
started recording my lessons for a while and replaying them to myself. If I spoke
too much, then the lesson wasn’t effective; but if the students spoke more then I
would secretly give myself a pat on the back.
Thom Ferlisi: At the grade 1 level in Keystone in which I teach, the Chinese and
English teachers plan a curriculum unit together. We discuss how we want to go
about a unit because we want the substance to be similar irrespective of whether
the students are in a Chinese or an English class. For instance, in the IPC unit ‘The
Stories People Tell,’ we decided to teach students about fairy tales in English and
folk tales and legends in Chinese. So children are able to cognitively grasp an idea
or concept across the board yet in different cultural settings. Of course, once we
decide on the substance, the Chinese and English teachers have different ways
of teaching and these are planned or discussed in smaller groups. One aspect
that we are all working on revolves around language. As we are teaching different
subjects in different languages, we find ourselves sometimes stalling when talking
about a student’s progress to find the right words in English or in Chinese. But this
is something that is bound to get better with time.
Primary school students during assembly.
Li Haiyan: Pei Lu’s mention of the vertical angles theorem reminds me of an
instance. A traditional approach would have me write down the theorem and
explain to the class in not more than one session. But here at Keystone, one of
my expat colleagues divided the class into groups, and gave each group a similar
set of tools. Each group was asked to come up with a design that demonstrated the vertical angles theorem.
The only rule was that all members of a group had to approve the design before they could build it. All groups
completed the task, but no two designs were alike. Then over the next 4-5 classes, each group explained their
design to the rest of the class. Students not only understood the vertical angles theorem, this math lesson
also honed their skills in teamwork, research, designing and building. They also learned to think critically and
reflectively. Through this lesson, I have seen how procedural education, experiential education, and creative
education can all be applied in a classroom.
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