Teachers’ concerns: How can we motivate the weaker students to learn English? How can we develop their confidence of using English? Lok Sin Tong Yu Kan.

Teachers’ concerns:

•How can we motivate the weaker students to learn English?

•How can we develop their confidence of using English?

Lok Sin Tong Yu Kan Hing School

English teacher: Mr. Hung Kar Ping

Drama teacher: Mr. Sin Chun Tung

Language ArtsDrama

Language Arts activities are interactive and stimulating

Imaginative texts are interesting and appealing

Our students have learnt

some performance skills in Drama

lessons

Drama offers a fun-filled and

encouraging environmentfor the use of

productive skills

School-based context (building on strengths)

Inter-disciplinary curriculum planning of Language Arts and Drama in EducationWhy collaborating with Drama in

Education?

•Develop students’ creativity and imagination

•Develop students’ communication and collaboration skills

•Develop students’ acting/performance skills

•Develop students’ sensitivity to life experiences

•Build up students’ confidence

Facilitate students to perform English Plays

Objectives

•To enhance students’ motivation to learn English

•To increase students’ confidence of using English

•To develop students’ learning of experience strand and creativity

Tasks:

1. Experiencing an English camp

Experience an authentic camp and do the activities, e.g. exploring the camp facilities, sharing with the use of five-sense chart and emotions card, singing camp songs and night walk, etc.

2. Creating and performing an ending of a play about a camping experience

(adapted from the seed project module of Ling Liang Church M H Lau Secondary School)

Scale down the unit plan

Simplify the L/T materials

Adjust the task expectation and level of difficulty

Support from Drama teacher

Let’s go camping

Strategies to help the weaker students to achieve the objectives

1. Manageable tasks

• Small steps to enable students to do the tasks

Five-sense Chart

vocabulary building

sentence making (five-sense chart) (emotions journal)

group sharing

mini-presentationrole play drama

Five-sense Chart

Emotions Journal

Strategies to help the weaker students to achieve the objectives

2. Collaborative learning

• Group activities and group sharing in the camp to promote good communication and collaboration skills

• Writing and performing the play in groups to increase students’ confidence and enhance creativity

Strategies to help the weaker students to achieve the objectives

3. Inter-disciplinary collaboration

• Using a lot of gestures to increase students’ learning motivation

• Developing students’ performance skills to increase their interest and confidence

Recycling and reinforcing students’ learning with the use of gestures and facial expressions

Vocabulary building

five senses

emotions and feelings

Singing camp songs with more focus on pronunciation

Singing camp songs with gestures

English lessons Drama lessons

Writing the ending for the play

Helping students to brainstorm the ending with play elements

Revising, editing and rehearsing with focus on writing and speaking

Rehearsing with focus on performance skills

Helping students to understand and read aloud the play

Helping students to perform the play

Impact on Learning

1. Learning attitude

Students have shown much higher motivation to learn English and confidence of using English

Level of Interest No answer

Using English in the camp

43.5% 43.5% 8.7% 4.3%

Reading the play and doing the related activities

56.5% 34.8% 4.3% 4.3%

Presenting the ending of the play in class

60.9% 30.4% 4.3% 4.3%

Students’ Reflections

2. Creativity

Students have demonstrated high creativity in expressing their feelings and ideas through their plays and drama performance

Impact on Learning

Come on, baby. Strike me here.A poisonous

apple!

Many people are coming to help you!

Impact on Teaching

Be more reflective in selecting and adopting materials and strategies that suit the needs, interest and abilities of my students

Inter-disciplinary collaboration

Way forward

Incorporating the unit plan into the F.1 English Language curriculum

Exploring ways to give students opportunities to perform outside classroom to give them greater sense of achievement

Exploring possibilities to collaborate with other subjects to fully develop students’ talents and arouse their learning interest, e.g. Music, Art, Physical Education, etc.