Jiefi+Ye

= My Profile: =

I am a Chinese teacher in Lowanna College. The Chinese program covers students of year10 as well as year3- year 6 in feeder primary school.
As Lowanna College is also one of the victorian schools that set up Confucius Classroom, our Chinese program also includes communication between Lowanna College and its sister school in China. The previous exchange visits has put a postive impact on the school community, where more schools and parents welcome Chinese classes. = =

= Action Research Project Planner:  = Which area/s of your practice would you like to improve? I would like to improve my assessment skills on students’ work. I believe assessment is important in teaching because of a few reasons: I wish to work on assessment methods that can help students to discover their weakness. With this type of assessment, students can be given feedbacks during their works. They are encouraged to correct their own errors and, more importantly, to learn from mistakes. The process that students go through an assessment can indicate students’ level of knowledge and the effect of the teaching. I wish to establish the habit of assessing students on a regular basis. I will try to provide students regular opportunities to demonstrate what they have learnt. I will also try to collect more data and work samples, so as to make adjustment to my future teaching. I wish to work on various ways of assessments. Most students understand that assessment is necessary in their learning, but they can take it as a burden or may not enjoy doing them. As learning from assessment is very important, I would like to involve it in different learning tasks such as competition, quiz and performances. What will be your focus for this project in 2012?
 * = Stage 1 ** – ** ANALYSE =
 * 1) Help students to reflect their works.
 * 1) Help me as a teacher to reflect on the learners and programs.
 * 1) Develop students’ interest of taking assessment tasks.

My focus of the first term will be on developing various meaningful assessment tasks.

I am looking to engage students in a range of activities. I hope students enjoy the tasks, which they also like to talk about it afterwards. Through participation and discussion, students are given opportunities to experience interesting ways of learning, to self-evaluate and to self-reflect. Which aspects of the Standards does your project relate to?

I will work on the following standards:

Timeline for 2012
 * 1) Teachers know the learning strengths and weaknesses of their students and are aware of the factors that influence their learning.
 * 2) Teachers plan for the use of a range of activities, resources and materials to provide meaningful learning opportunities for all their students.
 * 3) Teachers monitor students engagement in learning and maintain records of their learning progress.
 * 4) Teachers select assessment strategies to evaluate students learning, to provide feedback to students.
 * 5) Teachers regularly reflect on and critically evaluate their professional knowledge and the effectiveness of their teaching. ||
 * = Stage 2 - PLAN =
 * = Stage 2 - PLAN =


 * 1) Establish regular assessment system: (FORMATIVE ASSESSEME NT)

Every lesson:


 * to start with: Words revision. Flash cards/word games/dictations
 * to finish with: quick quiz on sentences. Q&A.

Twice in a project


 * have conversation with Chinese speaker:

Ask as many Qs as you can

Answer as quickly as possible

Presentation

At least once in a project (every 3-4 weeks)


 * one oral presentation for peer assessment
 * one video task to build up the confidence of using Chinese
 * one writing tasks (English and Chinese)
 * one creative task ||
 * == Stage 3 ACT[[file:STAGE 3 ACT.pdf]] ==
 * == Stage 3 ACT[[file:STAGE 3 ACT.pdf]] ==
 * == Stage 3 ACT[[file:STAGE 3 ACT.pdf]] ==

|| What did you notice?
 * == Stage 4 - OBSERVE ==

What have been done:


 * 1) Flash cards and Q&A activities were established as a regular class task.
 * 2) Oral presentations are frequently used for assessing different contents.
 * 3) Writing, creative works and filming videos are used in projects.
 * 4) Assessments are used for both language and culture knowledge.

What students enjoy:


 * 1) Students enjoy quick games to check their memories.
 * 2) Students enjoy creative works, including making cartoons, create a picture for the poem, create a dialogue and create their miniatures.
 * 3) Students enjoy watching presentation.
 * 4) Students like having simple conversation with Chinese speakers and being understood.

What needs to be improved:

What would you do the same/differently in the future? ||
 * 1) Students slowly developed a habit of talking their own work. They are not willing to give comments to others work either.
 * 2) Students spent more time working on the creative task than using the language.
 * 3) Some students were frequently absent from classes. It was hard to keep a consistent record.
 * 4) I am aware of engaging students in some type of assessment every lesson, but I haven’t developed a habit of keeping data and samples in time. ||
 * == Stage 5 - REFLECT ==
 * == Stage 5 - REFLECT ==