Contents
Evaluation
Final Exams Test Students' CreativityA closer look at RCEF's hand-designed tests for creativity and understanding.
Curriculum and Teaching
Bookworm Teacher Promotes Love of ReadingMs. Yanzhen Wang explains how she runs the library and reading program at Guan Ai School.
Extracurricular Activities Enhance Life for Rural Students
Guan Ai is one of the few rural schools in China with extracurricular classes for students.
Curriculum and Teaching
Community Outreach
Innovation Grants Launched in Yongji
Eight small grants were given to rural teachers to expand RCEF's network in Yongji County.
Donor Updates
Recognition of Recent Donors
We warmly thank the donors to RCEF in June 2009
Final Exams Test Students' Creativity
By Steven Liu, Math and Science Teaching Coach
Students at Guan Ai take exams twice a semester, a mock at half-term and a real one at the end of term. While these exams do a decent job of tracking progress of students, they do have their inadequacies. Much of the content on the exams can be mastered by repeating similar questions ad nauseum over a period stretching several weeks prior to the exam. Certainly this is the preferred strategy of many rural teachers and, truth be told, some of our own teachers.
Yet what these exams aren’t testing for are real problem solving skills; that spark of creativity and intelligence that kicks in when a student encounters a problem that is, maybe via a slight twist on what he or she has previously seen, not answerable by activating “autopilot”.
Thus for the past year the teaching coaches at Guan Ai have been creating tests for this very purpose. We hope they will shine some insight as to whether our reforms really are increasing students’ ability to think critically and independently. You can read examples of the language arts and social studies tests on our blog. Below are some examples of the maths and science tests I created for the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th graders. Click on the images for larger versions.
But the more important point comes in the second part of the question, where we ask students how we might design an experiment to test whether our hypotheses were correct. We’ve emphasised experimentation a lot (those of you who read the blog regularly may remember our travails with creating suitable science experiments at the beggining of the year) and what this question was really about was whether they understood the scientific method of controlling of variables in order to isolate causes. To be honest this question could have been answered better by many students, but their knowledge of this powerful way of thinking has come on a lot.
The 3rd grade question above asks students to order the the buildings at the school by the area they occupy. This requires that they be able to calculate the areas of rectangles and then order them by size. Two of the buildings at Guan Ai are of identical size, and so there is an equality operator within the spaces in the answer. I’m happy to say that most students answered this question well.
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CURRICULUM & TEACHING
Bookworm Teacher Promotes Love of Reading
By Diane Geng, RCEF Executive Director of Operations
Ms. Yanzhen Wang is Guan Ai School’s first grade Language Arts teacher. Over the past year she spearheaded a school-wide Reading Program aimed at promoting a love of reading among all students. Thanks to her creative activities and a RCEF-donated library of high quality children’s books, students’ interest in reading has shot up and students of all ages have gotten into the habit of reading in their free time. Ms. Wang was born in a village not far from Guan Ai School. She has been teaching for nearly ten years but only began promoting reading over the past two years. We asked her what she's learned from the experience so far.
I know that you enjoy reading. Where did that habit come from?
It probably has to do with my family. My father was a teacher and he had a lot of books at home which he kept in a trunk. As a little girl, whenever he opened it I would think to myself, “When will I be old enough to open that trunk too?” As I grew older and began to read, my father gave me some books. My older brother and sister also liked to read and I would read the books they left around. Most of them were romance novels and I don’t think it was very good that I came in contact with those at such a young age!
What benefits have you seen reading have on students?
A person who loves reading has a very wide knowledge base and has stored up a lot of information. Primary school teachers often complain that their students lack topics to write about in class and that their essays have little original content. I think this is because our students have such limited exposure to things (outside of their immediate lives). One of the best ways to see how reading benefits students is to watch them in class. When some students come upon words that they don’t know, others help explain what they mean. My first graders became very good at this after they started reading more. For example, in class one day we came across the word, “extremely.” and one student asked what whether he could substitute “very” and convey the same meaning.
Reading also improves students’ listening comprehension. We recently had a story in our textbook about a tadpole looking for its mother. I spontaneously asked the children whether they knew of any other animal which changes from one form to another as it grows. A student immediately yelled, “Caterpillar into butterfly!” I hadn’t even thought of an answer yet but it was clear that he had learned this from a book I’d read to them.
Improvements in oral expression can be seen most clearly in my students. After the promotion of reading, they’ve changed a great deal. Before, when they told stories, they were often illogical and rambling with no connection between beginning and end. However, after a lot of reading aloud to them and telling stories, they’ve improved quickly. Now when they make up stories or re-tell stories, the plot is all there and they even have a moral or point to the story which is attached to the characters that they make up.
What kinds of difficulties did you face when you first started the reading program?
Last year when we had just started to give the students’ free reading time, Principal Yang came into the classroom and asked some students to tell him their opinions about what they were reading. Not one student was able to respond. They would just flip quickly through the books and then exchange them for a new one. But if you go to our classrooms today during free reading time, it’s totally different. Now if you ask them what happened in their book, they’ll say so much that you can’t even leave!
You said that students in your class are much stronger and faster than their peers, who took a long time to start reading. How did you help all students to like to read given these differences?
It’s very important to recognize that all students must have space to grow at their own speed. Every student’s rate of understanding is different. In my opinion, as long as a student likes reading, then we can be patient. One day, he or she will definitely develop very well. I can’t hold every student to the exact same standard. I use different methods to guide each student. I’ll let them spend time with other students and let them slowly figure things out for themselves. We have to give them space.
What do you think will be the biggest challenge for teachers who want to try out these kinds of reading activities?
The biggest problem is that students will just pick up a book and flip through it quickly. Our biggest challenge is figuring out how to guide students so that they will concentrate on reading a book carefully. I tried a method in which I gave every student a small piece of paper on which to write something about the book they were reading. After awhile, this turned into systematic book reports. If students just don’t know what or how to write, then what should we do? My way is to let students see what their classmates have written and motivate them to also write something that will be praised and highlighted by the teacher. It’s a step by step process.
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Extracurricular Classes Enhance Life for Rural Students
By Zhao Junfang, Monitoring & Evaluation Specialist
Above: A sixth grade student practices in Chinese yo-yo class.
Confucius said that being interested in learning is better than simply learning and that enjoying learning is best of all. At the beginning of this school year, Guan Ai teachers and RCEF staff launched a new initiative—extracurricular activity classes (called “Interest Classes” in Chinese). Taking place every afternoon for an hour, the choices have ranged from Origami to Cooking, Community Service, Jump Rope, Drums, and Dance, just to name a few. As the end of the school year approached, RCEF surveyed teacher and students to evaluate their experiences in these classes.
Enriching the day
Guan Ai takes care of students 24 hours a day. The hours 7 A.M. to 8 P.M. used to be spent only in regular classes, leaving students tired and restless. Unlike in the cities, there are few if any extracurricular activities in villages. Most rural children have very limited world views and few opportunities to discover their interests and talents. Despite this, villages do possess unique knowledge and resources not usually available in cities. These are enough to provide a wide pool of activities that don’t require fancy and costly equipment. In Guan Ai’s extracurricular classes, students gain rich experiences, discover their individual strengths, and increase their self-esteem and confidence.
Guan Ai teachers and RCEF staff can design their own extracurricular classes. Some villagers have also been invited to teach folk arts like paper cutting. RCEF’s mission is to prepare students to improve their own lives and communities and an understanding of local culture and history is an important part of this preparation. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer villagers are willing to learn folk arts and they are in danger of being lost. Since the regular textbooks don’t have much in common with local culture, Guan Ai’s extracurricular classes serve as a bridge to expose students to the valuable traditions all around them.
Teachers see results
The classes change twice a semester and Guan Ai is one of the only schools in Yongji—urban or rural—which offers them. The problem is not one of material resources since Guan Ai uses so few resources to organize its extracurricular activities. Rather, teachers often feel that spending time on non-textbook work will have a negative impact on students’ studies. However, Guan Ai teachers would disagree. For example, Ms. Wang runs the storytelling class and in her opinion, it can actually help students to improve their Chinese, learn how to play well with others, and cultivate a love for reading. In the Chinese Yo-yo class, more experienced students teach newer students and all get online to learn new tricks from the Internet. In this way, the moves and tricks of Chinese yo-yo continues to be passed on.
Students give feedback
In order to better understand students’ perspectives and hopes for extracurricular class, we gave a survey to students in June. From the results, we found that different ages of children selected classes in different ways. A lot of the younger students said they liked the storytelling, art, and games class. They suggested adding singing, piano, and other game-like classes in the future, stating that what they liked best about the classes was that they are “fun”. “We like dance class,” shouted some first graders. “We get to wiggle our necks and our bottoms,” said one, waggling as he spoke.
Students in the upper grades had other motivations. More said that they liked the classes because they could learn new things or get some exercise. Suggestions for new classes included an insect observation class, long jump, and high jump. The boy who is most enthusiastic about the insect class said, “Watching insects grow is really interesting. We can tell other kids about what we learn.”
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COMMUNITY OUTREACH
Innovation Grants Launched in Yongji
By Wang Bioajie, Communications Intern
RCEF’s Innovation Grants Program awards small grants of 2000 RMB to progressive education projects in rural China. We thank the Global Fund for Children for providing the financial support that makes this program possible! RCEF’s goal is to reach rural students beyond just our headquarters at Guan Ai School to identify more local teachers and principals who want to experiment with new teaching methods. We hope to build a local network of such teachers in the Yongji area who can support each other and learn from other’s experiences.
On June 21, the first round of recipients gathered at Guan Ai School for an introductory meeting. Executive Director of Programs Sara Lam described the program’s objectives and laid out reporting requirements. Each teacher must document the process they go through to implement the project and their reflections on the results. She emphasized that RCEF does not expect all projects to go smoothly and that we value the lessons learned from all new attempts, successful or not. The important thing is that teachers try something new and thoughtfully tailor their actions to students’ needs. The projects supported this round are:
- A summer teacher training for a primary school English teacher so that she can incorporate more knowledge about student psychology into her teaching methods for the upcoming semester
- A folk arts course for primary school students
- A hands-on interdisciplinary course for primary school students to learn about their village
- Physical Education equipment for primary school students
- Musical instruments to enrich music class for primary school students
- A library for a primary school that has never had one before
Afterwards, one grantee, Ms. Liying Yan said, “That presentation made such an impact on me. That is exactly what I want to do in my classes to help my students develop well-rounded skills. I had never heard the learning goals for students laid out so clearly and systematically! I feel like I can learn a lot from you.” Such cross pollination of effective methods in rural education is what RCEF wants to see in this program as we strive to bring more and more Yongji teachers into RCEF’s network.
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DONOR UPDATES
Donor Roll
We are grateful to all the supporters who donated to RCEF in June 2009! (A complete list of donors through the years is available here.)
Grants
The Global Fund for Children
Silver Sponsors ($1,000 to $4,999)
Bronze Sponsors ($100 to $999)
Eva Brune (New York, New York)
Givology (New York, New York)
Anne Hsieh (Aiea, Hawaii)
Patrick Lockne (Stockholm, Sweden)
Denise Martinez, Room B, Odyssey Charter School (Altadena, California)
Trinity School (Menlo Park, California)
Yuan Wang (Beijing, China)
Gary Yuen (Los Angeles, California)
Supporting Sponsors (under $99)
Hongzheng Lu (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania)
Scott Sjulin (Sacramento, California)
Xiaofeng Wang (China)
The RCEF Newsletter is a monthly publication about the educational initiatives being carried out at Guan Ai School in rural Shanxi Province, China.
Read more about RCEF's mission and program site Guan Ai Primary School.
Contact Us
Donate
You can help rural Chinese students reach their potential. Contributions are 100% tax-deductible in the U.S.
Checks payable to "Rural China Education Foundation" can be sent to:
PO Box 92424
Rochester, NY 14692-0424
Donations can also be made online!
From our Blog:
Creative Tests for Creative Students
Read about the language arts and social studies questions designed to test the creativity of students at Guan Ai School.
Click here to read more
Midterm Examples
See more examples of RCEF-designed questions that test skills beyond the textbook.
Click here to read more
RCEF History Slideshow
Four years ago, RCEF was incorporated as a nonprofit organization. This slideshow marks major milestones in our development.
Dispatches from the Field
A special collection of blog posts gives an up close and personal window into our experiences on the ground in rural China
Guan Ai Adult English Class
Since the beginning of the school year, RCEF's Sara Lam and Kiel Harell have been leading an innovative adult English class every Tuesday and Thursday at Guan Ai Primary.
Pilgrimage to Dulangkou
Dulangkou Middle School is located in a rural township but is one of the most-visited schools in the world.
Hands-on Technology for Rural Children
RCEF's Steven Liu reports on an Intel Learns curriculum that teaches computer skills in rural schools.
Click here to read more
Work for RCEF
RCEF seeks energetic individuals to join our full-time staff team in China. Staff members must be able to commit at least one academic year (September-August).
Past Newsletters
RCEF posts monthly and quarterly newsletters on our website.
Click here to read past issues