As the COVID-19 slowed down, on May 30, the seed teacher’s training was conducted at DENER. The training was conducted by teacher Yongyi Wu. Teacher Wu has won the first prize of the National Group of National Super Teacher Award in Taiwan as well as Special Excellent Teacher Award of Nantou County.  She is an outstanding teacher at the Taiwan Reading Culture Foundation and a very experienced teacher.

 

In the beginning of the class, Teacher Wu told us that reading was not just about reading story books, but also training a lifelong learner. Every child had his original appearance, like a seed. When it was still a seed, it has already decided what it would look like when it grow up. What we had to do is to water and fertilize it from the side, so that it could grow smoothly into its appearance. It was the same in education. Teacher is a guide, with different children, to give them a way to learn, teach them in accordance with their aptitude and rather than teach them how to do, guide them to think about growth. Grade is not important, the learning process was the point.

In the class, Teacher Wu also shared how to lead different ways of reading. For example, reading without books: You could let students listen to stories, and let students predict, infer, or draw pictures. The other was wordless reading, which allows students to listen to stories and made predictions. With wordless story, children could use their imagination. And reading with words can start from listening and reading pictures, and give way to children’s ability of speak, observe and reasoning. Teacher Wu also mentioned that the teacher’s questions and discussions are very important after reading the picture book, which can increase the wisdom and ability of the students. There were several types of questions: open, semi-open and closed. Through different questions from teachers, students could deepen their understanding, application and innovation abilities. Teachers should adopt different questioning methods for different students’ levels.

For example, for senior students, this kind of open-ended discussion can lead to “personal analysis”, “personality guidance”, “psychological dimension” etc., rather than just literal discussions.

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Teacher Wu’s teaching methods were very diverse and lively. In the class, she demonstrated the teaching methods of several picture books. Different picture books when lead in different ways, the tone of reading was very different. For example, when reading aloud, the same sentence when read in a different tone, the results would be completely different. Take the book “The Monsters of Palapara” by author Lai Ma as an example. The teacher asks the students to look at the cover first, then turn to the next page.  And use different clues, such as the color, the change of the protagonist’s expression etc., to guess what the next plot of the story would be. Then, gradually see whether the ending of the story was the same as that you predicted. When leading the picture book “Why the sky is blue,” the students also conducted role playing in the story, trying to play out the emotion of the role as it speaks. The students all had a great time.

Teacher Wu also reminded the students to pay attention to things in the course setting. First of all, it was important to create a safe and pleasant atmosphere in the classroom so that students could study in a safe environment. The second point is that the teacher should pay attention to his own tone and wording when talking to students and give students enough confidence. Secondly, the teacher should set goals first, and then design interesting activities, so that children could learn spontaneously and naturally achieve the preset goals in the learning process.

In addition, when designing questions, you should think about every level of students.  The shallow, medium, and deep questions should be carefully thought out. Finally, the teacher emphasized once again that “reading does not happen on black and white paper and words, but in the operation of one’s thinking.”

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The whole day’s course was completed in a pleasant and warm atmosphere. As Teacher Wu said during the class, “A lot of learning actually happens in silence”. Once the teacher could return the subject of learning to the students, let the teacher’s role in guiding the students to explore, think, compare and discuss as much as possible; In this interactive process, the students will absorb nutrients and adjust their thinking. In the end, no matter what the outcome was, what was changed, or how much improvement was made, what we could be sure is that learning has been going on silently and intensely in a place in the child’s mind that we could not see! And this is the best gift a teacher can give to the students during a reading class.

 

After the course, the words of Teacher Wu planted different seeds in each student’s heart. We believe that after continuous learning and internalization, it will eventually bloom and become the nutrients for new buds.