Catering for Learner Diversity

 Schools have always valued the importance of catering for learner diversity. In general, they provide support from two dimensions, students’ learning and their personal development, so as to help students of different learning abilities, styles and cultural backgrounds capitalise on their strengths. In terms of supporting student learning, schools continue to adopt practices such as split classes, collaborative teaching, and pull-out remedial teaching, and even hiring additional teachers or teaching assistants, in order to help students of different abilities in their learning. Further, they organise a variety of after-class enrichment and intervention programmes, and tutorial after-classes, to develop students’

potential and consolidate their foundation for learning. In the area of personal development, schools form different groups to help students adapt to school life and meet their various growth needs.

 In terms of curriculum and assessment, schools use a wide range of assignments, such as book reports, oral presentations, and model-making, to cater for students’ interests, abilities and learning styles. Some schools adapt the curricula of certain subjects by defining the core and extension learning content, thereby strengthening the support for students with different learning needs. They also set tiered assignments, providing the less able students

with more clues and learning strategies to help them process ideas and complete the tasks successfully, and in so doing, enhance their self-confidence in learning. Conversely, more challenging tasks, or opportunities to set their own questions, are given to the more able students to stimulate their thinking and deepen their learning. Schools are mostly able to adjust the requirements of assessments, and set the ratio for questions of different difficulty levels in the assessment papers. Schools that set tiered assessment papers are better placed to measure and evaluate the knowledge and skills level of students of different abilities.

However, relatively speaking, schools are less effective in catering for learner diversity in classrooms. They should capitalise on collaborative lesson planning and peer lesson observations to further discuss and develop effective learning and teaching strategies.

 Regarding gifted education, schools demonstrate a mature and confident use of the second and third levels of the three-tier implementation model: school-based pull-out programmes and off-school support. Schools host a great variety of after-class pull-out programmes.

They also provide opportunities for students to organise school activities themselves, and recommend individual students to join external training courses or competitions, extending their potential in such areas as academia, sports and arts, and leadership, as well as broadening their horizons. Schools that implement the first level of school-based whole-class teaching focus on guiding students into recognising and using different thinking tools, with a view to nurturing their higher-order thinking skills. However, support in terms of developing students’ creativity and personal-social competence is somewhat limited, and could be further strengthened. Schools that have established a “Talent Pool” can formulate specific criteria for identifying students’ potential, such as using the concept of multiple intelligences to evaluate students with talents in different areas. They also use the “Talent Pool” to select students for internal pull-out programmes and recommend them for external courses and competitions, enabling them to discover and build on their talents and strengths.

 For students with special educational needs (SEN), most schools have set up policies and mechanisms for a whole-school approach to integrated education. They are able to identify such students in time and appropriately use the extra resources provided by the EDB to support them. In order to support students with SEN in their learning, schools provide pull-out small-group teaching and after-class remedial programmes to give students more individual support and guidance. They also adjust learning materials, assignments and assessments to strengthen students’ foundation for learning. However, schools need to ensure alignment between the learning materials used in after-class support programmes and those used in class, and to continuously monitor students’ learning progress so as to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies. In terms of support for student development, schools arrange for students with SEN to receive professional support, and enlist the assistance of their peers and teachers to further develop their communication and social skills. Some schools allow these students to participate in activities and services in and outside school, with the purpose of unleashing their potential, helping them realise their self-worth, and enhancing their self-esteem.

 With the establishment of the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO) post, schools are steadily enhancing their commitment to school-based experience sharing and the collaboration between multi-disciplinary teams and subject panels. They arrange for teachers and specialist staff (such as educational psychologists and speech therapists) or support staff from tertiary institutions to conduct collaborative lesson planning and lesson studies together, with a view to enhancing teachers’ professional capabilities. Currently, the post of SENCO has only been established for a short time and its role is yet to be

strengthened in schools. Schools should delegate the SENCO’s work appropriately, giving them sufficient space to perform their leadership, planning, and co-ordination functions, so as to better promote cross-subject collaboration. School-based teacher professional development mechanisms should also be fully utilised to support other teachers in honing their skills of catering for the needs of students with SEN in class.

 Schools take the learning and growth needs of NCS students seriously. They often draw on the support of these students’ peers to help them adapt to and integrate into school life.

Schools also organise a variety of activities to enhance NCS students’ understanding of Hong Kong and Chinese culture. Some schools host life-wide learning activities to foster an inclusive atmosphere, to impress on students the importance of mutual respect and acceptance. In terms of supporting NCS students in their learning, schools with extra funding generally hire new staff or acquire additional teaching resources to help NCS students with their learning of Chinese Language. Based on the number of NCS students they have, schools usually decide on the modes of classroom support they deem appropriate, including integrating them into mainstream classes, pull-out learning, class or cross-level grouping, or a combination of these approaches. Yet, not many teachers have undertaken professional development related to second language learning and teaching.

Those who have not received such training generally lack understanding of second language instruction, and consequently have not been able to effectively apply learning and teaching strategies relevant to NCS students’ needs. In schools with a higher intake of NCS students, the senior secondary curriculum is influenced by international Chinese examinations, and is usually planned with the purpose of helping students achieve the relevant qualifications. Expectations for students are relatively low, and since the curriculum has not been planned with respect to students’ abilities, their motivations and impetus for learning Chinese are affected, which prevents them from achieving higher proficiency in the language. Outside regular classes, schools mostly offer after-class remedial programmes to support student learning, but the effectiveness of such measures varies. The more effective remedial classes organise students into groups based on their abilities. They are also successful in enhancing students’ interest in learning and catering for their learning needs through selected storybooks and appropriate reading and listening materials, as well as learning activities designed to consolidate their language knowledge foundation. The less effective classes usually fail to tie in closely with the Chinese Language curriculum or to design appropriate learning materials that suit students’ level of language proficiency or address their learning difficulties. Moreover, schools with a high intake of NCS students, or English-medium schools, mostly do not provide a language-rich environment, and so NCS students tend to communicate in their mother tongue or English, and lack the motivation to use Chinese. Overall, many schools are already using the

“Chinese Language Assessment Tools for NCS Students” or other school-based assessment tools to ascertain their NCS students’ starting ability in Chinese, and employ the data thus obtained as a reference for class streaming. They also draw on the “Chinese Language Curriculum Second Language Learning Framework” (“Learning Framework”) in planning their curriculum. However, they have not been able to fully exploit the “Learning Framework” and their assessment data to perfect their overall planning for supporting NCS students’ learning of Chinese Language.

 Generally speaking, schools are beginning to grasp ways of catering for learner diversity, but still need to capitalise on assessment data to better understand students’ needs, review the efficacy of their support measures, and make necessary adjustments to their plans and strategies. Schools need to continuously expand teachers’ professional capacity and

increase their understanding of the needs of different groups of students. Through enhanced professional exchange, teachers could explore effective teaching strategies together, so as to better meet the learning and growth needs of different students.

Exemplars

Effectively using differentiated learning and teaching strategies to cater for learner diversity

The various subjects under the Science Education KLA undertake to adapt their own curriculum and assessment to appropriately cater for learner diversity. Taking Science as an example, teachers focus on teaching the core topics in classes for the less able students to help them establish a solid foundation for learning. For classes of higher ability, more extension topics are introduced to allow students to deepen their learning. In terms of assignments, teachers use graded experiment worksheets to help the less able students better grasp basic concepts, and a greater number of higher-order questions to extend the learning of the more able ones. The junior-secondary learning task workbook, devised for the purpose of reinforcing classroom learning, has been divided into the “Core” and

“Extension” booklets. The former is more diverse in content, and includes experiment logs, vocabulary usage exercises, and materials supporting the learning of Science in English, seeking to help students consolidate their knowledge and skills. The latter, comprising more subject-related reading materials and advanced questions on application of scientific knowledge, is meant to widen students’ scope of reading and stimulate their thinking. For assessment, teachers also set tiered tests, whereby test papers of varied difficulty levels are provided, so as to heighten students’ sense of success in learning, and to encourage them to challenge themselves.

SENCO effectively executing his/her duties to cater for students’ needs

The school supports students with SEN in their learning, emotional, and social needs in a systematic manner. Under the leadership of the SENCO, the student support committee liaises closely with the curriculum committee to co-develop appropriate measures for supporting students with SEN in their learning, such as adapting the length and vocabulary of reading materials to aid comprehension, and providing clues in assignments to help them complete the learning tasks. The SENCO has hosted open classrooms and experience-sharing sessions to allow teachers insight into the characteristics of students with SEN and the corresponding pedagogical strategies. The SENCO has also observed teachers’ lessons, and engaged in professional exchanges on learning and teaching strategies for addressing the needs of students with SEN, thus empowering teachers’ skills in taking care of these students in class. The school also keenly promotes home-school co-operation. Parents of students with SEN are offered the opportunity to observe lessons. This enables them to gain an understanding of their children’s learning and the support techniques used by the school. In turn, they can use similar strategies at home to guide their children’s learning.

A clear philosophy for supporting NCS students’ learning of Chinese Language, complemented by appropriate strategies, and timely review of students’ learning effectiveness that informs planning

The school’s philosophy in supporting their NCS students’ learning of Chinese Language is clear: their goal is to assist them in bridging over to mainstream Chinese classes. At P1 to P4, the school mainly offers pull-out classes for NCS students. They take reference from the “Learning Framework” as the basis for developing the school-based curriculum, and set expected learning outcomes for NCS students in the domains of listening, speaking, reading and writing. At every year level, the learning materials used by NCS students are the same as those for mainstream classes, but teachers would make adaptations based on students’

language abilities. For example, they would modify the teaching focuses, shorten the length of reading passages, simplify the vocabulary, and add visual aids to cater for students’

needs, and to lay the foundation for their transitioning to mainstream lessons in the future.

Having a firm grasp of NCS students’ learning styles and characteristics, teachers employ a diverse range of learning and teaching strategies in the reading lessons, notably reciting and skywriting, using short video clips, and performing physical actions, in order to capture students’ interest and facilitate learning.

Teachers in charge of co-ordinating matters related to NCS students’ learning of Chinese Language conduct day-to-day lesson observations and pen-and-paper assessments to regularly review students’ language abilities. They flexibly adjust support strategies, such as arranging for eligible NCS students to attend mainstream Chinese classes, or re-assigning students, who have yet to catch up on mainstream language levels, back into pull-out classes to continue their learning.