S.K.H. St. Mary’s Church Mok Hing Yiu College Lee Chun Yu, Yuen Wing Ho

S.K.H. St. Mary’s Church Mok Hing Yiu College Lee Chun Yu, Yuen Wing Ho

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• Band 2

• Students have…

• positive learning attitude

• low motivation in autonomous learning

• dependency to teacher’s guidance

• average language proficiency

• Spelling problems

• Students do not appear interested in English

• Students do not understand an article

School’s MOI policy – class structure

Subject 1M/2M/3M 1A/2A/3A 1R/2R/3R 1Y/2Y/3Y

Chinese Language CMI CMI CMI CMI

Putonghua PMI PMI PMI PMI

English Language

EMI

EMI

EMI EMI

Mathematics

CMI CMI

Integrated Science Geography

CMI Computer Literacy

Technology & Living Liberal Studies

CMI History and Culture

Religious Studies Visual Arts Music

Physical Education

ELA

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B.1 Junior Form Geography

• School-based Curriculum

• Assessment

• Data response questions

• Map reading skill

First Term Semester Second Term Semester

Flooding Weather and Climate

Map Reading Skills Global Warming

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• Believe in “Flipped Classroom Model” teaching Style

• Deliver knowledge and instruction online (e-class)

• Develop students’ autonomous learning habit

• Before the lesson

• Powerpoint notes, videos and reading material are provided on E-class

• Students are required to jot note based on the notes

• During the lesson

• Students are required to have quizzes and exercises

• After the lesson

• Worksheets are given to students

• Students are required to write learning journal describing what they have learnt in the lesson

• Students are required to prepare for the next lesson

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Developing a Common Language

• Adapted

from Rose D.

(2012 edition) Reading to Learn, Book 1, p.24)

Teaching methods

1. Providing reading material

 To help students build their Geography vocabulary

2. Requiring students to categorize vocabulary items into different parts of speech

 To equip students with better reading skills

3. Requiring students to spell and memorize the vocabulary items  To help students understand the word formation of some commonly used Geography vocabulary.

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Purpose:

• Develop students writing skill for answering long questions.

• Consolidate students sentence structure for reading subject materials.

Method:

• Homework and worksheet with writing scaffolding

Some common sentence patterns used in Geography 1. Causes and effects

[Causes] [Connective]

lead to/cause/result in [Effects]

Increasing population causes great pressure on housing, social and welfare facilities.

Unawareness in

environmental protection leads to more serious environmental problems, such as waste of resources.

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Some common sentence patterns used in Geography 2. Writing Definition

When [Description of the process] [Name of the process] occurs.

When water droplets become larger and

fall to the ground, precipitation occurs.

When raindrops fall on vegetation and

remain there, interception occurs.

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• Complaint letter

• Passive Voice

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• Passive voice

• Model verbs

• Preparing presentation cue card

• Improving speaking skill

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Language teachers:

• Students should be embraced in an English atmosphere in Geography lesson, so that they can have more chance to practice their English.

• There are a lot of Geography terms that language teacher can’t teach.

Geography teachers:

• I expect my students can learn as many words as possible when I give them a text.

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So, how does it work?

Reading material

Modifying difficulty of the text

Teaching student to Guiding

student to write

• Text selected by Geography teacher

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• Highlighting some important vocabulary items (Freeman & Freeman, 2009)

• Subject Specific Vocabulary

• General Academic Vocabulary

• Signaling words

•  Geography teacher might focus on the Subject Specific Vocabulary

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Original text

• The water cycle is called the hydrologic cycle. In the hydrologic cycle, water from oceans, lakes, swamps, rivers, plants, and even you, can turn into water vapor.

Water vapor condenses into millions of tiny droplets that form clouds called condensation. Clouds lose their water as rain or snow, which is called precipitation.

• Precipitation is either absorbed into the ground or runs off into rivers. Some of the snow and ice that falls as precipitation stays at the Earth surface in glaciers and other types of ice. Some of the precipitation seeps into the ground and becomes a part of the groundwater called infiltration. Water that runs off into rivers flows into ponds, lakes, or oceans where it evaporates back into the atmosphere. Water that was absorbed into the ground is taken up by plants. Plants lose water from their surfaces to the atmosphere called transpiration. Oceans

Edited text ^• The water cycle is called the hydrologic cycle. In the hydrologic cycle, water from oceans, lakes, swamps, rivers, plants, and even you, can turn into water vapour by evaporation. Evaporation takes place when oceans and lakes lose water from their surfaces to the

atmosphere,. Water vapour then condenses into millions of tiny droplets that form clouds. This process is called condensation. When clouds lose their water as rain or snow, precipitation occurs.

• Precipitation is either absorbed into the ground or runs off into rivers. Some of the snow and ice that falls as precipitation stays at the Earth surface in glaciers and other types of ice. Some of the precipitation seeps into the ground and becomes a part of the groundwater. This process is called infiltration. When water runs off into rivers flows into ponds, lakes, or oceans, some of it evaporates back into the atmosphere and some was

• Teaching sentence patterns based on students’ need to help them

deconstruct long and difficult text

• Combining graphic and text can help students better understand the

content

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Teaching sentence patterns based on students’ need to help them deconstruct long and difficult text

• Preparing writing worksheet

• Staging of difficulty – From word level to sentence level

• Chances for practice is essential

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• Language teacher and Geography have different expectation on what they want students to learn.

• Students’ need in language learning keeps changing.

• Sometimes, teaching schedule of both subjects have to be remapped (plus, content of textbook has been changing frequently)

Adjust our mind set – be positive

Believe in our teaching ability – we are chosen

Work with a good English Teammate – s/he is professional

Familiar with English Curriculum – teach something students can handle

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• Asking language teachers to provide teaching materials (video) of sentence patterns, grammar and writing skills

• Improving students speaking skills (presentation, assembly sharing)

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