News

Greater Bay Area Guangzhou Cultural Exchange Tour

A breakthrough in S1 Student Admission

The number of application forms received in this year’s Discretionary Places(DP) Admission stage has exceeded previous records, showing that the school’s past efforts have been recognized by more parents. 30% of the students who submitted application forms this year, come from primary schools that have never chosen our school before. This reflects the growing awareness and understanding of our school by parents in different districts. They not only agree with the school’s vision and mission, but also have the confidence to choose our school as one of their two possible options in the DP stage. Our school is deeply grateful and promises to do our very best to enable every Kwei Wah Shan student to develop his/her potentials and build a positive outlook to life.

Next stage for promoting Self-regulated Learning

The ‘self-regulated learning’ framework as put forward by the school has been gradually implemented. Starting from lesson preparation to classroom interaction and cooperative learning groups, self-regulated learning in our school is then further extended to learning consolidation through after-class reflections ending in evaluating learning effectiveness through assessments.

The development focus of self-regulated learning in our school this year is ‘Assessments for Learning’. Teachers’ assessment literacy in both the Uniform Test and First Term Examination this year has shown significant improvement. Great breakthroughs have been made in the professionalism of paper design, the analysis of test and examination results and in training students to evaluate, reflect and plan their learning through assessments. Assessment is no longer a great scourge, but a good helper to help students learn.

To develop students’ learning habits, we focus on the ‘Six Stages of Note-taking’ this year. As observed, teachers can cultivate students’ note-taking skills according to the stage development strategy. Notes written by students are not only limited to basic stages, but also gradually develop to more advanced stages with greater autonomy. In the end, students are expected to use their notes to organize and convert knowledge, which help them review and prepare for examinations, making notes an efficient assistant to learning.

The school held the ‘Greater Bay Area Guangzhou Cultural Exchange Tour’ in this school year. On that morning, all the teachers took the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link to Guangzhou South Railway Station. In addition to experiencing the transportation hub facilities in the Greater Bay Area, we visited Guangzhou Siyuan School to have academic exchanges, observe classroom skills such as ‘Self-regulated Learning’ and share ways to cultivate students to become self-regulated learners. Teachers gained a lot from the educational excursion.

In addition, the school has participated in the ‘SRL Festival’ Open Classes of the Hong Kong Association of the Heads of Secondary Schools for the second consecutive year. The classes opened this year include Chinese Language, English Language, Liberal Studies and Science. Many teachers from collaborating schools came to our school to observe lessons and participate in post-observation meetings. Our teachers gained a lot of valuable and constructive feedback. Some teachers even praised our lessons as ‘4-point lessons’.  For us, we are aware that there is still a lot more to do in fine-tuning our teaching. We just hope to continue to strengthen exchanges, learn from each other and share with each other so as to improve the teaching effectiveness in our classrooms.

Students showing potentials on the Wah Shan Stage

The Wah Shan Stage was built last year and we officially started using it this year. There are lunchtime concerts held on the stage every month. Students willingly sign up and perform enjoyably on the stage. They sing and dance enthusiastically followed by rounds of applause from teachers and students. Not only our students are involved with performing on the stage, but also our teachers who perform by playing musical instruments or singing together with students happily. Oh what a wonderful time together!
In fact, the Wah Shan Stage was established to provide students with a platform to develop their potentials and talents, thereby increasing their confidence and building a sense of accomplishment.

School’s next five-year development plan

The school has confirmed the development direction of Self-regulated Learning. The next five-year plan will focus on the design of pre-lesson enquiry and all subjects at the junior secondary level will gradually design module-based pre-lesson enquiry, so that self-regulated learning can take root and develop steadily in our school.

Sports have always been the focus of our school’s development. In addition to basketball and volleyball, we will carry out more sport programmes in the near future, so that students can develop their sport potentials. Furthermore, the school attaches great importance to aesthetic development in areas such as music, dance, drama and the visual arts. For talented students, we will try our best to cultivate them and give them as many opportunities as we can to develop their strengths. All in all, the school will focus on enabling our potential students to achieve success in sports and arts.

Finally, I would like to once again thank the teaching team and all the supporting staff for their hard work, without which the school would not have made such great progress and achieved so much in teaching and learning in such a short period of time. Regarding student development, we have also worked hard to cultivate good personality traits and the all-round development of Wahshanians. May the Lord continue to lead Kwei Wah Shan College that we continue to develop in the days to come, with grace and strength!
Dr Cheng Lai-lam, Felix

Principal

February, 2019