Week 4 Group Task--- Analyse The Role of Student in An Innovative Classroom WU Hao( William)

The case I analyse is a controversial one, I translated the original web page into English https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UenzJTziT47-FyJScylrdZ2Goa_eeXBUa8GdbN4h1Qg/edit

Students’ roles in learning has always been the most critical factors of designing a classroom. According to different curriculums, students’ roles could be various but also similar in some aspects. This blog entry will mainly focus on the roles of students in Chinese poetry chanting class, a special learning experience for traditional Chinese poetry teaching.

Introduction

Due to the educational system of Chinese mainland, the teaching method has been instructional lectures for centuries. With the development of technologies and education integration, many educators in China begin to realise how important to attract students’ interests in learning, which has introduced a new teaching method for teaching traditional Chinese poetry --- Chanting class.

In old times, students were sitting in the classroom reciting all the poetic verses together in the same tones and rhythms. Nowadays, a new kind of class makes students to stand up and imagine themselves as the poets to perform the poets out with various music and rhythms based on the right rising and falling tone of ancient Chinese characters.

Students’ roles

• Cooperative listeners -- At the first stage, teacher will read the poems to the students while students listening to the poem and get a general idea of how it sounds like. Then, teacher will explain the ancient Chinese words in the poem and also the relevant grammar to the students. In this process, students’ roles are not active but more cooperative-like.
• Self-learner -- After the instruction by the teacher, students have their to digest the poem and raise questions if they find some. This process does not only include the Q&A part, the personal comprehension is also very important for its influence on the performance later.
• Imitator -- Teacher will begin to tutor students how to perform the poem out based on the tones and rhythms. This is a creative part, but not totally creative, what students should do is to imitate what teacher shows. This could be understood as the mechanical drill.
• Innovative and performer -- The most precious part of this method is there is no limits for students’ imagination. Students may expand their imagination after their imitation from teachers. With the playing of ancient music and tones, students begin to perform the poem out by moving their bodies, chanting the verses and even dance.
• Evaluator -- Students’ learning outcomes are always the reflection of how well the teacher teaches. In this class, the ability of reciting poems is not the main focus, instead, the ability to comprehend and perform the ancient poems out with innovative performance, on the other hand, it drives students to participate more in class activities, which makes this classroom an interactive one.

Summary

The case is controversial because it looks like still a traditional Chinese class, but with more integration of media, music, technology, the class will become more active and interactive. 

It is a good sign that educational institution now realise the classroom designing should match the new trends of exploring students’ creativity and potentials.