Author: system
Results of the 75th Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival 2023-2024
Good News 🎉 A total of 56 students participated in the 75th Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival 😘, of which 15 participated in English Speech, 27 participated in Cantonese Speech and 14 participated in Putonghua Speech. In English Speech, 14 students got Merit and 1 student got Credit 🤩And Lai Ming Yau from Lower K3A got the 3rd place in Hong Kong 💖💖 In Cantonese and Putonghua Speech, 7 students got Honours, 26 students got Merit and 8 students got Good 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗Congratulations to all of you again for your hard work, and thank you to all of you for all of your training and all of you for all of your support from your parents 😊👏🎊🎊👏🎊👏👏👏👏🎊
K2 Visit to “Sunny Smiles Playground Information
On 23 January 2024 (Tuesday), the Lower Class will visit the “Sunny Smile Playground”, details of the activity are as follows:
Assembling time: 1:00pm (Please be punctual)
Assembling Place: Our school (please enter through the main entrance of the school hall)
Dismissal time: 4:45pm
Dismissal point: Main entrance of the school hall
Attire: Please wear full winter sportswear and bring a water bottle with a strap (name must be written on it).
Notes:
1. Children do not need to pay for their homework or bring the school bag.
2. Morning and afternoon classes will return to the school according to the above meeting time; morning classes do not need to have lessons in the morning, and children in whole-day classes can go to school according to the normal time.
3. Please note that there will be no extra-curricular activities for Ballet and Jazz Dance on this day.
✨”Ho Yat Tung Cup” Tuen Mun District Children’s Talent Competition✨
Good News! A total of 16 representatives of our Upper and Lower Class students participated in the 2023-2024 “Ho Yat Tung Cup” Tuen Mun District Children’s Talent Competition organised by Shun Tak Fraternity Association Ho Yat Tung Primary School.😍”Congratulations!👏👏👏
Joint School Teacher Development Day（January）??
17 January 2024(Wednesday) will be the Joint Schools Teacher Development Day.
One day holiday for all students.
TWGHs Ko Teck Kin Memorial Kindergarten Programme Briefing” Activities
We are going to hold the “Tung Wah Group of Hospitals Ko Tak Kan Memorial Kindergarten Programme Briefing Session”, for more details, please refer to the following poster 🎉.
“I Love Hong Kong, I love China” Lunar New Year’s Eve Game Booth Parent-Child Activity
As the Lunar New Year is approaching
, we would like to wish all parents “All the best for the New Year” and our toddlers “Good health and academic progress” in the Year of the Dragon.
In order to welcome the coming of Chinese New Year, we have arranged the “I Love Hong Kong, I Love China” Lunar New Year’s Eve Game Booth Parent-child Activity, which allows children to learn and understand more about the traditional culture of Chinese New Year through playing games.
Parents can browse the poster for more details of the activity. If you are interested in joining the activity, please scan the QRCODE and fill in the enrolment form before 31 January 2024 (Wednesday), thank you.
Parenting Tips
How to cultivate a positive learning attitude in young children from an early age?
Source: Dr. LAU Yee-hung, Associate Professor and Deputy Head, Department of Early Childhood Education, The Hong Kong Institute of Education
Many parents hope that their children will develop a love for learning from a young age. However, children don’t automatically develop a liking for learning; it requires parents to gradually nurture them, bit by bit.
Encouraging Children in Interactions
Children won’t initially learn to persevere on their own. It’s the parents’ responsibility to encourage them to persist in the process, instilling in them an anticipation of success. When a child succeeds, parents can review the past with them, allowing the child to feel the valuable outcomes achieved through perseverance and encouraging them to continue exhibiting positive behavior.
Providing Intrinsic Motivation
Often, children need some motivation to excel in certain tasks. Parents should emphasize what the child gains without making comparisons, such as satisfying their sense of achievement, enjoying the process of effort, and receiving appreciation from parents. This helps children experience the joy of learning and establishes intrinsic motivation, enabling them to engage in learning activities willingly from the heart.
Parents set a good example
Learning knows no age limits, and parents can demonstrate proactive learning and curiosity in front of their children. For instance, parents can learn to cook new dishes online, expressing to their children that, even if they don’t understand initially, they persevere and learn from various sources. Even if the outcome isn’t delicious, they commit to improving next time. Allowing children to see their parents’ initiative and curiosity in learning through real examples is much more effective than mere verbal instruction.
There are no children who don’t love learning; there are only parents who don’t know how to teach their children to learn. A love for learning is inherent in children. Correctly instilling a positive learning attitude in children, can only be achieved through the parents’ persistence and continuous efforts, reinforcing the child’s motivation for learning through various everyday experiences.
Parenting Tips
Apart from good grades and getting into a good school, what else does a child need?
Written by: Ms Carmen Leung (Teacher Car Car)
Many parents often ask, “What is holistic education?” If we look at the profound wisdom of the Chinese people spanning thousands of years, it is about cultivating a child’s “virtue, intelligence, physical fitness, social skills, and aesthetics.” From the perspective of psychologists, it involves developing a child’s multiple intelligences. From an educational standpoint, it goes beyond the pursuit of knowledge; we also need to nurture a child’s values, attitudes, appreciation for art and culture, interpersonal skills, problem-solving abilities, and critical thinking. In simpler terms, from a commoner’s perspective, holistic education means enabling children to excel in academics, have many friends, possess positive thinking, and excel in various aspects such as music, sports, and art. Do you want your children to experience holistic development?
Multiple intelligences are categorized into seven types, with innate and nurtured aspects each accounting for half.
In common discourse, the concept of multiple intelligences is frequently mentioned. Let’s explore holistic education from a psychological perspective. The theory of “multiple intelligences” was proposed by Professor Howard Gardner of Harvard University in 1983. He discovered that intelligence could be classified into at least seven types: linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, musical intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence.
When we discuss “intelligence,” parents often associate it with genius or innate talents. Is intelligence something one is born with, or is it developed later in life? In reality, an individual’s intelligence is a combination of innate and nurtured factors. Each child has a range of innate intelligence, such as an IQ of 100-120. Regardless of the stimuli provided or efforts made, their IQ cannot exceed 120. So, do we still need to cultivate a child’s multiple intelligences? Absolutely! Because whether a child’s IQ stays at 100 or reaches 120, it depends on postnatal cultivation!
Each intelligence is equally important.
So, how should it be cultivated? Through practice? Classes? Exposure to the outside world? Engaging in sports or listening to music? In reality, different intelligences have different cultivation methods. Scholars propose multiple intelligences to remind everyone that when parents focus on cultivating their children’s academic subjects such as Chinese, English, and math, they should not forget that other intelligences are equally important, especially interpersonal communication skills and personal introspective intelligence. If a child lacks any of these, how can they navigate in society? Therefore, when choosing courses for our children, don’t just opt for academic classes, language classes, or literacy classes. We should pause and think, besides academic performance, in which areas does the child need improvement? How is their communication ability? Analytical skills? Personal introspective ability? If a child’s communication skills are lacking, should parents choose courses that provide sufficient space for communication with others, such as drama classes, to allow them more opportunities to express themselves?
Remember the underlying meaning behind what I said about “multiple intelligences.” Take a moment to pause and consider the child’s development in areas beyond academics!
Parenting Tips
Storytelling education, what can parents do?
Written by: Senior Early Childhood Education Consultant, Miss Mok Loi Yan
Many parents have asked me about storytelling topics that are challenging to explain to young children, such as stories involving death, like “The Little Match Girl,” or stories with violence, like “Little Red Riding Hood.” Due to the detailed depiction of events in the storybooks and lifelike illustrations, children may experience significant fear of death after listening to or reading such stories. They might be unable to express their inner discomfort, and some children even burst into tears after hearing these stories. What was originally meant to be an enjoyable parent-child storytelling time ends up having the opposite effect, triggering a heavy psychological burden on the children and leaving parents feeling guilty and unsure of how to handle the aftermath.
Fewer Characters, Positive Plot
I advise parents to start by selecting stories that are deemed suitable for a child’s mental and comprehension level from the vast array available in libraries. These stories typically have fewer characters, and a positive plot, and are easy for parents to use during interactive storytelling to help children understand causality and emotions. Stories with fewer characters allow children to focus more on understanding the transformation of the characters’ inner selves, behavior, and values within the story context.
Choosing stories with a positive plot helps build qualities such as self-awareness, problem-solving skills, confidence, and analytical ability in children. These positive aspects counterbalance stories with negative themes, bad situations in stories, or the ability to face difficulties in reality. Therefore, unless parents are certain that their children have accumulated a sufficient foundation of resilience from such stories and mental experiences, they should avoid exposing children to stories with terrifying or negative themes until these prerequisites are met.
Inspiring Cognitive Growth and Positive Character Principles
Secondly, starting with the educational significance that stories bring to children, it is crucial to steadfastly adhere to the principles of inspiring children’s cognitive growth and fostering positive character development! Regardless of how convincingly the storyteller portrays evil and villains, don’t forget the original intention! Storytelling education is a process of interactive learning between the audience and the storyteller, stemming from the direct description of scenes, associated information, and the shared underlying meaning. These observations, descriptions, awareness, and interactive content arise from the mental and emotional states of the audience and storyteller at that moment, as well as their accumulated personal experiences.
The role of the storyteller in education is highly important. In addition to carefully preparing and reading the story content, emphasizing key points and conveying the underlying meaning clearly, the storyteller should also be prepared to trigger children’s thinking about people and events at certain points in the story. Providing opportunities for the exchange of values in description and atmosphere creation is essential. Most importantly, observe the audience’s reactions while listening to the story and engage in interactive parts that deepen thought and sustain curiosity.
Dramatization and interaction should be humanized
Thirdly, ensure that the dramatization and interaction by the storyteller have the invigorating effect of being humanized and appealing to innate goodness. Whether in stories or the real world, children face different psychological and situational challenges that provide them with important opportunities for development. These experiences make them happier and more resilient than children who grow up in a sheltered environment. As the guiding light for children, we should equip them with the abilities needed for their journeys in life. Therefore, gradually tailor stories to children’s life experiences and cognitive levels, providing narratives of different levels, encounters, or aspects of human nature for them to hear.
When the storyteller portrays negative characters or delves into psychological crossroads and choices involving human nature, it is even more crucial to vividly depict the inner dialogue of conscience. The storyteller, assuming a narrative role, should provide children with positive consequences as a reference and analyze the relationships between themselves, characters, and situations. When parents engage in storytelling education with children, any decisions made in response to presented scenarios must be voluntary. Allowing children to experiment, face challenges, or find solace in the virtual world is essential. Moreover, it is important to make children aware of the parents’ stance and understand that parents are open to discussion and can be approached for communication! If the interactions spark reflective thoughts on love in children, helping them find their position in these values, the storyteller has successfully illuminated an outstanding life for the child through the story.
