Speech at HS Assembly, May 31, 2021
Weekly updates
Tomorrow will be International Children’s Day. For those who still self regard as children. Happy Children’s Day! Actually, every person should try to keep some traits that normally only children possess, such as endless curiosity, full of openness, and tremendous energy, etc. So, wish you all will always be young and happy.
DP1 Arts exhibition opened last Friday and will remain open through June 11. I appreciated those Art works, they are full of creativity, imagination, as well as provocative ideas behind these pieces. I encourage all students and staff members to appreciate these wonderful art works.
Probably you noticed that our DP2 students have finished their global examinations, while Cambridge examinations for G11 and G10 are close to the end of this season too. June will continue be the season of harvesting when students will see the outcomes of your learning efforts. I know you will be still working hard for the rest of exams. I also know, very soon, all of you will switch gear again to the final assessment week of the semester.
Especially, on this Friday, the third G12 class, the class of 2021, will officially graduate from ECNUAS. All students and staff members in the high school will witness another group of ECNUAS graduates proudly walking out of this campus into their next stage of study careers.
When you attend the graduation ceremony, you know you must dress formal and demonstrate good manners. By dressing formal and showing good manners, you demonstrate your respect to the graduates, their parents, our distinguished guests, and more importantly the tradition and culture of the school.
On the afternoon of the same day, we will celebrate your learning outcomes from extra-curriculum, or in some schools, they call it co-curriculum. We all know that students in our school not only learn in academic classes but also in a variety of extra-curricular opportunities including CAS clubs, House events, etc. Hence, let us wholeheartedly celebrate our very first CAS Exhibition. Many students are working on this project, many meetings and plans have been organized, a lot of preparations have been made, and a lot of excitement can be seen felt among our students especially those CAS club leaders. Many teachers are supporting this project, including CAS coordinator Miss Ann Liu, her collaborator Miss Amelie Yin, and all the CAS club teacher supervisors. We look forward to a well organized, exciting, and memorable CAS exhibition on Friday.
Theme of June 2021
Since this is the last day of May, I am going to announce the theme of June 2021. There are two parts of the theme of June, including Reflective and Thinking Skills.
Being reflective is one of the 12 ECNUAS learner attributes.
Reflective
You give thoughtful consideration to your own learning and experience.
You are able to assess and understand your strengths and limitations in order to support your learning and personal development.
If you want to become an effective learner, you have to learn to be reflective about your learning. You are not just am empty vase that awaits other people to fill in you with knowledge and skills. Rather, you will proactively think about what you want to learn, why you want to learn these things, and how you will be a better learner. You reach out to teachers, counsellors, parents, and friends because you know they can help you better see yourself. You would like to deal with your shortcomings, whether spoken English or Chinese reading, and you want to continue building up your strengths.
When you clearly see your strengths and limitations, you will know where you should invest in your energy and time and where to find supports and resources. Therefore, being reflective is the first step of becoming a self-regulated learner. And being a self-regulated learner is all but anything that a good education should help students achieve.
Thinking skills
You are able to think critically by analyzing and evaluating issues and ideas;
You are able to think creatively by generating novel ideas and considering new perspectives;
You are also able to transfer skills and knowledge across disciplines.
Reflection in IBDP
While reflection should happen in every IB or A-Level subject, reflection in IBDP core is especially highlighted.
CAS is a guided experiential learning experience focusing on three main areas. The emphasis in CAS is on affective reflection, characterized by reflecting on attitudes, feelings, values, principles, motivation, emotions and self- development.
TOK is all about reflecting on the nature of knowledge. The emphasis in TOK is on critical reflection, characterized by reflecting on metacognition, evaluation, justification, arguments, claims and counterclaims, underlying assumptions and different perspectives.
EE helps students gain experiences of planning a research study, conducting the research and writing up your findings. The emphasis in the extended essay is on process reflection, characterized by reflecting on conceptual understandings, decision-making, engagement with data, the research process, time management, methodology, successes and challenges, and the appropriateness of sources.
IB. (2018). Extended Essay Guide (pp. 39-40).
Reflection in international education
As you can see, reflection is not a practice distant from your daily lives in the high school. Reflection should be part of your learning in every class, every assignment, every activity, really every experience. I gave one example. Last year, at the end of the new Grade 9 orientation week, one of the new Grade 9 students reflected on his learning experience and compared the differences between the learning in his previous public school and our school. He said, what our school does is to create opportunities for student learning instead of forcing students to learn.
I totally agree with his observation and I think this is exactly what the school and our teachers are doing for students here. We create an environment full of opportunities of learning; and more importantly we are creating many and more opportunities of learning for students.
ECNUAS curriculum components
I mentioned these ECNUAS HS curriculum components before. There are 27 components as it stands. Now I would like each student to take a closer look at each these 27 components and reflect:
Do you think you learn and grow with all or most of these curricular parts?
Or, in fact, do you only narrowly focus on a few but missing many other learning opportunities in the high school?
For example, do you miss the leadership development opportunities in Houses or CAS clubs? Do you miss the opportunities of developing your public English speeches at a variety of Assemblies? Do you reach out to English teachers and ask for extra support for your reading and writing?
Dewey used to say, Education is Life. Yet, most people might believe that education is preparation for life. Regardless of your understanding of education, you must be involved and engaged in these colourful things around you as life is never going to be the matter of one colour, one approach, one person, or one future. Education life is full of possibilities that every of you should consider and explore. If your reflection helped you realize this, you would wholeheartedly embrace these learning opportunities that the school provides.
Thinking skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy
Thinking skills is the second part of this month’s Theme. I talked about thinking skills before. And you probably know there are different perspectives on what we call as Thinking Skills.
Some people use Bloom’s Taxonomy to categorize thinking skills, the first three are lower order, while the other three are high order.
For effective learners, while low order skills are necessary because you have to learn to process basics such as a formula in Physics or a sentence structure in English, these high order skills are more desired if you want to be able to solve new problems, assess the learning progresses of your own and others, or create some new research projects such as Extended Essay (EE) as in IBDP or Independent Project Qualification (IPQ) as in Cambridge A-Level. In short, with the support, sometimes, push or nudge, by teachers around you, you should urge yourself to be able analyze, evaluate, and create.
Higher Order thinking skills in A-Level
High order thinking skills are developed and required in both IBDP and A-Level programs. Take A-Level as an example, this quote from the Cambridge website explains its understanding and approach to higher order thinking skills.
“Cambridge programmes combine an emphasis on mastering subjects in depth with the development skills for study and work in the future…We also encourage students to develop higher order thinking skills - problem solving, critical thinking, independent research, collaboration and presenting arguments. These are transferable skills that will last a lifetime, preparing students for their future lives. They also make learning enjoyable and rewarding.”
Therefore, learning in A-Level program, just like that in IBDP, helps students master basic knowledge and skills; at the same time, they equip students with the skills that can support life long learning and can make you enjoy solving new problems and creating new approaches and products.
https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/why-choose-us/benefits-of-a-cambridge-education/international-curriculum/
Unpacking thinking skills
I talk about these categories before. But I don’t think we had time to delve into any of these categories of thinking skills. Let us focus on Metacognition Skills today as it is highly related to the other theme of June, that is Being Reflective.
• Critical thinking skills: a collection of dispositions and skills underpinned by an open-mindedness to having currently held viewpoints challenged
• Creative thinking skills: the ability to generate and apply new ideas in specific contexts, seeing existing situations in a new way, identifying alternative explanations, and seeing or making new links that generate a positive outcome
• Problem solving skills: the ability to systematically explore a complex problem scenario, devise multi-step solutions to take into account all constraints, and adjust in light of the feedback received
• Computational thinking skills: the thought processes involved in formulating a problem and expressing its solutions(s) in such a way that a computer can effectively carry it out. This type of skills is closely associated with mathematical thinking skills.
• Ethical reasoning skills: the ability to identify, assess, and develop ethical arguments from a variety of ethical positions.
• Metacognition skills: thinking about thinking, cognitive behaviours directly linked with the individual’s control and monitoring of their own learning and thinking.
Metacognition skills: thinking about thinking, cognitive behaviours directly linked with the individual’s control and monitoring of their own learning and thinking. How do we think about our own thinking? Do you have this kind of thinking habits or experiences? If not much, it is an area of thinking skills you should develop.
-Education: Future Frontiers, Thinking for the future. New South Wales Department of Education.
-Ethic reasoning: a key capability, Wesleyan University.
Examples of metacognitive strategies
There are many metacognitive strategies. If you are using several of them, then you are using some metacognitive strategies at least. You may want to learn more about these strategies and skills so that you can become a more successful learner.
Self-questioning
Evaluate own learning
Consider learning styles
Consider strengths and weaknesses
Writing down your thinking
Mnemonic Aids
Thinking aloud
Meditation
Graphic organizers
Requirement checklists
Active reading strategies
Active listening strategies
Planning ahead
Set learning goals
Reflection
…
You may also want to develop your own style of metacognitive strategies, I think they will be completely legitimate as long as they satisfy you and they help you think about your own thinking, and help you control and monitor your own thinking and learning. There are thousands and hundreds of thoughts in each of our mind in any hour in a day. It is impossible for us to monitor and control all of them. Yet, if we can monitor and control more of them and make them a little more conducive to our learning and lives, then how wonder this situation would be!
At last, it is one quote about reflection. It is said by Confucius.
“Learning without reflection is confusing, Reflection without learning is dangerous.”
子曰：“学而不思则罔，思而不学则殆”。
Therefore, you learning must be accompanied your thinking and reflection so that you will incorporate new knowledge in your own knowledge structure and will know how to apply the knowledge. If you only think and reflect without taking in new information and perspectives, your thinking could lead to nothing and possibly harm to yourself.
Comments