GEGCLEAR ‘Early Education Professional Development Advanced Course: Early Literacy Support (2020-2021)’
GEGCLEAR ‘Early Education Professional Development Advanced Course: Early Literacy Support (2020-2021)’
01
Jun
01/06/2021
On the 22 May, Unit 1 ‘Initiating the Support Program Step-by-Step’ was successfully held at the Fatima Centenary Auditorium at the University of Saint Joseph.
As an active promoter of Macau’s early literacy education, one of the project’s focus is kindergarten teacher’s training. Since 2019, GEGCLEAR has been co-hosting the ‘Early Education Professional Development Course: Early Literacy’ teacher training course with the Division of Teacher and Research Staff Development under DSEDJ. As previous sessions were received positively by participating kindergarten teachers, GEGCLEAR, Domingos Lam Center for Research in Education (DLCRE) of the University of Saint Joseph and DSEDJ continued their collaboration in 2021/2022. They will be offering a new training program ‘Early Education Professional Development Advanced Course: Early Literacy Support’, which comprised four units.
On the 22nd of May, 2021, Unit 1 ‘Initiating the Support Program Step-by-Step’ was successfully held at the Fatima Centenary Auditorium at the University of Saint Joseph. 104 kindergarten teachers from 6 project schools, including Macau Baptist College, Colégio Santa Rosa de Lima (Chinese Section), Escola Dom João Paulino, Lou Hau High School Affiliated Kindergarten, Fu Luen School and Our Lady of Fatima Girls’ School (listed in no particular order) participated in the training. The training was held in hybrid mode, as speakers from Hong Kong and Macau instructed via Zoom and on-site respectively and simultaneously.
DLCRE’s Director Professor Ana Correia opened the training with a welcome speech. She stressed the foundational role of early education in children’s learning journey, which also shaped their subsequent development. As a result, early intervention could close the achievement gap. She also praised GEGCLEAR in improving not only children’s Chinese literacy but also the integration and development of interactive, play-oriented educational mode. Professor Correia envisioned participation from more Macau kindergartens in GEGCLEAR, hoping that the trained teachers will become mentors of the project.
Unit 1 was composed of two sessions. In the first session, GEGCLEAR’s Director Professor Cheng Pui-Wan and Associate Director Gloria Ho introduced the rationale and design of the support program. After addressing the teachers its framework, Dr Miranda Mak, Assistant Professor of the University of Macau in the Faculty of Education, demonstrated the application of teaching materials in the support program, which included etymology cards, picture cards and short readers.
GEGCLEAR’s Associate Director Terry Tse explicated procedures of the screening test and subsequent grouping arrangements in the second session. To anticipate scenarios in the actual screening process, teachers used the evaluation form to do a mock test with each other. This was followed by the sharing of two pilot school’s directors, which joined the project since 2016. Amanda Lei and Ann Chan, director of Colégio Santa Rosa de Lima (Chinese Section) and Macau Baptist College, shared on the administrative aspect of the support program, which included its planning and implementation. Project schools were also given the opportunity to discuss in groups on how to arrange the support program in their respective school context.
GEGCLEAR will continue to offer relevant training program and enhancement of educational resources to project schools, with the aim that project schools can implement the support program with no fuss in the new academic year. It is expected that session 2 of the course, themed ‘Teaching in Support Program’, will be held on 17/7/2021 and 28/8/2021 in two respective classes. Unit 3 and Unit 4 are scheduled to be held in 9/2021 and 4/2022.
