Overall aims
- To provide every student with opportunities to learn a second language as a tool to extend their knowledge and experience.
- To provide students with learning experiences to increase their language proficiency for study, work, leisure and personal enrichment; develop their knowledge, skills, values and attitudes; and promote life-long learning so as to enhance understanding and global competitiveness.
Curriculum goals
Listening
- An authentic language environment is constructed for students to listen to native English speakers from a variety of sources.
- Students have to listen carefully, to understand and respond appropriately to others with good manners.
Speaking
- To read and speak with variation in pitch, tone, pace and volume and suitable body language.
- To make contributions and ask questions that are responsive to others’ ideas and views.
- Use accurate pronunciation and appropriate vocabulary, with a level of grammar accuracy which does not interfere with communication.
Reading
- To cultivate in students a reading habit and promote reading as a pleasure.
- Students can make use of vocabulary learnt from reading in writing and conversation.
Writing
- To develop the understanding that writing is both essential to thinking and learning, and enjoyable in its own right.
- Students will write in paragraphs in different text types.
- Students will use the planning, drafting and editing processes to improve their work.
- Students will demonstrate a knowledge of grammar constructions and apply the knowledge appropriately in a range of context.
School-based curriculum
Reading to Learn
Using a set of Australian readers with different themes, fiction and non-fiction, the school teachers have designed different learning activities for P1-6 students to help them acquire knowledge; develop language skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing as well as grammar (text types, vocabulary, grammar items and structures); and generic skills ( collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, information technology, numeracy, problem-solving, self-management and study skill); values and attitudes.
Accelerated Reading Scheme
The scheme is targeted for students from P1-3 to assess the English reading abilities of students in order to devise measures for varying needs. Using the scheme, teachers can address students’ individual differences. Teachers can give suitable suggestions to maximize stronger students’ potential, encourage them to strive for excellence and reinforce their strengths. In the meantime, teachers can provide remedies for weaker students in order to build up their self-confidence and sense of achievement.
Drama in English Education
Drama can enhance students’ motivation in learning English. It also extends students’ learning outside the classroom. To help students gain more confidence in speaking English, the school has established two drama programmes, namely Helen O’Grady Drama Programme and Shakepeare4All for students of the low primary and upper primary respectively. The school has also started to integrate Drama into the P6 English curriculum since 2008. The programme aims to teach students to be critically-literate learners who use intentional high-order thinking skills to regulate their speaking, listening, reading and writing so that meaning is constructed and communicated to others. The programme offers a diverse range of roles for students to work with their strengths and interests to help them identify and develop different intelligences. Generic skills can also be developed at the same time.