Date & Time

Topic

Abstract

2020-12-09 (Wed) 10:15-10:55

Still Love, under COVID19: Can You Hear Me, Daddy?

The focus item 'Can you hear me, Daddy?' of 'Still love, under COVID19' in our school is based on the true story - 'The Lost Father' to show that 'Grief' is a persistent expression of 'Love' and teach children to 'Positively' face the 'Lost' experience. The emotions of school children in the epidemic are understood through the analysis of student paintings.

2020-12-09 (Wed) 11:45-12:25

A Cross-Country Study on Play: Voices of Children

Play has been placing an important role in children’s development as well as the curriculum and pedagogy in the pre-primary education in many different countries. Yet, it was said to be a pedagogy with ‘hollow’ theory by early childhood scholars (BERA, 2003) as the definition and implementation of play varied across culture, and it was mainly practiced according to adult’s perspectives. Children’s perspective of play was yet to be explored. This study is a cross-cultural study of five locations：Argentina, Demark, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom (U.K) and the United States (U.S.). It aims to understand Children’s perceptions on play in these locations, and how their perceptions on play reflect the contexts they are in. The findings show interesting and significant similarities and differences of children’s perceptions on play among the five locations. Their differences on the choices of play, play companion as well as the play behaviour are also identified. Implications to the notion of play in early years’ practice will then be discussed. 

2020-12-09 (Wed) 12:30-13:10

The Power of Play in Early Childhood Education

In this presentation, the speakers will:
- Introduce different types of play in school (kindergarten) context
- Explain how playing different types of toys can help children’s needs in their physical, cognitive and social development. For example, how building blocks can foster eye-hand coordination in an earlier stage and facilitate children’s spatial sense and speech development. And how toys help facilitate self-management skills and logical skills
- Provide real examples in schools will be mentioned in the presentation
- Demonstrate how toys help improve focus and concentration, train gross and fine motors, provide tactile stimulation, reinforce eye-hand coordination, train oral motor, improve language skills and understand different feelings.
 
Participants will also have the chance to interact with the toys.

2020-12-09 (Wed) 13:15-13:55

Wordless Picture Book For Moral Education

Wordless picture books encourage children to read initiatively and build up positive characters and habits in the early childhood. Miss Lui will share the integration with moral education and storytelling. 

2020-12-09 (Wed) 14:45-15:25

A Literacy Play Kit for Supporting Kindergarten Children's English learning : Development, Evidence and Impact

The speakers will share the development, evaluation and impact of a literacy play kit which was awarded the Silver Medal at the 2019 International Invention Innovation Competition in Canada < iCan>.  The kit, composed of a play manual, learning materials and a website, has been used by more than 150 parents in Hong Kong to engage their young children in home literacy play.  Scientific evaluation of the kit has shown that the kit is able to enhance children’s English language learning, home literacy practice and parent–child relationship in Hong Kong families.

2020-12-09 (Wed) 15:30-16:10

Relationship between Social-emotional Learning and Children's Daily Lives

The purpose of the presentation is to demonstrate the relationship between social-emotional learning and children’s daily lives. Social-emotional learning (SEL) has become more popular in recent years, but what is this exactly? The community and educators believe that social-emotional skills are essential along with child development. However, the knowledge and skills are no innated which have to be acquired through SEL and practise. It would be beneficial for children if SEL is provided regularly in school. A solid foundation that built in the early years can transform such to lifelong skills. There will be case sharing in the presentation to show the change of children when SEL is implemented in school.

2020-12-09 (Wed) 16:15-16:55

Cultivate Children's Musicality through Age-Appropriate Musical Activities

Informed by Bourdieu’s theory of 'cultural reproduction', this study proved the paramount parental influences on children’s musical learning and development, and informs the ensuing discussion of the importance of the musical environment on children’s musical development. This presentation further discusses the construction of age-appropriate musical activities in early childhood education to enhance the development of children’s musicality.

2020-12-09 (Wed) 17:00-17:40

Play to Learn: Facilitate Language Learning and Creative Thinking with A New Game

Words are the building blocks of early language learning. In order to understand a newspaper article in Chinese or English, language learners need to know thousands of words. Word learning is always a challenge. Many words are compound words. They follow lexical compounding rules. Indeed, in Chinese, the majority of words are compound words. Researchers have found that understanding how words can be combined together can facilitate bigger vocabularies, better word reading, and more accurate reading comprehension.

In this talk, we will present research and practical applications on this idea of how to promote children’s compound word skills using  Bumper CardsTM  (碰碰詞TM), a game which was developed based on more than 20 years of research on the importance of understanding and playing with language to form compound words. Such word play facilitates both language learning and children’s creativity. In addition, I will show how to play the game with children of different ages and ability levels. I will also highlight how this game can stimulate children’s creativity as well as their word learning.

2020-12-10 (Thu) 10:15-10:55

Findings Related to Early Intervention of the Research on Evaluation of the Pilot Scheme on On-Site Pre-School Rehabilitation Services

The Pilot Scheme of On-site Pre-school Rehabilitation Services (OPRS) was implemented in November 2015 and regularized as one of the government-subvented rehabilitation services for young children. The evaluation study was conducted from September 2016 to August 2018 led by a cross-disciplinary team of scholars from four local universities. This seminar summarizes its findings and discusses inclusive education in mainstream kindergartens and child care centers and the roles of special education teachers. In both qualitative and quantitative analyses, positive and significant outcomes were observed in children’s various dimensions of development, including cognitive abilities, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, language abilities, and socioemotional skills. These positive gains were sustained in a subsample of children who completed the services with a 3-month follow up assessment. Over half of the training sessions were delivered by teachers or child care workers with special education training. Parents expressed high satisfaction towards the services. Teachers reported that the largest benefit of the scheme was providing early identification and intervention to children with special needs. Another advantage was accommodating the special needs education in mainstream classroom. Successful factors and recommendations for implementing effective practices in early childhood special education will be discussed in this seminar.

2020-12-10 (Thu) 11:00-11:40

A Professional Development Programme to Assist Hong Kong Early Childhood Practitioners to Teach through Play

A recent increase in emphasis on the importance of children’s free play in kindergarten is reflected in the latest edition of the kindergarten curriculum guide in Hong Kong. This increased emphasis presents new challenges to early childhood practitioners in terms of their teaching approach and their children’s learning. Teachers frequently find it difficult to put into practice the concepts of play and free play as advocated in the guide. As a result, implementation of “play” as observed in many early childhood classrooms still turns out to be a disguised form of didactic class activity merely labeled as “play”. 

This presentation describes how the teacher professional development (TPD) program of the Jockey Club “Play n Gain” Project has addressed this policy-into-practice gap. The speakers will discuss the objectives, content and procedures of the TPD program, and will identify common obstacles that teachers encounter when implementing “learning through play” in kindergartens.

Most importantly, the speaker will present successful cases to illustrate how the TPD team has assisted kindergarten teachers to: 1) make sense of play and free play in the curriculum guide; 2) effectively integrate play in the school-based curriculum, and 3) create sustainable play corners in kindergarten. Finally, consideration will be given to the impact of the TPD program as reflected in feedback from the participating teachers.

2020-12-10 (Thu) 11:45-12:25

A Chinese Language Assessment Tool for Ethnic Minority Kindergarten Students

Conventional language assessment framework, especially for ethnic minority students, is always paper-based and non-interactive.  The richness and fluidity of the emergent language proficiency of the young learners is therefore not properly recorded or measured.  In this session, the development and insights gained from a play-based, age-appropriate language assessment will be shared.

The newly developed assessment tool, Chinese Language Usage Evaluation (CLUE), is first of its kind in the kindergarten sector and a language testing innovation that complements traditional assessment methods with the possibility of pioneering an age-appropriate form of assessment for learning and of learning in early childhood settings. Suggestions and good practices are given to kindergarten teachers on how to conduct language testing in an era attuned to pluralism, inclusion and the empowerment of minority children.

2020-12-10 (Thu) 12:30-13:10

Promoting Parents' Awareness of Child's Development Needs in Puzzle

Puzzles are toys that all young children love to touch. However, on some children with developmental differences, parents not only can understand their children's learning behaviour through puzzles, but also promote their children's learning motivation and ability with puzzles. If parents can master and inspire their children to play puzzles properly, parents can walk into their children's learning world more easily.

2020-12-10 (Thu) 13:15-13:55

A Whole School Approach of Implementing Play Education in Kindergartens

The Jockey Club “Play n Gain” Project is derived from a research-based play education programme that has been used effectively for over 10 years. This Project adopted the “Social Star Mirror Model” (Liu, 2015) which served as the conceptual framework in improving children’s social-emotional learning through playing face-to-face interactive games systematically.

Fourteen kindergartens have adopted a whole-school approach in which parents partner with teachers to create holistic learning experiences, and parents who become game trainers will be able to apply the skills at home and in community settings. The speaker will share practical implementation experience of play education, play-based learning and project evaluation.

2020-12-10 (Thu) 14:00-14:40

Happy Reading Together

To be available

2020-12-10 (Thu) 14:45-15:25

Playful Learning through Drama

Early childhood is a critical stage for holistic development. Children begin to discover the surrounding environment, experience interpersonal interaction, and develop their imagination as well as express their emotion, which are the essence and characteristics of drama. Integrating drama into early childhood education not only responds to the latest requirements of the Kindergarten Education Curriculum Guidelines, but also articulates the education development focus such as “Holistic Education” and “Learning by Playing”.

Mike Chow is the Head of Outreach and Education of Hong Kong Repertory Theatre. In recent years, he has been actively promoting Playful Learning Program, with a view to assisting the kindergarten teachers to develop a wide range of teaching strategies by providing professional in-school teacher training so as to further promote the art integrated education and develop feasible teaching programs with different preschool education organizations.

Mike will share insights and the effectiveness of some specific cases in the hope of inspiring peers in education.

2020-12-10 (Thu) 15:30-16:10

Rethinking Play in Preschool Classrooms: The Cognitive, Affective and Contextual Roles of Constructive Play in Storytelling and Retelling Performance

Whether learning through play is an appropriate and effective way of learning for young children is always on debate. With empirical findings, some parents still doubt the effectiveness of the integration of play and learning.

In the presentation, Dr. Chung will talk about how she used bricks play activities to enhance kindergarteners’ storytelling and retelling performance. She will also reveal the underlying cognitive secret of why free play and semi-structured play should be used simultaneously in preschool classrooms for a balanced development of creativity and oral language production.

2020-12-10 (Thu) 16:15-16:55

Integrated Education in Pre-school Education: Teaching and Learning Strategies to Take Care of Individual Differences

To implement integrated education in the pre-school education sector, teaching and learning strategies effectively can enhance the ability of schools to take care of individual differences among students and enable all students to receive a quality education. This section shares how to use the ‘three-tier support model’ and enhance students’ learning outcomes through appropriate and effective activity design and alignment of teaching strategies.

2020-12-11 (Fri) 10:15-10:55

The Significance and Elements of Holistic Education

Holistic education is a multidimensional mode of learning in which the individual is immersed in personal, social, emotional, environmental, creative and spiritual levels of awareness that form the spectrum of thinking skills, character education, caring relationships, environmental awareness, creativity, democracy, spirituality and play. Whole child education is founded on the three overarching principles of balance, inclusion and connection while linking the three educational orientations of transmission, transaction and transformation. Holistic education is underpinned by engaging the child's head, heart and hands while making connections with community, earth, soul, subject, mind-and-body, as well as developing intuition and inquiry. Children need a holistic educational experience that doesn't create artificial boundaries between the different aspects of their development. Learning must respond to children's current and future personal needs, their future career needs, and the needs of the wide-ranging societies and cultural groups in which they are likely to play a part in.

This seminar unveils, simplifies and clarifies a complex paradigm and facilitates implementation to benefit young learners in a holistic way.

Attendees of this presentation will gain a clear understanding of the elements of holistic education and will be introduced to a practical framework that can be implemented in the Early Childhood classroom and applied in daily teaching.

This seminar will cover the significance and elements of holistic education, introduction to a practical framework* and guideline for implementation.

*This framework is the result of doctoral research, investigating educational stakeholders’ perceptions of holistic education. In addition to documentary analysis, policymakers, school principals and teachers were interviewed, and observations were conducted among Montessori, Waldorf and Nature schools.

2020-12-11 (Fri) 11:00-11:40

Chinese Preschool Children's Understanding of Death

In traditional Chinese society, parents rarely mention death to their children. Parents should seize the opportunity to talk about death with their children, because children will one day experience the death of pets or relatives; or be exposed to news about deaths; for example, the new coronavirus caused many deaths around the world; many children died in the earthquake.
These messages may cause children to become anxious about death, worrying that unfortunate events will take the lives of their loved ones at any time. When a child asks a question about death, parents do not need to emphasise the ultimateness of death, but emphasise how to help the bereaved to deal with grief instead. In addition to helping children understand that death is a law of nature, adults should also give them a positive message. If a loved one in the family has passed away, parents can tell the child about the cause of death (disease, old age, or accident) briefly, which can help the child overcome the worry about death. In addition, everyone expresses grief in different ways, so adults should respect children's expressions. Adults should let children choose the way to express their grief or miss their loved ones. The child can cry, draw a picture, talk about his feelings, and ask questions, but if they don’t want to talk, just respect them. The most important thing is to let children feel the care of relatives and friends in daily life, so that they can develop a positive and optimistic character.

2020-12-11 (Fri) 11:45-12:25

Inspiration of Children's Creativity: Use of Diversified Teaching Approaches of Picture Books to Foster Children's Exploration

This seminar will introduce diversified teaching approaches of picture books, which trigger children's motivation to explore and facilitate their thinking skills.
The teaching approaches are 'facilitating deep reading picture books through appreciation of literary works', 'facilitating reading picture books through exploration activities', 'exploration of living environment through reading picture books'.
This seminar will also explain how to make use of the features of various picture books to develop children’s thinking skills, trigger their curiosity and arouse their interest of exploration.

2020-12-11 (Fri) 12:30-13:10

Experience Sharing on the Curriculum Development of Play-Based Learning

Introduce the 'Play, Learn, Grow' project orgranised by Centre for University and School Partnership on how to support schools to develop play-based learning. A project school will share how to facilitate children to explore different kinds of shoes through play and let them to construct relevant knowledge as well as express themselves under the topic of 'A shoe finding friends'.

2020-12-11 (Fri) 13:15-13:55

Assimilations and Accommodations of Culturally Responsive Practice

Culturally Responsive' should not be an unfamiliar term with educators who work with ethnic minority groups. In order to implement culturally responsive teaching, teachers will design activities by considering and integrating the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and learning styles of the ethnic minority groups. However, it is believed that “culturally responsive” should not only be occurred in the learning and teaching between teachers and students, but also among the educators working in a school. Social inclusion can only occur when the culturally responsive practice is integrated into the school atmosphere. The speaker will share her experiences from the perspective of multicultural teachers in order to achieve social inclusion through the process of assimilation and accommodation.

2020-12-11 (Fri) 14:00-14:40

A Play-Based Home Learning Box to Parents in Underprivileged Families to Provide Quality Stimulation and Parent-child Interaction Time at Home for Their Children

A play-based home learning box, named “KeySteps@JC Treasure Box”, loaded with training materials and demonstration videos was produced due to the school and KeySteps@JC Community Hub suspension under the outbreak of COVID-19. The box has been sent directly to parents in project schools with underprivileged families and children in Sham Shui Po and Tin Shui Wai. It aims at providing the children quality stimulation and parent-child interaction time at home during school suspension period. With the good response from the parents, it is now going to be extended and incorporated into the thematic activities in the Hub and introduced to schools for home learning, too. The speakers will share how to utilise the KeySteps@JC Treasure Box to empower parents as the first teachers and teachers for engaging parents with both online and offline support.