MYP Subject-Groups“Get Married”at RFLS
Training Officer: Elaine Leung
- She is a current teacher at Hong Kong Discovery College, professor of Chinese language acquisition, Chinese TOK, and serves as an EE coordinator.
- She is an IBO certified training officer.
- She has over 10 years’ experience in IB teaching.
- She is both a MYP and DP examiner.
- She has studied in Hong Kong, the United States, Singapore and Mexico. She has made many achievements in critical thinking and language teaching, and has published several related books.
One of the finest MYP workshop leaders in the Asia-Pacific region, Ms. Elaine Leung, visited RFLS and conducted a two-day workshop on Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning over the weekend of May 13-14.
Interdisciplinary teaching is the core content of MYP, which aims at helping students to explore the intrinsic connection between different disciplines and thus form new knowledge and understandings. Leung said: “Interdisciplinary teaching is the process by which students come to understand bodies of knowledge and research techniques of two or more disciplines or subject groups and integrate them through key concepts and global concepts to create a new understanding.” MYP interdisciplinary teaching has three characteristics: purposeful, integrative, and grounded in the disciplines.”
Ice-breaking activity before the training
Leung helped middle school teachers to “marry” their subject-groups
Young middle school teachers went through a Speed-Dating session under the supervision of Leung. As a result, several couples celebrated “marriage”. Of course, it was not the teachers who tied the knot, but their MYP units of instruction were joined together or integrated, as Speed-Dating is a strategy for teachers to seek crossover topics and explore the possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration in a limited time.
How to skillfully obtain timely feedback? Elaine Leung introduced teachers to innovative ways to provide ongoing feedback like this sticky note poster displaying “3 things I learned.”
Teachers collaborated to develop inter-disciplinary assessment
The workshop not only facilitated mutual understanding and interdisciplinary collaboration among different subject groups, but also helped develop the teachers’ awareness of their teaching limits and encourage them to ‘get out’ and explore other disciplines which are essentially connected with their expertise. For example, the design of an advertisement on honey products needs professional knowledge on honey, compelling languages and attractive visual designs. Interdisciplinary collaboration enables students to better understand and utilize knowledge and skills from different specialized fields.
Teachers developed assessment activities for interdisciplinary units as a way to culminate the two-day professional development training.
The MYP Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning workshop culminated with an exciting experience where teachers from different subject areas collaborated to design an assessment activity for a unit they had envisioned through the two-day professional development training. The level of passion and commitment that filled the room was a clear indicator of the future of the MYP in RFLS classrooms. Teachers are life-long learners and their consistent progress is the great hope for education development.
