Tying education to experience
At the start of the summer session, Wang adjusts his new students’ seat assignments based on their interactions and level of participation. He also gives careful consideration to the seating layout, putting the students together into groups of four or five, and dividing the whole class into five of these groups. The groups on the left and right side of the room are each arranged in an “L” shape, while the group in the center forms a “U,” ensuring that all the students can see him. Today’s lesson is a modern poem entitled “Time Follows” (“Suiyue Genzhe), written by the poet Xiang Yang.
Wang begins class by giving the students a 40-question test to see which Chinese characters they recognize and know how to pronounce. Many of the students get only five or six answers wrong, and the homework he assigns the class is simply to write out the characters they got wrong. His approach is much more targeted than the traditional one, which would have had all the students learning the same things in class and doing the same homework, regardless of their individual needs. Wang then asks the kids “warmup” questions that assess how much they have learned at home, help them anticipate the content of the upcoming lesson, and encourage them to make connections between their own experience and the subject of the lesson.
Seeking to start an educational conversation, he asks them: “Does modern poetry require that verses have meter?” “What period in a person’s life does this poem depict?” “Which lines in the first stanza describe childhood?” The kids tell him: “It goes from childhood to maturity, old age, and death.” “It mentions horse’s hooves because children love to jump around.” “Because the second hand of a clock moves fast, which reflects the quickness and liveliness of children.” Wang then poses follow-up questions based on their answers. He guides the students as they respond, using the small whiteboards on the desks as mediums for interaction and to lead them to the underlying questions raised by the poem.
Wang’s method uses foundation questions to guide students through the reading of a written work. Their purpose is to help make students aware of the writer’s point of view and the evidence marshaled to support it. Foundation questions lead to challenge questions: “How would you describe children?” “If we were facing death, what might we do to keep our memory alive?” The resulting discussions help the students connect with the material, appreciate the joy of reading, and learn more about life.
Guided by their lesson preparations, class discussion, and the teacher’s questions, students form images in their minds of what they are reading, which they then transform into mind maps.