Holistic education, based on love, lays the foundation for high-quality courses
The transition from kindergarten to primary school is an important watershed in the growth of children. Whether they can successfully adapt to the new environment and establish a solid learning foundation depends to a large extent on the all-round cultivation in the preschool stage. PO LEUNG KUK CHEUNG POON MEI YEE KINDERGARTEN Backed by Po Leung Kuk’s comprehensive education network, Principal Leong Siew Ting closely follows the laws of children’s growth and development, and constructs a complete teaching framework from five major directions: Chinese literacy, inquiry thinking, physical development, kindergarten-school connection, and home-school collaboration. Under the leadership of Principal Liang, the school pragmatically cultivates children's comprehensive abilities and qualities, and makes adequate preparations for entering primary school in advance.
Deeply cultivate Chinese language and lay the foundation for learning
Language ability is the basis for children's thinking development, interpersonal communication and knowledge absorption. The school lays a solid Chinese foundation for children in an all-round way through normalized, interesting and life-oriented curriculum design. The school has specially set up "Happy Reading Wednesday", setting aside 20 minutes every Wednesday as a dedicated reading period to guide children to read independently. It also provides multiple sessions such as teacher telling stories, principal telling stories, children sharing stories, etc., to encourage children to bring their favorite books back to school to communicate with their peers.
At the same time, the school has set up a "Happy Reading Star" to commend students who take the initiative to share stories and fully mobilize their enthusiasm for reading. Principal Liang said: "Although today's children can quickly obtain all kinds of information with the help of AI, paper reading can help children develop concentration and reading interest, and simultaneously exercise literacy and creativity. It allows children to enrich their knowledge reserves and stimulate creativity in a large number of picture books and books, and develop good reading habits, laying the foundation for large-scale text reading in primary school."
In addition, at the level of English teaching, the school uses professional Cambridge English teaching materials, covering the four major areas of English listening, speaking, reading and writing, to systematically build children's English knowledge system. Foreign English teachers and local teachers teach together, communicating and interacting with children in English through life-like scenarios. Teacher Benta uses Cantonese to communicate with children on a daily basis, allowing children to clearly distinguish bilingual usage scenarios and independently switch to the corresponding language according to the communication partner. This teaching model has been running stably for two to three years, allowing children to dare to express themselves and effectively improving their English listening and speaking skills.
Inspire inquiry thinking and cultivate problem-solving abilities
Principal Liang focuses on cultivating children's thinking, deeply explores inquiry-based learning, and makes good use of life-like scenarios and diversified teaching aids to guide children to think proactively and explore boldly, break out of the learning limitations of a single standard answer, and cultivate their thinking and problem-solving abilities. Principal Liang observed that children’s inquiry learning stems from daily questions, and every “why” is the starting point of inquiry learning. The teacher will follow the trend and guide the children to think deeply through heuristic questions, such as asking children "Why do you think like this?" "Would there be a different result if you change the way?", encouraging children to think divergently, actively express their ideas, explore multiple possibilities for solving problems, and learn to think flexibly.
At the same time, the school actively leads children to get out of the classroom, enter the community, contact nature, and carry out outdoor learning activities. There were more than 30 outdoor learning activities last year, including study tours and explorations at the Town Hall Theatre, Farm, Police Dog Training School, Fire Station, North District Park and other venues. During the play, we accumulated knowledge and summarized discoveries, fully stimulating children's curiosity and desire to explore, and effectively improving their observation and creative problem-solving abilities.
In addition, the school also carries out multiple intelligence courses, including board games, scientific exploration experiments, matatalab robot programming courses, cooking, etc. Students are free to arrange a week's worth of activities in a mixed-age format, so students of different ages can learn together. Through independent choices and cross-age cooperation, children develop creativity and team spirit in a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere.
Break through venue limitations and promote physical development
Knowing that physical development is an important foundation for children's concentration, body coordination, and brain development, Principal Leung specially rents the LCSD basketball court as an outdoor physical fitness venue, allowing students to carry out physical training in a wider outdoor venue with sufficient space for running, jumping, and stretching, ensuring the amount of exercise and improving physical quality. The school will also launch handball courses soon and invite professional handball coaches to teach at the school. The course covers running, jumping, throwing, balance training, competitive speed training and many other contents. It specifically trains children's large and small muscle coordination, body balance, reaction and explosive power, and strengthens the body and improves body control in fun competitions and sports. Sufficient outdoor physical exercise can also effectively improve classroom concentration and promote balanced physical and mental development.
Build a "young-school alliance" to improve the connection to higher education
Relying on Po Leung Kuk's complete education system, PO LEUNG KUK CHEUNG POON MEI YEE KINDERGARTEN has established a "young-school alliance" with many high-quality primary schools under Po Leung Kuk, and regularly organizes primary school visits and experience activities to help children familiarize themselves with the primary school environment, classroom patterns and campus life in advance. At the same time, exclusive primary school courses and high-quality extracurricular activity resources are fully open to kindergartens, and various parent-child linkage activities are simultaneously carried out to provide comprehensive kindergarten-to-school connection services from multiple dimensions such as curriculum connection, activity experience, and support for further studies to help children make a smooth transition to primary school study and life.
This year, the "Kindergarten Alliance" will focus on deepening AI teaching exchanges and cooperation, covering various achievements such as teachers' AI teaching applications and students' practical use of AI tools. Subsequent teaching exchanges will be carried out through the alliance platform to share AI teaching experience and innovative models at the levels of campus administrative operations, student activity organization, and children's learning support, so that kindergarten teaching can keep up with the trend of innovation and technology education and cultivate children's scientific and technological awareness and innovative thinking in advance.
Deepen home-school collaboration and jointly build joint efforts in child care
Principal Liang understands that home-school cooperation is an indispensable part of children's growth. In order to allow parents to keep track of their children's learning progress and life dynamics, the school actively contacts parents in multiple dimensions through preschool connection, in-school communication, growth assessment, daily interaction, etc., deeply participates in the growth and cultivation of children, and unites the joint efforts of home and school education. For example, preschool parent-child classes are set up to allow parents to accompany their children to experience campus life, familiarize themselves with campus routines such as attending classes, queuing, and taking care of themselves in advance, and quickly adapt to the campus environment.
In addition, the school regularly holds parent “tea gatherings” to communicate with parents in a relaxed manner. Principal Liang shared: “We will conduct discussions around parenting issues such as the cultivation of children’s curiosity, imagination development, language skills, self-care abilities, and concentration development, and simultaneously share educational methods with parents and provide professional guidance on home parenting.” At the same time, the school also uses the fragmented time of parents waiting for pick-up to carry out lightweight discussions to communicate in a targeted manner about children’s growth in school and answer parents’ parenting questions in real time.
Principal Liang added: "The school regularly updates parents on their children's learning progress through phone calls and mobile apps to ensure that parents can keep track of their children's growth progress. Parents are also very welcome to come to the school at any time to communicate with us, and we will patiently answer parents' concerns about child care."