The Teaching Trio - Projecting Education

The Teaching Trio is an education podcast where the hosts discuss novel ways of teaching. They are joined by Samuel Ho, an English teacher who uses project-based learning to motivate students. Samuel explains that projects help students manipulate and interact with the language and make it more rewarding. He shares an example of a project he does with his students, where they create a video commercial, a magazine commercial, and finally write a letter of complaint. This project incorporates all four language skills and teaches students about the consequences of misleading advertisements. The hosts discuss the importance of combining the four skills in language teaching. Hello and welcome to The Teaching Trio, an education podcast for people who have had enough of boring lessons or at least those trying hard not to teach one. My name is Dominic Teng, an education student at your daily dose of serotonin. In each episode, I'll be joined by my podcast buddies, Claire Tan and Cyrus Yu, also teachers-to-be, to flip the classroom and explore the novel ways of teaching. Hello Claire and Cyrus. Hi. And today we are pushing our desks together, spreading out our A2 papers and ready for some rigorous group brainstorming for projects. Joining us online today to talk about project-based learning and teaching is Mr. Samuel Ho, an English teacher who is now teaching at Wyand College Kowloon, who manages to finish at least three group projects each term, despite the already tightly packed curriculum. Welcome and thank you for coming, Samuel. How are you? I am fine, thank you. It's actually really tiring after a long day, but I'm happy to be here, obviously. Thank you so much. Inviting you here at our first episode is such a great honour because you're actually my teacher, my alma mater at Form 3, and having been taught by you, I've done so many projects. We all know as teachers-to-be how difficult it is to use projects in our lessons and to prepare for it, but what exactly drives you to use so many projects in your classroom? To make it very simple, I think it's just because I myself don't want to be bored, because teaching English is actually kind of a very tedious and boring task for most people, and for students themselves, I think they actually learn a lot of English through grammar books and doing a lot of exercises in worksheets, and I feel like without an authentic task, an authentic project, it's actually very hard to motivate them to actually start loving the language, and that's why I think through projects, they can actually really manipulate, comprehend, produce and interact in the target language, and I think that's really rewarding for the whole process to actually happen in a classroom. That makes me want to start doing projects when I first start teaching in YN. Yeah, taking English into real life and making use of it in something that is solid and something that is communicative, I think that's very important too. So, you are also an alumnus in YN, have you ever done projects before as a student? Sadly, no. Not really, because my teachers never actually used projects. It's basically just whiteboard, like talk and talk, and most of them basically worksheets and stuff like that. The most interactive thing that I've ever done is actually watching a movie in the classroom for like double period or like triple, and then they ask me whether I've learned anything from it. That's actually... Criticizing Hong Kong, right? It's really Hong Kong, yeah, and that's why I haven't really experienced anything like that in YN. I'm actually like a student there. Yeah, never. Trying to fit into the curriculum in Hong Kong, but at the same time, implementing project-based learning and teaching is something quite difficult. So, how do you use PBL in your lessons, actually? Yeah, so what I usually do is trying to figure out the writing first, because every unit, there's a writing outcome, right? For example, for one of the topics in Form 2, it's letter of complaint. So, when you think about letter of complaint, it's mostly about having some really unpleasant experience in buying surfaces and products, right? And then when you think about that, you want your students to actually produce like a really good letter of complaint, but what is the authentic situation that can happen before you write a letter of complaint is that they have to encounter some really bad surfaces and products, right? So, when I think about that, I started to plan about pre-task, while-task, and post-task. So, the post-task, obviously, it's the writing of letter of complaint, but how to get them interested in the topic is that introducing commercials and advertisement. Let's just say that is actually the background. And after doing that, for example, with one of the topics in Form 2, they have to first produce like a video commercial after picking one product they really enjoy using or they think about using, and then they have to produce it for real, and then actually show it to everyone in the classroom to make them feel more interested in the topic and the theme itself. And after that, they have to do another thing called magazine commercial, and then they have to use exaggerated words. Like, for example, you won't regret it for the rest of your life. You actually get 10% taller or whatever. So, just make it very exaggerated. So, teach them a lot of elements in making a magazine commercial, and then after that, they have to show the magazine commercial using pictures and drawing and stuff to make it like a real product. It looks like a real magazine commercial. Of course, I give them some input, like some real ones, and cut them out from magazines and show them. They have to produce it, and then after seeing those commercial, like magazine commercials, they have to imagine actually buying the service or buying the product. And what can go actually wrong is they actually believe in the product. So, they have to imagine using the product and something went really wrong, and they have to then write a letter of complaint. So, for that second, I have to teach them the structure of a letter of complaint, right? They have to write it. That produces a real authentic purpose, but not just like an imaginary one. And then they actually have to learn it, and then they have to produce one, and then the final step is actually to show that final letter of complaint to the commercial producer to let them see how wrong the commercial can go and how it can be misleading, how it can actually harm people and customers. So, that makes it quite fun to read as well, because people are complaining about your product, and you have to defend yourself. So, that makes it another last task. It sounds like a master thesis. I've done it for like five or six times already, and at the very beginning, it's a drama, and it turns into a video, and it turns into like videos with the titles, and then they start exchanging and posting online to YouTube to let other classes see as well. It can be a different kind of improvement, but the major point is that in order not to be suffocated with like, you know, fulfilling what you have to do for the whole syllabus, I'm actually fitting in reading. I'm fitting in grammar, because when they write letter of complaint, they have to learn grammar, right? I'm fitting in writing, actually in speaking, because they have to complain, and they have to actually do debate between one another. They have to learn how to interrupt, how to comment, and then how to do different kinds of interactions in the middle. So, basically, it's one topic that you have, one project that includes like all four skills already. Try to include as much as possible in one project. They can learn vocabulary, like grammar, and they can learn like writing skills, reading skills, and everything come together in one project. And so, that's why I won't actually get, you know, like things undone at the end of the term. Yeah, yeah. That's really about, you know, getting things combined together. And we're actually learning ORISU right now. So, it's so related. I think as teachers and as, you know, pre-service teachers, we are always so concerned and so focused on the end product of it. And like in Samuel's case, we are doing, say, a letter of complaint or we're doing an argumentative essay. And we're always talking about how we can structure an argumentative essay. And in the end, we're making that the main task instead of the pre-task or the post-task. And that really is something fun. And I actually like how you did with the project. And the main body isn't really about the writing itself. It's about experiencing it. And say, as a customer or as a consumer, how you are going through that process of being serviced and you're not, you know, getting good service, right? So, yeah, I think it's actually very important because for us, usually, as Starbucks said, we would just focus on the letter of complaint, let's say. But we always ignore the authentic context of it. So, I like how it actually, like the project also helps students to understand why we'll use letter of complaints, which is one of the most usual ways we'll use it is to complain in an advertisement. So, I think, yes, I think it helps. And I think something similar, maybe like visiting a restaurant or crafting a menu, I think there can be so much extensions that we can use with this structure of a project. Yeah. I feel like this is a very meaningful structure because while you're incorporated most of the four skills, it's given a social, cultural background to it of, like, advertisement and how they can be misleading and the consequences of misleading advertisement and teaching them how to be, like, a smarter customer or, like, a more morally or ethical advertiser if they choose to pick the job. So, I think that it's very important and meaningful. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, putting the four skills together, I think, is something quite important in the language classroom because we have four different papers in, say, DSC, but in the end, like, using language in reality, we don't put these different skills into different categories and we don't use them in separate terms. So, it's really about putting them together and combining them. And I actually recall, like, when I was in your classroom when I was form three, we got tons of debates and we are, I think we're talking about crimes. Yes. And sometimes, yeah, about crimes and we form groups, we have huge papers that you list out our ideas and we take turns to go on to the stage to sort of debate. We actually have people from the ground, like, attacking us verbally. And we need to rebut it. So, it really is, we have, I feel like I have a flood of professors, you know, sitting before me and I'm defending my master's degree thesis. So, it really is a great experience to have that, to have that lesson and to really put what we learned in language into real practice. But, you know, it takes so much work of preparation into preparing all these things and making sure that you are actually combining different skills together in all lessons. So, what exactly do you think is challenging in PBLT teaching? I think time control is actually, like, one of the things that I really have to pay attention to, even though it's actually combining all things together. It's just, like, imagining a teacher teaching the same thing, spending, like, one period, but with the PowerPoint slides being printed, give it out to the kids and you learn a structure and be like, let's just complain the first paragraph, you write that, you write that. And then some of my colleagues have been telling me that it's been only two periods teaching what I taught, like, in, like, two weeks. The whole project was two weeks. You have to do everything, like, quite precisely. You have to make sure the kids are paying attention to you. You have to make sure people are creating stuff that's actually worth presenting in front of the whole class. If anyone, like, created something really bad in terms of quality and people laugh at them, you have to make sure they're on progress. They're actually, like, doing things according to your schedule. That's why it's actually quite challenging in terms of controlling the time and making sure it's actually not out of your hands. Like, you have to make sure they're actually on top at the same time. Another thing that is quite challenging to me is that some students are not really up to standard in terms of the proficiency in English, so they might not have enough, like, they might not have enough vocabulary or enough, like, skill to make sure they can actually follow whatever you want them to do. That's actually how you have to spend time with them after class to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. So, that happens quite a lot in some classes, which are, like, remedial classes. So, that is actually a lot of effort as well. But after, I think it's still really something worthwhile, because most kids tell me that they enjoy, like, the lessons a bit, a lot more than just doing routine exercises. I mean, it makes sense, right, in a way, that who would like doing a lot of exercises if it's actually quite meaningless, just to repeat the answer through the blanks, compared to, like, a real-life task. They can actually submerge in and enjoy themselves and really produce something worthwhile. That's actually a huge benefit of that. So, I think it's still worthwhile after, like, listing all the pros and cons. It's still, like, something that's worth doing. And really, you know, that's what we call meaning-focused and communicative tasks. And, yeah, I really like it. As teachers, we are always coming up with tasks that we aim to cater to our learners' ability and proficiency. But it could be quite difficult to sort of balance out taking care of the proficiency, but at the same time making the task actually interesting. I really appreciate how you manage it very well, that even when you are taking care of learners' diversity, you're actually keeping the task equally interesting and equally interactive. Sometimes it's actually for the remedial classes where you need to take a further step into making your classroom even more vivid, because if you teach them boring lessons, always about DSC and always about drilling, exam drilling, and how to write a good, sort of a good writing or an argumentative essay, that's when they got bored and that's when they are losing that focus in class. And you don't usually get that in the most top-notch class. And I would say when we talk about project-based learning and teaching, it seems to be something that is confined to the more proficient classes. But in that way of speaking, it seems to be something that is more universal and more important for the less able and for the more average students. And that's when we really need to pay attention to PVOT. Oh, I actually have an additional question that I want to ask. I think it's a common teacher struggle that we have a standardized curriculum for each grade. Like, for example, we have to complete four writing tasks at the end. So how do you actually balance, like you have to meet all the requirements of a standardized curriculum, but at the same time incorporate your own PVOT elements into teaching? Maybe I can share, like, what happened in my school. Before the term starts, we actually have, like, a list of things that we teachers have to complete. For example, for Form 3, it's, like, two writings and then, like, listening assessment. And then we have, like, speaking. And then we have modular and extensive reading reports, stuff like that. And then I ask myself what I can do to incorporate as much as possible in project. It includes the speaking. The speaking can be incorporated as the last task, the post-task of a project. For example, it's a group discussion, right? Group discussion can come with different kind of forms and shapes. For example, it can be, like, a letter of complaint. You have to discuss, like, how the product can mislead a person and harm that person physically and mentally. So with that topic in mind, you can actually do that one as the last task of, like, your project already. So that's why you don't have to do another thing out of it. For writing, letter of complaint is one of the things that you can do in a project already. For reading, one of the passages that I picked will be about shopping. And then if they actually read it already, I can actually mark it as an infographic. I actually ask them to use an infographic to represent what they've read from the article, that final line. That's actually done already. So you can see that I have done one reading report. One reading report, I have done one speaking and one writing in one project. So I think that's how I keep up with, like, the progress quite securely, I would say. Yeah. So you talked about, like, there are students that need, like, remedial classes, like, afterwards. So do they, like, do they really, like, would they feel, let's say, would they feel upset about it? Let me share a little bit. Actually, in my school, I volunteer to take most remedial classes because I feel like, actually, I got more resistance in elite classes than in, like, remedial classes, because there would be always one to two kids who complain that you're not doing papers, that you're not teaching them real stuff. There's a kid, and I don't want to name him, he always gave me the rolling eyes when I said something about projects, because he felt like he should be doing past papers. But to answer Claire's question about how to help remedial students to get, like, get to the mode of learning in projects, I think the most important thing is you have to give them something that interests them a lot, especially the theme. For example, for a complaint, there can be many things you can do in a project. For example, you can show them new advertisements, you can show them some any kind of imitation, and ask them to comment on it, to imagine them using the surface of the product. There are many ways, right? So picking the right theme and picking the right project routine actually determines how successful your project can be. That is the first step that I do. Second of all, I think giving each of the students something that they can do, giving them something challenging enough and handleable and doable is really important. So what I do is usually I give them, let's say for example in group discussions, they have to come up with some kind of product, right? So what I do is give them each of them individually a piece of paper. So they have to actually prep what they have in mind on their own piece of paper, instead of giving them a big paper, everyone please contribute and discuss. That doesn't work with only one kid, 12 minutes is everything, just don't do anything. So just give them one piece of paper individually. And after that, I give them A, B, C, D, like one person, you have like a label. So every time I give them one minute, time it on my phone. So one minute, A, start presenting your idea. And then after that one minute, B, C, D, comment. Comment on A. They have to actually give me some written comments as well. So I will actually receive them, collect them and give them some feedback so they know it's going to be checked. And then B, we have one minute and then C, D, A, if comments, so on and so on. And at the end, after presenting, after everything, collecting opinions, they have to discuss and give me a final product they focus on. Let's say B got the best one. They have to give me some ideas and explanations of why they picked B. And that's why everyone participates already. Everyone commented, everyone actually contributed to the idea. And when they have the final product like B's ideas being picked, they have to do another step. And everyone has to also generate their own stuff before coming to the conclusion that which one is going to be picked, so on and so on. So every discussion, everyone is involved. Every part of the project, everyone is involved. They have to comment, they have to contribute, they have to do some kind of like stuff to make sure they're actually doing something, contributing to the group, but not just individually done. So that's how I make sure every, even remedial kid has something to do in the whole project. You have to make sure everybody is doing something and that a final outcome is actually selected because of your, like your group effort. That's not just individual effort. And that helps a lot in the remedial kids. And one of the reasons also because I pick the kids in group because I put like a strong kid in every group. I pick one remedial kid in a group and two middle in a group. So it's actually really structured. So I know that one can help more, the other one can actually help less, but still everybody's contributing. And it's really about structuring because sometimes we really concern about the, about, you know, very, very able kids and top-notch kids being, you know, dominating the entire conversation and dominating in class and mixing them together and structuring the lesson in a way that you're still putting them into groups. But at the same time, they're engaging in both individual tasks and group tasks. So they have their own efforts and their own work, but also they are contributing to the group product, which is the great thing because you have teamwork on one hand, but on the other hand, you're also, you're also, you're also learning in your own pace. Which is, which I think that very much brings us to another topic that is, and I believe there are different opinions as to PBLT lessons, even though it has been something that is introduced into the academia for actually decades. So I think it's really quite rare in Hong Kong. Do you have any opinions from your students and even from your teachers or your supervisors telling you not to use PBLT? I mean, in all these 11 years of teaching in YN, I think there'll be like a few kids, like two of them were really weak ones. And then they don't like anything in English. No matter how, they just hate the language. Like whenever I speak the language, it just like goes off. Like they don't even ever give me a chance. I just like do whatever I can. I started dancing. I started singing in the classroom. I started like, I gave them, I gave them gifts. Like, and I think there's actually not really the appropriate saying it right here, but hopefully this won't actually. You can say it's positive reinforcement. Yeah, positive reinforcement in whatever way you can think of. No matter how I tried, it's just like English. At the end, they still fail. At the end, they still got like nothing in the CA and in the exam marks. But I still, I still try really hard to engage them. And some of them still try a little bit in presenting the ideas. At the end, they told me they enjoyed the lesson much more than the other years already, but still not really showing a lot of appreciation and gratitude. But that's okay for me. I mean, I'm doing the right, I know I'm doing the right thing. It's already starting point for them. I believe that might be a starting point for them. I'm not too confident that will make them love English. It's just less hatred, I would say. I mean, you can't be like, you can't be so perfect all the time, right? And then for the other two kids, they're like really exam oriented kids who are like aiming for five double stars in English. And whatever you do should be about past paper, about exam skills drilling. And then I told them, I explained to them face to face, I can't do that for you because you're not the only one I should care about in this classroom. They don't really care what I said. They just like give me that face. And what I, instead of fingers, I'm quite grateful for that already. And then at the end of the day, I still make them do the project. I fail them or I give them a very bad grade if they don't really fulfill the requirements. I want to make them understand like, in order to improve your English, it's not always about skills. I think skills is like 50%. Your proficiency, it's like another 50. So what I want them to do is trying to be proficient in English in other ways. And I also explained to them, you want to go to UK, you want to do like, like you want to do direct subsidy scheme school, like you want to do IB schools. It's actually project. It's actually the way to go, right? You know that in IB school, it's always about project. It's not about skills. So they understand that. I think one of them actually show more appreciation. The other one still gives me that face. And I can't do anything else. I gave them extra paper. I gave I printed them past paper, like five years and they do it themselves. I explained to them outside classroom, how to get improved in the past paper. That's all I can do for them. Yeah. That's the best I can do, I think. Yeah, I think already for the more remedial students, at least as a starting point for them. And for the more able students, they you're really helping them to understand how English is not only about exams and ESC, but really putting them into real use. So I think we are, we are, we're going to the end of the podcast. So do you have some final tips for us, for us teachers, pre-service or in-service about PBLT? Your colleagues might hate it a lot. Your panel chair. I heard about it. They kind of hate me, but whatever you're doing, it's showing other kids, your kids that how able you are and how fun you are. And the other classes, how bad the teachers can be and how boring it can be. So you'll be hated by lots of fellow colleagues. The way I give comments, like video comments in writing, people hate it a lot. They actually bad mouth me a lot as well, telling the kids that I'm actually like doing something in that necessary. So you have to tell yourself the only thing that gives you the only thing that gives you the motivation and your money, your salary is because of the kids, not your teachers, not your fellow teachers. They don't actually determine how much you get every month. They don't justify how much you get every month. The kids that you're teaching, they are the people that you should be serving because they are your main target of your teaching career. And that makes me go on. Otherwise I can just be anyone because I'm, I have a perm like many years ago. I have my promotion last year. Whatever I do right now, it doesn't really concern any of my money, right? But the only thing that makes me want to go on is actually seeing how my kids, my students actually like the language more. That gives me the passion to go on. Instead of printing PowerPoint slides, instead of just giving them worksheets, that makes me want to go on. That's my first tip. It sounds really philosophical. It sounds very old fashioned, but that is the real struggle that you guys will face. That's real struggle really. That's when you think about all the things you have to mark and think about all the preparation that you might not need, that you will actually want to give up. But then for me, it's just seeing the smiling face of the students that I really want to go on. And I think they deserve better teaching than just like crappy teaching. That's my first point. The second point, the second tip I want to give is actually something I said already, but I just want to repeat that how to incorporate all the four skills in one project is actually the key. The key to make it like a good one and how to make sure you won't struggle and drown in your teaching. We think like this curriculum and also syllabus, how to catch up with it, incorporate as much as possible meaningfully. That will be the way to go. And then I believe that after listening to the examples I give you right now, that might be giving you some kind of heads up like how you can do it in your teaching career later. Yeah, that's what I really want to say. Thank you so much. I think it's really about focusing on our students and giving lessons that are interesting and incorporating the skills together so that we are making our tasks structured but at the same time realistic. So thank you very much for coming. It's been fantastic having you here. Well, that's pretty much what we have time for. I think I've learned a bit more about bringing projects into classrooms. Now, if you enjoy this podcast, please do share with your friends and don't forget to like and subscribe to our channel. It's called The Teaching Trio and make sure you don't miss an episode. A huge thank you to our guest, Mr. Samuel Ho to come and share what he loves and teaches. I hope you love this episode and what we talked about can just fill in the gaps in your teaching diaries. And speaking of diaries, join us next time when Cyrus opens his geometry diaries and takes us on a tour of his boarding life. That's all and thank you for listening. Till next time, bye. What do you think a boarding life could be? Well, what I have in mind is boys clad in like very strict uniforms and similar costumes and then end up, I don't know, following a very strict schedule, I guess. Is it like a brotherhood relationship? Yeah, definitely. They would take care of the new coming form one. And so it's like they is passing on from generation to generation. So they take care of them and also control them. Yeah. Control them. Manipulate them.