CMA Secondary School
Lesson Study: School-Based Programme of Multidisciplinary Collaboration to Cater for Learner Diversity
Our school implements “Catering for Learner Diversity” at the whole-school level to support students with different abilities. Given this overarching direction, teachers of the school teach students in light of their different learning needs and aptitude. In addition to supporting students with weaker abilities, the teachers provide learning support to students with different abilities (including students with special educational needs) through optimised classroom learning and teaching from the perspective of catering for learner diversity.
Establishing a multidisciplinary lesson study team and perfecting a well-developed learning and teaching support system
In order to drive continuous development, the school implemented the “School-based Programme of Multidisciplinary Collaboration to Cater for Learner Diversity” in early years to support different subject departments in catering for learner diversity and develop a professional learning community. The school required all subject departments to participate in the programme in an orderly manner and set different themes such as “Specific Learning Difficulties: Dyslexia”, “Enhancing Learning Motivation” and “Enhancing Language Proficiency”. The programme adopted a model of continuous collaboration cycle and aimed at embracing learner diversity through collaborative lesson preparation and co-teaching. Under the programme, the Special Educational Needs Coordinator collaborated with the colleagues from different subject departments to jointly establish a Multidisciplinary Lesson Study Team. Through the lesson study model, teachers worked with the school-based educational psychologist and the school-based speech therapist at all stages including design, implementation, observation, study and reflection, collaboratively exploring how to apply teaching strategies to enhance the learning effectiveness of students with different needs. The Multidisciplinary Lesson Study Team has obtained remarkable results. In addition to sharing the findings of lesson study with teachers at the meetings of subject departments, the team placed related teaching materials and documents of lesson study in the file server of the school for the teachers’ reference. Challenging as it seems, the work has been implemented at the school gradually after years of endeavour.
Effective assessment and follow-up to motivate teachers to optimise classroom teaching and learning continuously
In respect of learning effectiveness, students have made progress in planning their study, time management, relationship with teachers, confidence building and communication skills. As a whole, they have displayed a trend of significant progress in academic achievements. This shows that the school’s focus of multidisciplinary collaborative teaching on embracing learner diversity is inch-perfect. With good teacher-student relationship as the basis, students’ learning progress is assessed effectively to adjust the pace of learning and teaching. The “school-based learning and teaching support strategy to cater for learner diversity”, which has been developed based on students’ characteristics, has proven effective. These evidence-based strategies can effectively motivate teachers to make tentative moves, sustain and optimise classroom learning and teaching, and cater for students’ different needs in learning and adaptation at an early stage.
