The first-year students explain shadow puppets in English throughout the whole p

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, HD Qingdao are in our 9th week of online teaching and learning. While there are challenges associated with online-learning , we are proud of the way our students and teachers have adapted to the process to ensure that learning has continued. Today, let's take a look at HD Qingdao Primary school's international programme and see how it has worked during the outbreak.

Traditionally, drama classes emphasize the importance of collaboration and teamwork, which we practice together in our weekly on-campus drama lessons. Since we are not together in class, we’ve taken this as an opportunity to study areas of theatre that are better suited for individualized study, ranging from technical theatre projects to using technology to enhance solo performances.

Each week, I offer an actor’s challenge for students who want to delve deeper into the topic, and I also welcome students to add their own interpretations to their pieces. Though we all look forward to the day where we can be together in drama class once again, I really value this time I’ve had getting to know the students on a deeper, individual level, and celebrating their unique talents.

· I’ve included some examples of our different drama activities throughout the weeks.

As part of our costume design unit, the students were given descriptive prompts of character types, and used items in their home to create costumes to match them.

· In our sound effects unit, I gave students six sound effects to make using items in their home, and they were required to document what they used, and provide a sample of the sounds. Later, they made sound effects for a story, with many students opting to challenge themselves by reading the story themselves or adding visual aids to the story (and including the whole family!).

· For performance-based projects, students have focused on storytelling through realistic lip sync, pantomime, and using tableaus to create pictures for storybooks (and then even reading the story out loud for an audience!).

The Physical Education curriculum has been adapted from teaching elements of practice in sports to focusing more on fitness training, PE vocabulary and co-ordination. It is stated that Physical Education is one of the few subjects that combines body and physical competence with values-based learning and communication.

Over the past 9 weeks of online teaching, our approach to Physical Education has been to keep the students active by promoting different exercises and activities. We have provided lessons on gymnastics, yoga, co-ordination drills, cardiovascular and strength training, as well as sport specific exercises. We at HD Qingdao understand the importance of physical activity and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Whilst students are inevitably spending longer time facing a computer screen, it has been our approach to keep the children happy and active.

Music is helpful in times of change.  Students have been encouraged to enjoy music as part of their daily lives.  Listening and singing along to our favourite songs can lift one’s spirits!  In addition to being asked to listen to and describe music that they have an appreciation of， students were asked to talk to their family members about songs enjoyed by older generations.  Music is a connector, something to be appreciated by all, and students have been exploring these themes. 

Alongside lessons in elements of reading music and discussions of songs, students have all been learning to sing and/or play a new English folk song each month.  Students have had opportunities to show their performances of music to the class, and have been coached in methods for improving independent practice. Various resources like video, PPT, MP3s and worksheets have been provided to ensure a rewarding and enriching online e-learning experience.

We have had to rethink the way we teach Design Thinking and make significant adaptations to our normal processes. This has required us to be as flexible as possible in order to engage children in DT activities. I have been proud of the way the children have responded to these challenges and the results have been encouraging.

Children are becoming more resilient, creative and independent in their bid to solve the problems they encounter during our Design Thinking projects.

An example of this was with our Grade 3 students who didn’t have building materials in their study of Geometric Shapes and Prisms. This meant that we had to adapt in order to create building materials before designing and building the actual project. We made the construction materials from rolled up magazine pages which challenged the students but they managed to produce some great work nonetheless!

As you can see, our teachers have had to be creative in the way that they have overcome the challenges of online learning.

When this crisis is finally over and we look back on this time, our students will have a lot to be proud of.