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Day 4
Monday
5th November 2007
Weather: Fine
Hello! Today we had a series of events in school and I myself really did have a fun time! For the first half of the day, we sat in our buddy's classes for leassons. Their lesson are really further in deapth and much more difficult than what we are learning now. Lunch was also being delivered to our class rooms. For the second half of the day, we had a session of music and a lesson on character by Sun Lao Shi, the chinese head of department of beijing 54 middle school. We seperated for dinner and then met at 7pm to watch an acrobatic show staged at a library. Reached home at around 9pm and we better get some rest as we are going to climb the great wall of china tomorrow!
The first time I stepped into a foreign classroom and I realised that traditional methods are still being used these days. They still use the blackboard, however, the classrooms are equipped with air conditioners, however it will be only turned on in summer. These are my very first imperssions when I first stepped into the classroom. A warm round of applause greeted us as we sauntered into the classroom. This is how receiving they are when we come. The average number of classes they (equivilant to secondary 4) have during the day would be 8 classes, which excludes their 1 and a half hours lunch break. Therefore, school ends at around 5pm. Met some of Ma Teng's classmates, they seem taller and bigger build than me as I am 2 years their junior. Another thing I realised is that the method of teaching there is much different from what Kranji teachers teach. They use the asking method in order for students to give explainations and answers. The teacher would ask a random student to stand up and would be given a question to answer. If he or she is unable to answer the question, they would have to remain standing. Another thing I realised is that their testbooks and workbooks are all made from recycled paper, something similar to the material of our newspapers. This will help save the environment as it reuses paper and saves more trees. Unlike singapore, the tectbooks are all filled with colour and think layers of paper. This I think is quite a waste of resources. A book which has content and diagrams are already enough for personal use, why go to the entent of wasting precious resources?
After a series of lessons, it was lunch break. The packet lunches are being sent to each classroooms for everyone to eat. The meals are relatively delicious and are much more efficient. This is really too different from Kranji Secondary. We get to choose the variety of food that we want to eat and can decide wheather or not to eat. I found out that some students do not eat and therefore lead to the wastage of food. If many students do that, that would be a huge amount of waste being generated. However, the food the school provides are full of nutritions and are healthy food, therefore they can control what you consume in order for you to mantain a balanced lifestyle. If you were given a choice of food, you might go for the french fries everyday and this would lead to unforseen consequences.
After lunch, we had a peking opera singing lesson where we did had lots of fun. The teacher explained to us what does each coulor on each mask represent and we did had a fun time singing too! Then the HOD of Chinese Sun Lao Shi taught us a character building lesson. He focused on LOVE, CARE, MANNERS, MINDSET and TRUST. The intresting lesson allowed us to get to know more new things of Beijing and some are what I have discovered:
Singapore 660 sq km
China 9600000 sq km
Beijing 1.67 wan sq km
1 october is china's national day
mao zhe dong is the founder of china
zheng ge ping is the bearer of china after he died(build the futre of beijing)
Beijing has the 3rd fastest growing economy in the world
There are 56 tribes in China
13 billion population in China
Few thousands of slangs and tones in China
7384
Kong Zi died at 73 years old
Meng Zi died at 84 years old
After that we watched a beijing acrobatic show. It was really fasinating and cool! These are much to the professional standard and it is much better than what I have watched last time when I was here. Update till here.