GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme
Scheme Introduction
To promote early literacy research and development in Macau, Galaxy Entertainment Group Foundation started funding the “GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme” which began as a three-year pilot project in 2016. Having established partnership and collaborating with the University of Saint Joseph’s Bishop Domingos Lam Centre for Research in Education (DLCRE), the Scheme began its second phase in 2020 and extended as the “GEG Chinese Literacy Education and Research (CLEAR) Project”.
The long-term goals of this Project are to construct a research evidence-based early literacy education model and support programs, these include offering professional development for teachers, developing small support groups for students, and organizing seminars in language and literacy acquisition for parents.
As of 2022/2023 academic year, eight kindergartens in Macau have/had joined the CLEAR Project in various modes thus far. For instance, establishing support programs in school, attending teacher training and/or conducting parent seminars.
The two main pillars of the CLEAR Project are “Research and Development” and “Education and Training”.
Research and Development
- Conduct research relevant to early language and literacy acquisition in response to educational needs and social changes.
- Develop program-based assessment tools (including screening test, pre-post measures on key indicators of preschool literacy skills, and progress monitoring measures) to identify students with needs for literacy support and review the effectiveness of the support groups in order to assist schools to establish a regular literacy support policy and system.
- Design and compile school-based support-group curriculum, offer supplemental programs with three levels for K2 and K3 students, and assist teachers to handle students’ individual differences.
- Launch a support-group program teaching kit for teachers’ use, including a teacher’s manual, a series of supplementary teaching materials (e.g., vocabulary cards, character cards, picture cards, character structure card, nursery rhymes, etc.), recommended lesson plans and teaching strategies, and online resources.
- Produce a series of basal readers with vocabularies and syntactic features suitable for young readers in Macau and Hong Kong with suggestions for the series to be used in the regular classroom, small-group settings or for parent-child shared reading, thereby creating an environment conducive to reading, enhance language skills, and cultivate reading interest and habit in young children.
- Publish a guidebook for children’s picture books to assist parents in their selection of high quality picture books and offer guidance to parents in parent-child shared reading strategies.
Education and Training
- Offer a series of teacher training courses in three tiers, including Basic Training for all kindergarten teachers, Advanced Training for teachers of the collaborating schools, and Expert Training for school leaders of the collaborating schools.
- Offer a series of parent seminars with topics on Language Enhancement, Reading Enrichment, and Literacy Acquisition.
- Promote the Project to the community and the public, maintain a social media platform, produce educational videos, enhance the public’s knowledge of young children’s language and literacy development.
The Project Team
The Project team is led by academics from Hong Kong and Macau to offer professional instruction and support to collaborating schools.
Professor Cheng Pui Wan is the Principal Investigator to the Project. Professor Cheng is Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Educational Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where her teaching areas include psychology of learning, specific learning disabilities, special educational needs and special education, and classroom management. Professor Cheng had been involved in numerous research grants and projects, most of which dealt with literacy difficulties, specific learning difficulties, psychology and pedagogy in handwriting and learning Chinese, and particularly in the areas of early intervention.
Professor Miranda Chi Kuan Mak is the Co-Principal Investigator to the Project. Professor Mak is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Education at the University of Saint Joseph in Macau.
GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme Facebook page:
Collaboration Agreement: The University of Saint Joseph
Beginning in the second phase of the Scheme, a collaboration agreement has been reached with the University of Saint Joseph’s Bishop Domingos Lam Centre for Research in Education (the “Centre”), in research towards the development of a Macau-wide Kindergarten language corpus. It is also hoped that a screening tool can also be developed for teachers to enable a more streamlined process in identifying children at-risk of delayed Chinese language acquisition. The collaboration will eventually incorporate all teacher training under the Centre, enabling the Scheme to take root in Macau as a sustainable project beyond the Foundation’s funding period, enabling adoption of the Scheme in more kindergartens in Macau.
Announcement from the Domingos Lam Centre for Research in Education at the University of Saint Joseph
Scheme Partners
Collaborating Institution
Bishop Domingos Lam Centre for Research in Education, University of Saint Joseph, Macau
Participating Schools
- Colégio de Santa Rosa de Lima - Secção Chinesa (Phase 1 & 2)
- Escola Cham Son de Macau (Phase 1 & 2)
- Escola Secundária Lou Hau (Phase 2)
- Escola da Associação Geral das Mulheres de Macau (Phase 2)
- Escola Dom João Paulino (Phase 2)
- Colégio Diocesano de São José, 1a Escola (Phase 2)
- Escola De Santa Teresa Macau (Phase 2)
- Escola Nossa Senhora de Fátima (Phase 2)
Teachers Training
Basic Teacher Training
The Scheme’s Project Team, comprising academics and specialists in their respective fields in literacy acquisition and development, conducted basic teacher training for all kindergarten teachers in all participating seed schools during the pilot phase of the Scheme. Beginning in the second phase of the Scheme, Macau-wide teacher training sessions are being conducted with accreditation from the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau, with training hours qualifying for Continuing Education Credits (Category 1) for participants.
The basic teacher training includes two 6-hour modules.
Advanced Teacher Training
The Scheme’s Project Team also supervised and assisted the seed schools to implement small group intervention, targeting K3 children who have been screened as being at-risk of delayed Chinese language development and providing the seed schools with school-based review of their syllabuses and supplementary teaching materials, together with suggestions on small group intervention design and implementation.
The Project Team will continue to conduct progress reviews during implementation of the small group intervention exercises with teachers, both before, during and after intervention sessions, so as to assist teachers in continuing to develop and evolve their teaching methods, improve course design and highlight difficulties encountered by particular students and related methods of resolution.
The advanced teacher training is comprised of 4 modules, 6 hours each.
Teachers’ Conference
A Teachers’ Conference was held in April 2019 to share the results of the pilot Scheme with school administrators and teachers across Macau. The Conference was attended by representatives from the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau as well as about 200 teachers from 25 schools in Macau. Teachers from the two seed schools shared their teaching experiences and how they had witnessed the improvements of students in both normal and intervention groups after participating in the Scheme. The teaching materials developed and used in the small group intervention were also put on display.
Macau-wide Teacher Training
Starting in the second phase of the Scheme, the Project Team, in collaboration with the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau, has begun offering basic teacher training open to all kindergarten teachers in Macau. The training is offered over two full-day sessions (12 hours), and teachers participating in the training will earn hours towards teachers’ Continuing Education Credits (Category 1).
Teacher Training at Escola Oficial Zheng Guanying, 16/23rd November 2019
The first Macau-wide “Basic Teacher Training” sessions, comprising the first two of four modules, were held on 16th and 23rd of November, 2019, with over 160 teachers participating over the two days.
Teacher Training at the University of Saint Joseph, 31 October 2020
Despite the disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic, the “Basic Teacher Training” session conducted by the GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme was successfully held on the campus of the University of Saint Joseph on 31 October 2020. Only 30 participants were allowed to attend the training onsite due to social distancing measures, and with border controls, trainers based in Hong Kong participated via video conferencing.
The training on the day consisted of modules 1 & 2 of the Basic Teacher Training module. The Scheme’s Principal Investigator, Professor Cheng Pui Wan opened the introductory session over video conferencing, assisted by Dr Maranda Mak of the University of Macau co-leading onsite.
The afternoon session on foundation of language acquisition was led by Ms Terry Tse, Assistant Director on the Project Team instructing from Hong Kong. Ms Amanda Lei, head kindergarten teacher from Colégio de Santa Rosa de Lima (Secção Chinesa), co-led onsite assisting on small groups hands-on exercises with participating teachers.
Teacher Training at the University of Saint Joseph, 11September & 21 October 2021
67 teachers from participating seed schools in GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme attended the third in the series of training sessions of “Early Education Professional Development Advanced Course on 11th September and 21st October.
Co-hosted with the Education and Youth Development Bureau, the Bishop Domingos Lam Centre for Research in Education at the University of Saint Joseph, and the GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme, two training sessions were offered. Speakers elaborated on the assessment mechanisms and their purposes in the support program, and how students’ learning progress should be monitored so teaching adjustments can be made. Participating teachers all believed that the guidance and advice offered by the speakers would help with improving the quality of teaching, allowing them to more effectively help kindergarten children with weaker literacy skills to improve their language skills.
Completion of Advanced Teacher Training, University of Saint Joseph, May 2022
In May 2022, 77 kindergarten teachers from 5 participating seed schools of the project had completed the 36-hour, 4-module Advanced Training co-hosted by the Education and Youth Development Bureau and the University of Saint Joseph. Speakers from Hong Kong and Macau delivered training courses via onsite and remote teaching, equipping participating teachers with the necessary skills to identify kindergarten children at risk of learning delays in the Chinese language, and to conduct consequent intervention programmes.
A second round of training have already started at the end of 2022 to benefit more local teachers, equipping them with the necessary skills to identify kindergarten children at risk of learning delays in the Chinese language, and to conduct consequent intervention programs.
Assessment & Intervention
One-on-One Screening
The Project Team had devised a short one-on-one screening tool for kindergarten children in order to assess their Chinese language proficiency and, as importantly, gauge their proficiency level relative to their peers. With assistance from school administrators and teachers, these one-on-one screenings are done towards the end of each academic year in order to establish school-based benchmarks for the different age groups.
This screening is particularly important for those graduating from K2 as it is used to identify students whose Chinese language proficiency is lagging their peer group, and therefore deemed to be “at risk” of Chinese language acquisition delay. These students are then encouraged to participate in small group intervention during their K3 academic year, with the hope that the intervention sessions will enable them to improve their Chinese language proficiency during their last year of kindergarten, enabling them to improve their proficiency in line with their peer group before they begin their primary education.
It is hoped that under the Research component of the second phase of this Scheme, a simplified and improved screening tool can be devised in due course to enable teachers to be able to conduct such screening in class.
Small Group Intervention
Small group intervention is conducted during term time for K3 students, identified as “at risk” of Chinese language development delay, with their progress being tracked and monitored.
The pilot Scheme’s tracking of such results has shown noticeable improvements in children after one year of receiving regular intervention. Children who received small group intervention were able to catch up to their same age peers, and the skills they learned from the small group sessions could be transferred to large group classes.
Parents’ Seminars
Parents’ Seminars Series
Support and education within the family can have a lasting impact on a child’s learning and development. The “Parents’ Seminars” are aimed at helping parents build their child’s language skills outside the classroom. The Parents’ Seminar Series comprises age-appropriate sessions for the three kindergarten grades conducted for parents at the participating schools. The seminars introduce parents to the appropriate developmental language level expected for their child’s age, as well as methods on how parents can also be involved in helping their child grasp language concepts and boost language skills in everyday life. Demonstrations, role play and where possible, “live practice sessions” to include students are held during the seminars to enable parents to better understand and grasp the concepts covered.
Target Audience : Parents of K1 Students
Theme:
Enhancing oral language
Content:
This seminar focuses on how children transition from oral language to reading printed language. Parents will be shown how they can play a role in helping their children enhance their oral vocabulary at home.
Target Audience : Parents of K2 Students
Theme :
Shared Reading: Tips and strategies
Content :
This seminar focuses on how to nurture reading in children. Parents will also be able practice the skills taught during the seminar and are provided with tips on how to select appropriate books for young children.
Target Audience : Parents of K3 Students
Theme :
Preparing to read and write: Fun with reciting and reading
Content :
This seminar focuses on how to enhance children’s recitation and writing skills to help them prepare for the increased language demands when they enter primary school.
Online Parents Seminar Lou Hau High School Affiliated Kindergarten 17 April 2021
On the 17th April, 2021, the GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme co-hosted with Lou Hau High School Affiliated Kindergarten’s first parent seminar. More than 100 families from all three grades stayed home and participated the seminar on shared reading via Zoom.
Most parents attended the seminar at home with their children, learned from speakers from Project Team members from Macau and Hong Kong over videoconference, to understand the importance of reading and to learn techniques to motivate shared reading. The two directors from the kindergarten were also on hand to encourage parents to actively participate in the shared-reading practice and Q&A sessions, winning book prizes for sharing with their children.
As the seminar came to an end, teachers turned on their web camera to greet their students and took a “group photo” with all participants.
Parents Seminar Escola Dom João Paulino 10 April 2021
On the 10th of April 2021, the GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme co-hosted with Escola Dom João Paulino the school’s first parent seminar, with fifteen parents and their children participating.
Speakers from Hong Kong, via video conference, joined Ms Amanda Lei, Director of the Kindergarten of Colégio de Santa Rosa de Lima (Secção Chinesa) and Dr Miranda Mak, Assistant Professor from the Faculty of Education at the University of Macau, who conducted the seminar on site. They illustrated the “three essentials” and “four skills” of shared reading with vivid examples and on-the-spot demonstration.
In addition to the shared reading practice section, each participating family also received a picture book for reading at home, as encouragement for parents to put what they have learnt into practice.
Online Parents Seminar Macau Baptist College Kindergarten 12 December 2020
On 12th of December, 2020, the GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme hosted an online Parents Seminar for the kindergarten at the Macau Baptist College. Close to sixty pairs of parents and children attended the seminar on parent-child reading, which was held via video conferencing.
Principal Lei C.K. of Baptist College kicked off the seminar sharing the positive impact brought by the Scheme after it was implemented at Macau Baptist College three years ago. Principal Lei was pleased to witness improvements in literacy of his students, and encouraged parents to practise shared reading with their children. In the first of the seminar’s three sections, Professor Miranda Mak from the Faculty of Education at the University of Macau discussed concepts of the Three Essentials of Reading. The scheme’s Assistant Director, Terry Tse, then shared Four Interactive Skills of Shared Reading, followed by Professor Cheng Pui Wan, the Scheme’s Principal Investigator, who explained how to combine these skills in real settings with illustrated examples of shared reading.
The seminar included an online interactive game which was actively participated by parents in attendance; their children were also as eager to participate during the seminar. Head teachers Ms Chen and Ms Choi of the kindergarten were also present to announce winners to the online game, who were be awarded with children books to encourage shared reading.
Online Parents Seminar Colégio de Santa Rosa de Lima (Secção Chinesa) 28th November 2020
On 28th of November, 2020, the “GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme”, together with the kindergarten of Colégio de Santa Rosa de Lima (Secção Chinesa) co-hosted two parent seminars. In line with social distancing measures advised by the Government, the two seminars were held via video conferencing, so as to ensure both parents and children’s well-being in compliance with safety measures. Parents and children were able to comfortably, and safely, attend the sessions at home, learning together over the internet.
Almost one hundred sets of parents and children attended the seminars in the morning session, which was on parent-child shared reading, for parents of K2 students; the Scheme’s Principal Investigator, Professor Cheng Pui Wan opened the session with highlights of the three essentials of shared reading. Assistant Director Terry Tse went on to elaborate on the four interactive skills of shared reading, followed by Dr Miranda Mak of the University of Macau, who illustrated the applications of these skills in real settings.
For the seminar for parents of K3 students on readiness for Chinese literacy success in primary school, over 90 pairs of parents and children joined the seminar. The seminar pinpointed the critical literacy skills required for a successful transition from kindergarten to primary education in the Chinese language. Professor Cheng and Ms. Gloria Ho, Assistant Director of the Scheme, imparted parents with the equal importance of sense and reason in parenting with two practical strategies for supporting reading aloud and handwriting. Dr Mak reinforced these concepts with real cases and examples.
The K2 Parents Seminar on shared reading included a practice session, while both seminars included online interactive games, when parents competed in online interactive games, with winners awarded pictures books to encourage shared reading with their children.
Resources for Parents
Recommended Booklists
During parent seminars, booklists recommending age-appropriate picture books are given out so that parents can use them for shared-reading time with their children. Book Accession Numbers for each of the books that are available for loan from Macau’s public libraries are also provided.
Videos
Apart from the Parents’ Seminars, the Scheme will be producing videos to teach parents how they can use shared reading as a fun and engaging activity to develop print awareness (pre-reading skills) and at the same time enable them to play an active role in developing their child’s literacy skills outside of the classroom.
Please go to "Related Videos" of this page for the instructional videos.
Publications
A set of specially designed publications, developed by the CLEAR Project Team and published by the University of Saint Joseph, is now available to the public.
The highlight of the publications include two sets of basal readers, namely 《學會閱讀》. Based on the research by the Department of Linguistics at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the readers introduce children ages 2-6 to Chinese vocabularies and grammar structures of their learning stages, and provide reading instructions and practical skills to parents. With colorful illustrations related to everyday life in Macau, the readers shall introduce young children to the amazing world of reading, so as to build a strong Chinese literacy foundation for them.
More teaching tools, such as big books for classroom shared reading, flashcards and rhythm books, are also available for kindergarten teachers.
Click here for Catalog of Publications
Click here for Online Purchase
For inquiries about the publications, please contact the Project Team at:
- Domingos Lam Centre for Research in Education, University of Saint Joseph
- Tel: (853) 8592 5695
- Email: dlcre@usj.edu.mo
Community Outreach
By organizing various activities such as seminars and workshops, the Project Team aims to promote the Scheme to the community and the public, encouraging parental co-reading and enhancing the public’s knowledge of young children’s language and literacy development.
The CLEAR Project Team participated in various community events including Tap Seac Craft Market, Macau Book Fair, World Book Day events.
Researches
The Project Team has been conducting research relevant to early language and literacy acquisition in response to educational needs and social changes, and participating in international seminars.
Some of the presentation topics include:
- ARWA 2021 (The 5th Annual Conference of the Association for Reading and Writing in Asia):
To Zoom or not to Zoom: Macau kindergartener parents’ perception of the effectiveness of parent education program for early literacy development using face-to-face and online methods
- SSSR 2021 (The 28th Annual Meeting Society for the Scientific Study of Reading):
Does school closure during the COVID-19 pandemic have an effect on Macau kindergarteners’ literacy development in Chinese?
- ICLT 2021 (International Conference on Learning and Teaching 2021):
Monitor or On-site? Macau kindergartener parents’ learning experience in face-to-face and online parent education seminars
- ARWA 2022 (The 6th Annual Conference of the Association for Reading and Writing in Asia):
Towards a framework of teacher professional development: The case of early literacy education in Macau
- ARWA 2023 (The 7th Annual Conference of the Association for Reading and Writing in Asia):
Developing Programs for Preschool Children to Enhance Chinese Literacy: A Macau-based Example
Impact
Enhancing Language Learning
The Scheme uses evidence-based practice. Based on the school-based curriculum for participating seed schools, the professional team analyses the language ability of different age groups of their kindergarten students, and helps to build a language corpus for the particular schools so this can be used to enhance the kindergarten language curriculum. Doing so enables teachers to re-evaluate their curriculum, and make appropriate adjustments so that they can systematically teach Chinese language, and thus help students build a strong Chinese language foundation.
Feedback from Scheme Partners
Feedback from Teachers
• Kindergarten students have great potential. As long as we (teachers) are willing to put in a little bit of effort, you will see a great change, so do not underestimate your ability.
• I believe that every seed teacher who volunteered to run the intervention groups in the Scheme did so as they want to help students with weaker language abilities.
• I hope that more teachers will join so they can benefit more students
• The intervention groups have been able to help weaker students make significant improvement and made me understand its philosophy.
• Young children develop language a difference pace. The intervention groups are very effective in helping those who are slower to catch up.
• The intervention groups have had a positive impact on the students’ learning motivation. The students now actively participate in both their normal classes as well as in the small groups.
• Prior to intervention, the students knew less words, were slower to say sounds and lacked confidence. After receiving intervention, all aspects of their language skills had improved, were more self-confident, more motivated to learn and evidently participated more actively in class.
• Through participating in the intervention groups, the students were able to experience the joy of language learning and took interest in learning words in daily life.
• The teacher training improved my skills in teaching small groups as well as large classes.
• In the large class setting, it is harder to cater to the needs of weaker students. In the intervention groups, teachers are able to target their weaknesses and design appropriate educational games to enable them to learn through play and at the same time increase the learning motivation and interest.
Feedback from Parents
• The Parents’ Seminar has enabled me to understand how I can communicate and explain everyday phrases to my child.
• The Parents’ Seminar has taught me how to engage in shared reading with my child. Apart from watching the demonstration, I was able to practice it at the venue.
• The Parents’ Seminar helped me find ‘joy’ in shared reading and taught me how to get my child interested in reading.
• The speaker made everything very interesting and used videos and pictures to help us better understand.
• After participating in the Scheme, there is obvious improvement in my child’s word recognition ability, and he developed an interested in reading books.
• My daughter is more able to express herself after joining the Scheme. She now will proactively ask about words she does not recognize and like to go to the library. Each evening she will select a book to read with us.
• The Scheme has helped my child recognize more Chinese characters. My child will proactively read out the words he sees on billboards.
• My child loves the Scheme. He will share the new characters he has learned at school with me when he comes home.
• The Scheme uses a fun approach to teaching. As children learn words through playing the games, it increases their learning motivation.
• The information from the Scheme is very interesting and can meet the needs of my daughter.
Related Videos
GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme - Part 1
With Chinese as the primary medium of teaching and communication in Macau, the Foundation believes that developing literacy in Chinese is crucial to a student’s success in school. The "GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme” in 2016 was initiated with the objective of supporting children, parents and schools on Chinese language development for kindergarten-aged children based on evidence-based practice, and providing early intervention for children lagging behind in Chinese language acquisition. The Scheme conducted a “Parents’ Seminar Series” comprising age-appropriate sessions for the three kindergarten grades, focusing on helping parents build their child’s language skills outside the classroom.
GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme - Part 2
Under the "GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme”, students from the Scheme’s participating kindergartens were screened each year, with K3 children who were identified as lagging behind in the Chinese language being invited to receive small group intervention. The results from the intervention exercises had shown noticeable improvements in these children after having received regular intervention for one academic year. Children who received small group intervention were able to catch up to their same age peers in their Chinese language abilities, and the language skills they learned from the small group sessions could be transferred to their regular classes. Aside from their language skills being improved, results also showed that these children became more self-confident, more motivated to learn and evidently participated more actively in class.
The Three Basic Foundations of Reading
Language learning begins with reading. Parents reading with their children will not only nurture their interest in reading, but also helps to improve their vocabulary and reading ability. The three basic foundations of reading, text awareness, spoken vocabulary and story structure, shall be reinforced during shared reading; research has indicated that a child’s ability to read correlate positively to their academic success. Shared reading is an important stage of your child’s development.
The Four Tricks of Shared Reading
To encourage and motivate children to read, it is important that parents start with shared reading. There are four simple “tricks” to shared reading:
Query (問): through asking questions to pique the interest of the child, and to also allow the child space to think, recall and anticipate the story’s development, and enabling the child to express her thoughts;
Compliment (讚): encourage the child’s behaviour and attitude through constant affirmation and appreciation of the child’s participation;
Expand (充): “fill in the banks”, to help build the child’s vocabulary, and learn to express their thoughts; and
Practise (練): verbalising different sentence structures, and to strengthen what they are learning through repetition.
The Five Key Points of Reciting
After shared reading with their children, parents may recite the story book with the children again, to reinforce their reading and narrating abilities.
Related News
Please visit the Chinese version of this page for more news about GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme.