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1. "New Stars Island" Graded Picture Book Series (Grade 4-6)

 

Publisher: NTU-SCCL Press, 2018

Publication Date: April, 2018

        The stories in the "New Stars Island" Graded Picture Book Series are the winning entries of the "Creativity, No Boundaries!" National Children's Story Writing Competition held in 2016. Specially commissioned for preschool children and primary students in Singapore, this series comprises six levels, each level consisting of six books. The stories in level one and two are specially denoted with hanyu pinyin. As the difficulty level increases across the levels, parents and teachers can select suitable books according to their children's reading proficiency and learning progress.
        Every story in the "New Stars Island" is the fruit of labour by residents and students in Singapore. Packed with the authors' wondrous imagination and the illustrators' extraordinary creativity, this series promises to enthrall every child with its novelty. "New Stars Island" is suitable for both parent-child co-reading and children's self-reading.
        Levels one to three were published in August 2017 while levels four to six have just been published in April 2018. Each primary schools will get 42 sets. Teachers may use the books to conduct class reading.

 

2. Teaching and Learning Interaction Strategies via iMTL Portal for Secondary 3 Chinese Language (Express) [Secondary School]

 

Authors: Dr Liu May, Mdm Lim Kwee Hua, Ms Siow Sze Teen, Ms Tan Yu

Publisher: NTU-SCCL Press, 2018

        Built on the basis of the research project "Developing Task-based Learning on the iMTL Portal to Strengthen Students' Oral and Written Interaction Proficiency: An Exploratory Study with Upper Secondary CLB Students" by the Ministry of Education, this teaching toolkit is tailored for the Secondary 3 Chinese Language (Express) curriculum.
        It features a wide variety of resources, including lesson plans, PowerPoint slides, activity sheets, supplementary teaching activities, as well as oral samples and rubrics. Ten videos clips are also provided and uploaded to the iMTL portal for easy access. The themes of seven of the videos correspond closely to seven lessons in Secondary 3 Chinese textbooks (Express), while those of the remaining three are relatively independent.
        This toolkit will be helpful for teachers to conduct textbook-based lessons on oral and written interaction, and effectively improve students' oral and written interaction skills.

 

3. Targeted Teaching for Primary 1 Oral Chinese [Primary School]

 

Authors: Dr Fan Jinhua, Mdm Chow Fong Yee, Mdm Tan Yan Ni

Publisher: NTU-SCCL Press, 2018

        This teaching toolkit begins with an introduction to the concept of targeted teaching and proceeds to re-arrange in a progressive order the oral skills as presented in Primary 1 Chinese language textbooks. On the basis of this, it comes up a set of 34 lesson plans, complete with PowerPoint slides and activity sheets. The teaching plans are designed in line with the Oracy Theatre and Real-Life Application sections in the textbooks. With this toolkit, teachers will be able to follow the general progress of the textbooks while targeting at students of different levels to strengthen and improve their skills. Teachers may follow the lessons plans in the toolkit. Alternatively, they may also use the chart of re-arranged skills to design their own syllabus according to their students' specific learning needs.

 

4. Professional Development for Teachers as Researchers – Action research

 

 

Authors: Dr Yan Jing, Dr Soh Kay Cheng, Dr Goh Hock Huan

Publisher: NTU-SCCL Press, 2018

        Action research is important to teachers' professional development. It has been practiced in Singapore for more than 10 years. Many teachers have experience of conducting action research while more teachers are still in the process of exploration. This book aims to provide theoretical and practical support for teachers embarking on action research.
        It consists of two parts: 1) Principles and methods of action research, and 2) Action research in practice. The first part gives a concise definition of action research and explains the procedures involved. Research methods, such as classroom observation, interview, language testing and questionnaire survey, are also introduced with practical examples. The second part includes six action research reports by teachers. Covering various topics, these reports will serve as important references for teachers who intend to conduct their own action research in the future.

 

5. Innovations in Chinese Teaching Practice in the Transformed Teaching Environment

 

Editor: Dr Fan Jinhua

Publisher: NTU-SCCL Press, 2018

        The nine papers collected in Innovations in Chinese Teaching Practice in the Transformed Teaching Environment are selected from among more than one hundred papers presented at the 4th International Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Chinese as a Second Language held by Singapore Centre for Chinese Language. They fall into two thematic groups, addressing respectively the changed environment of language learning and innovation in teaching practice, with the concept of reflective practice running through. Depicting specific aspects of teaching and learning practice, the papers in this collection will provide the reader with examples and approaches to improve their teaching through innovation in teaching strategies and to reflect on their teaching against the changed environment.

 

6．Come, Let's Celebrate-Preschool Teaching Activities and Evaluation for Festivals of Singapore

 

Authors: Dr Cheng Wan-Ni, Dr Tan Chee Lay, Mdm Zheng Yingjiang

Publisher: NTU-SCCL Press, 2018

        Using Tyler's objective-centered model, this book provides sample lesson plans for the teaching of festivals of Singapore's diverse ethnicities and cultures. It proposes a framework and approach to teaching activities related to such festivals. General knowledge and guiding values in early childhood education are embedded in the introductions to the festivals, which include accessible background reading and suggested teaching activities. Early childhood teachers can modify and extend the activities of a specific festival for other festivals as well. To provide teachers with evaluation tools, each teaching activity also contains a suggested assessment based on different learning areas.
        This book complements the set of "Come, Let's Celebrate! Preschool Teaching Resources for Festivals of Singapore" teaching tools linked to the thirteen important festivals celebrated in Singapore. The tools include six medium-sized backgrounds that could be used for classroom decorations, four larger-sized stage backdrops, and close to a hundred of small pictures of festive elements that could be used for story-telling, role-playing and language games.
        In addition, parents and kindergartens can acquire the "Come, Let's Celebrate! Preschool Interactive Art Book", which contains reusable stickers to reenacted scenes of festivals, like donning traditional costumes, eating festive food, visiting the homes of other ethnic groups, as well as travelling in Singapore. The ready-made interactive art book also includes 3D art materials for children, and is hence a handy and useful festival teaching tool for teachers and parents, easing their burden of preparing class materials. Parents and children can also make use of the book to come up with creative activities together, and in the process enhance parent-child relationship.