Ms Jannie Tsang and Ms Leung Kit-yan of the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching conducted a Parents’ Seminar and a Staff Development Workshop on “Self-Regulated Learning” (SRL) for Hennessy Road Government Primary School (Causeway Bay) on July 2 and July 9, 2021 respectively. The target audience of the seminar were appproximately 80 parents of the school. The content revolved around how parents could nurture the ability of their children to learn independently at home under the new normal of suspending classes without suspending learning. The speakers first introduced the basic concepts of SRL and the characteristics of self-regulated learners, followed by a variety of metacognitive learning strategies and a number of online educational platforms for gamification so that parents could assist their children in revising at home. Participating parents commented that the seminar had given them a deeper understanding of SRL, and the learning strategies introduced by the speakers were very practical.
The second event was a Staff Developemnt Workshop on SRL which was, in fact, the second workshop or a continuation of the workshop on the same topic conducted in January 2020. The speakers first reviewed the rationale and the three orientations of SRL with the teachers. Each orientation was illustrated with an authentic case showing how the elements of SRL could be integrated in the lesson design. To promote home-school cooperation, similar metacognitive learning strategies which had been introduced to parents were discussed. Three models of Blended Learning and a variety of note-taking strategies were recommended so that teachers could help students develop their autonomous learning skills and enhance their learning motivation. The workshop had provided opportunities for the fifty teacher participants to collaborate with their colleagues teaching the same subjects in designing lessons integrated with SRL elements, and to share their teaching ideas with all their colleagues. The participating teachers found that the feedback given by the speakers about their instructional design was constructive and would help them further develop SRL in the school.
