FROM THE VICE PRINCIPAL
Mr Sebastian Jin
Vice Principal
Greenridge Secondary School
Our pupils love it. Our teachers welcome it. It’s our school-based curriculum innovation called “Camera, Lights and Action Programme”, in short, CLAP. Since its inception and implementation in 2005, this novel pedagogical approach has been one of the school’s pride and joy in exciting and motivating our pupils in their quest for learning. It is easy to understand why.
Look at the phenomenal success of YouTube, a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips, created also in 2005, sold to Google for US$1.65b and around 13 hours of video are uploaded every minute. This is an example of the hynoptic effects of broadcast media and how youths of today and the new generation of learners are going ga-ga over it. Of recent times, digital technology and the Internet have become a major arenas for broadcast media. Web-based television broadcasting is proving an attractive field for traditional electronic media and for communication. And we have been quick to capitalize on broadcast media technology in teaching and learning. In fact action research done by our Master Teacher, Mrs Shirley Tham, revealed that engagement in terms of language acquisition, team work skills and motivation rose for pupils who went through the CLAP process. Although initially conceptualized for the more kinaesthetic learners with musical and spatial intelligences, this approach quickly caught on with the rest of the pupil population, cutting across all streams and levels. Now, beyond the English department, teachers from other departments such as the Humanities, have or are seriously considering the use of CLAP.
At the individual level, pupils at this age, being on video, acting, singing and narrating are exciting and memorable moments for them. In wanting to appear their best and impress viewers, naturally they put in every inch of effort to practice their roles. And practice makes perfect. This is what we also hope to achieve in their oral competency, public speaking skills and confidence building. And for those who do not appear in the videos, they also learn teamwork and organizational skills.
I hope you find this website interesting and useful as you navigate. Particularly, the resources section, the templates, lesson cycles, tasks, rubrics are the outcomes of our teachers’ attempt to systematically capture the CLAP processes. This website could also further the conversation among teachers and among pupils and possibly help germinate new exciting ideas. Do feel free to contribute your comments and suggestions to the team members.
So go forth, explore and enjoy!
