From Seeking Beauty in the Park to Confident Expression How SUIS Qingpu Fills New Curriculum Standard Classes with Warmth

On the afternoon of 14 May 2026, the district-level open class seminar for primary school English in Qingpu District successfully concluded at Shanghai United International School, Qingpu Campus. More than 150 English teachers from across the district gathered to focus on improving classroom quality under the background of the New Curriculum Standards and New Textbooks. Using an immersive Park Exploration Journey as the theme, SUIS Qingpu teachers delivered an outstanding teaching demonstration.

Theme Leadership: Holistic Unit Design Under the New Curriculum Standards

At the start of the event, Zhang Minzhí, Primary English Researcher from the Qingpu Institute of Education, delivered a keynote interpretation. Based on the philosophy of the New Curriculum Standards, she emphasised that English teaching should focus on thematic meaning and deepen holistic unit design. She set out observational perspectives across three aspects: theme exploration, content optimisation, and activity design, pointing the way for the entire seminar.

Teaching and Research Team: Reinterpreting Textbooks to Build a Closed-Loop Learning Model

Taking In the Park from Longman 1B as the teaching unit, the English teaching and research team of SUIS Qingpu closely followed the requirements of the New Curriculum Standards and tailored a complete unit teaching plan for lower-grade students.

Teacher Yu Minyan first presented the overall unit lesson plan design. Centring on the core task of Seeking Beauty in the Park, and considering the learning differences of lower-grade students, she constructed a spirally progressive closed loop: Perceiving Beauty → Exploring Beauty → Sharing Beauty. Breaking from the original textbook framework, the team reconstructed progressive discourse chains closely linked to students’ daily lives. Adopting a differentiated task model of basic mastery + extended improvement, and integrating multi-sensory experience with AI-assisted creation, the team fully practised the English learning activity concept of the New Curriculum Standards.

Classroom Demonstration: Two Lessons Unlock Diverse Ways to Explore the Park

Teacher Jin Qiang: Bringing the Park into the Classroom, Learning English with All Senses

Teacher Jin Qiang taught the first lesson of What a Nice Park: See and Smell. Taking Sally’s email about visiting West Lake Park as the cue, she created an immersive learning atmosphere with soft music, an amiable teaching manner, and beautiful real-scene pictures.

The highlight was bringing real flowers and plants into the classroom. Students closed their eyes to smell, observed the pictures, and expressed themselves, naturally moving from simple phrases such as “smell a flower” to complete sentences.

All students participated actively and expressed themselves confidently. Researcher Zhang Minzhí praised the lesson, saying, “This class turns abstract vocabulary into tangible real experience and shows the solid language foundation of SUIS Qingpu students.”

Teacher Wang Qian: Learning Through Rhymes and Games, Mastering Prepositions in Interaction

Teacher Wang Qian taught the second lesson of What a Nice Park: See and Hear. Based on English chants, she guided students to discover the dynamic beauty of the park through progressive activities focusing on overall perception, imitation recitation, and creative expression.

She skilfully used TPR rhythm teaching with the “flying bee” body-movement demonstration to turn learning abstract prepositions into an intuitive experience. AI technology further enriched the class by converting static pictures into dynamic park scenes. Students internalised language knowledge effortlessly through chanting, playing cooperative games, and completing listening-and-matching activities. The lively and engaging lesson integrated learning with fun, drawing participation even from the observing teachers.

Lesson Plan Sharing: Five Periods Form a Complete Growth Chain of Unit Learning

After the classroom demonstrations, three teachers—Tang Yuan, Xie Lele, and Fu Shirong—respectively explained the teaching design of lessons three to five. Centring on Park Exploration Day, they connected a complete learning growth chain.

Tang Yuan (Lesson 3: What a Fun Park: Prepare to Explore)

Driven by pre-exploration tasks, she realised the coordinated development of language ability and inquiry literacy through situational comparison, layered practice, and creative construction, laying a solid foundation for subsequent exploration activities.

Xie Lele (Lesson 4: What a Fun Park: Learn to Explore)

Using the real scenario of observing park animals, she built a three-level activity system: demonstration → collaborative consolidation → independent application. By adopting scientific inquiry approaches such as observing with binoculars, seeking help from tour guides, and examining with magnifying glasses, language learning was extended from the classroom to real life.

Fu Shirong (Lesson 5: What a Fun Park: Show the Exploration)

With making a park animal photo album as the core task, she designed four progressive links: lead-in stimulation, title creation, annotation writing, and achievement presentation. It formed a closed loop from language input to output, improving students’ comprehensive language ability and guiding them to appreciate the beauty of nature.The most impressive part was the students’ performance in class: fully focused, actively raising their hands, describing scenes in English, creating chants, and taking part in interactive conversations. Their confidence shone through in every look. Observing teachers commented sincerely, “Students’ language literacy is the best proof of long-term, solid teaching at SUIS Qingpu.”

Interactive Seminar: Peer Recognition and Expert Affirmation

During the interactive discussion, participating teachers spoke highly of the SUIS Qingpu classes and teaching team:

Teacher Zhang from Shenxiang Primary School:

The unit’s thematic meaning is clear, forming a complete closed loop of “Perceiving Beauty — Exploring Beauty — Sharing Beauty”. Abundant real-experience activities involving seeing, listening, and smelling immerse students in the scenario and enable natural language output.

Teacher Li from Yifu Primary School:

The most touching part of Teacher Jin’s lesson is the multi-sensory real-scene experience. Bringing flowers and plants into the classroom allows students to smell with eyes closed and perceive with their hands, turning abstract words into operable real experiences. Sentence patterns are layered from single words to phrases, fully meeting the learning needs of different students. Teacher Wang used the “flying bee” movement to demonstrate prepositions, and the “stick and say” activity was solid and efficient. The class combined quiet and active learning perfectly, integrating knowledge acquisition with fun. Students took the initiative to use language in immersive experiences with confident and natural expression, showing excellent language application ability.

Teacher Zhao from Experimental Primary School:

The teaching content of the two lessons is reasonably optimised. The textbook context is adapted to West Lake, and emails are replaced with WeChat-style output, which is more in line with lower-grade students’ cognition and daily life. The lessons feature distinct static and dynamic design: Teacher Jin presented the park’s static beauty with soft music and a gentle teaching demeanour; Teacher Wang showed the park’s dynamic beauty through rhythmic chants and body interpretation. Progressive activities such as chant practice, closed-eye listening, and layered creation guide students to explore the thematic meaning in depth.

Authoritative Comment by Researcher Zhang Minzhi

Teacher Zhang fully affirmed the effect of the demonstration lessons:

“The two lessons truly display students’ language literacy and teachers’ steady and solid teaching competence. Based on thematic meaning, the teaching team integrated and optimised fragmented old textbook content, adjusted the context to the familiar West Lake setting in line with students’ real lives, and ran the whole unit with the theme of ‘Park Exploration Day’. Classroom activities are well designed, with progressive arrangement and repetitive language recurrence. The educational goal of ‘discovering beauty, expressing beauty and sharing beauty’ is naturally integrated into teaching, providing a clear and referential implementation path for holistic unit teaching of English in lower grades.”

Let Every Classroom Become Fertile Soil for Children’s Growth

This district-level open class activity is not only a concentrated display of teaching ability, but also an epitome of SUIS Qingpu’s in-depth implementation of the New Curriculum Standards and New Textbooks, and high-quality classroom construction. Going forward, we will continue to promote teaching through research, polish classroom teaching, and enable every child to see a bigger world through English learning.