Community-Based Effective Teaching: A Case of Shaohuiba Primary School in Yunnan

This is an elementary school located in a village of the Lisu people on the border of China and Myanmar (see Fig. 4.1). There are only 40 students and 2 authorized teachers. The language and knowledge in the textbooks are strange and unfamiliar to the students here. To help them better understand the textbooks, the teachers have tried many teaching methods based on local conditions. For instance, they implemented trilingual education, that is, to teach students in three languages: the Lisu language, the local dialect and Mandarin to achieve different teaching goals in different situations. Besides, they have adopted a method called Total Physical Response (TPR), which enables students to acquire knowledge not only by listening, but also by sensing with their bodies.