Some 1.07 million students, from fourth grade in primary school to sophomores in senior high school, took online lessons Monday due to school closures brought about by Shenzhen’s new wave of COVID, while students in their final year of senior high school returned to schools Monday as scheduled.
“I have adapted to online learning as my class studied online for almost a month amid the pandemic previously. In the beginning, I felt it was very different from the daily schedule on campus, but I’m already used to it,” Liu Minhao, a grade 11 student from Shenzhen Middle School, told Shenzhen Daily on Monday.
Many students told the Daily that they still prefer offline over online courses because they are more likely to lose focus when staring at screens and hope to have more physical interactions with teachers and other students. However, Wu Yixuan, a grade 10 student from Shenzhen Middle School, suggested that she became more willing to join discussions with her classmates when seeing them have a heated discussion online.
“I am not brave enough to share ideas in front of the class. But when studying online at home, I was kind of inspired by my classmates’ enthusiasm and I also want to share my opinion via the platform’s chat zone,” Wu said, adding that “I also have a sense of achievement when successfully motivating myself to finish tasks at home.”
“My daughter’s school informed us to pick up new curriculum books Sunday. It was very cold that day, but the school’s staffers organized the pickup very efficiently. Though results of online learning might not be as good as offline teaching, I believe that teachers will help students catch up after the school reopens,” said a parent surnamed Liu, whose daughter is a sixth grader at Shenzhen Futian Quanhai Primary School.
While studying at home, students can get more curriculum resources via the website of Shenzhen Education Cloud Resource Platform, https://zy.szedu.cn/, according to the city’s education authority.
The city’s education authority has not given a new opening day for offline lessons. About 47,000 students in their final year of senior high school returned to schools Monday.