On The Self-development Effect Of Students' Classroom Thematic Activities

Classroom thematic activities, in the comprehensive schema of building Democratic Classroom Community, refer to the well-designed classroom activities with specific themes which aim at solving of the students'development problems and enhancing their development needs in a certain phase.The students are the subjects of those activities, while the teacher offers necessary guidance.The ultimate goal is the students' learning of self-education and self-development through initiatively taking part in the process of design, preparation, implementation and reflection of the thematic activities.The two main characteristics of thematic activities are the presentation at a critical moment and the emergence through a process in a long period of time.In this way, "a thematic activity" is not just an ordinary activity. It includes planning, implementation and reflection of the whole process; it may also include a series of activities prior and after the main process. The time for such a thematic activity can be from a week to several months. All the relevant activities are centered on a theme and thus called "a thematic activity".The effect of self-development here refers to the positive impact of thematic activities on the individual students and the whole class. The former is the individuals' active and creative planning of their own development while taking part in the activities, the latter is the organizational self-adjustment, change, and improvement in the internal class structure, rules and the environment. Those two layers of effect intercommunicate and are support each other. They serve together the .students' self-development in a class, which functions as a basic educational organization.In the research, the author took part in and investigated the whole process of the thematic activities in an experimental class in a model high school in a county. The methods we used is primarily the participatory action research, which is supplemented by questionnaires and interviews.On that basis, combined with the study of other thematic activities in other classes, the paper analyses emphatically the self-development effect of those activities.The results showed that when students become the subject of thematic activities, they are able to develop self-awareness, leadership skills and higher level of need. We also found that the thematic activities can not only promote the development of individual autonomy, its can also make positive impacts on the organizational development of the whole class at the same time.In the experimental classes, while the series of thematic activities are carried out, the organizational structure can be optimized, the collective life quality can be improved; the self-development effect of a class as a basic educational organization is obvious.To produce the self-development effects of thematic activities more profoundly, those activities should be carried out more effectively. So we have further explored the strategies of improving the thematic activities:(1) extracting the theme of each activity according to the students'need of proximal development; (2) optimizing the structure of each activity and heighten the students'ability of designing and implementing the activity; (3) utilizing the following-up activities and distilling the students'experience of growing-up.