Chinese Class Review 12/13

The teacher started class today with a little game called "Charades". The teacher held out cards with Chinese word(s) on them. The students split into two teams. There would be a student as the role of the guesser facing all the other students on the team,  the team then would have to act out or say the word(s) on the card that the the teacher is holding in English. Each team gets two minutes to do this.  If the first person up cannot guess a word, the next person in line from the "team" section takes their turn as the guesser.  The person that could not guess the word will go back to the "team" section and help the guesser guess the word.  The students all loved this game!

  The words we learned today are 妈,们,国,也. We played "beat the teacher" after learning the words as always.  

 Today class 1A and 1B combined and is learning a dance together for the Chinese New Years Festival that NSCS puts on each year. The the song they are learning together to perform at the Festival is called "小宝贝' and here is the link to the song so you can practice at home :   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNKXhQ30rEs 

 

 

12/6 Class Review

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Since we had not had class for two weeks, we began the lesson with review. First, we looked at some of the more difficult characters we have learned so far and laid those characters on the floor. Next, we divided the students into two teams to play a review game. One student from each team was sent to the board to write the characters that other students chose. Whichever student completed the character accurately won their team a point. Both teams were equally skilled and the game ended in a tie!

We learned four new characters today: 工, 作, 生, 在. While learning the pinyin of these characters, we added new Pinyin cards to the students' collection: ong, eng. We devoted time to hole-punching the pinyin cards and putting them on metal rings to help students keep their cards organized.

Next, as a whole class and individually, we read aloud several times lesson ten from our textbook: 我的爸爸是医生. Afterwards, students gathered in the middle of the classroom to discuss the variety of careers out there. In pairs, students told each other the occupations of their parents. 

Last but not the least, THANK YOU, to all the families of C1A class, for the generous appreciation gifts we received from you! It has been a wonderful semester working with your children and we are looking forward to an efficient-learning and hard-working new semester next year! 

11/15 Class Review

   Today we started class with a traditional Chinese game: 击鼓传花! Students sat in a circle, and one student was picked to be the "drummer". The drummer would have his back to the circle and pound his or her fists on the floor while the rest of the students passed a balloon around the circle. When the drummer stopped his pounding, whichever student held the balloon must go into the middle of the circle and sing/recite one of the songs we have learned. Many students had the chance to be the drummer and the singer!

   Next we learned several new characters: 几 , 口 , 人, 三，四. The teacher also showed the students a more complicated character: 家. Students are not required to know how to write this character at this point, but since it does show up in the textbook reading, it is best if they can recognize it. 

   To make practicing writing the characters a little more interesting, the teacher gave students a plate covered with a thin layer of salt. Students partnered up and took turns using their pencils to write the characters in the salt. They found this activity very fascinating! Students who are interested can also practice writing like this at home.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! See you in two weeks!

11/8 Class Review

     For this lesson, we jumped right into learning new characters and saved review for end of class. Students were taught a poem that celebrated the beauty of autumn. Among the new words in that poem were: 秋 (autumn), 地 (ground), 手 (hand), 起 (together, to get up). These characters are not easy to write, but students paid careful attention and for the most part, mastered how to write them with correct order of strokes. We also added a couple more PinYin cards to their collection: sh, ou, q.

     For the latter half of class, we played Bingo to review nine of more difficult characters that students have learned. Nine characters were placed in the middle of the classroom and students were asked to fill out their own Bingo board with the nine characters. When everyone finished, the TAs read out characters and students had to find and mark the character on their own board. Students that got three characters marked in a row received a sticker! 

11/1 Class Review

As usual, we began class with a review of what students learned in the last lesson. Students took turns writing the four characters 子, 这,不, 你 on the whiteboard. Then the teacher gave students pointers on how to improve their calligraphy. Overall students did good job today reviewing/writing those characters.

Next, we learned four new characters: 王 (king). 老 (old), 师 (master/teacher), 没 (none). To learn the pinyin of these characters, students were asked to piece together the correct pinyin using the Pinyin Cards they have. Students also made four more Pinyin cards: sh, i, m, ei. We played several rounds of "Beat the Teacher" to test how well the students know the correct order of strokes for each of the four new characters. Students successfully beat the teacher in several rounds! They are definitely getting much better at this game!

Since it was raining during recess, we asked the students whether they thought rain was 好（good） or不好（ bad）. We took a vote, and interestingly, most students believed rain is good. They justified their choice by saying rain helps plants grow taller, helps alleviate the drought, can wash cars, and is fun to play in. Those were some very thoughtful answers!

Near the end of class, students read from their textbooks: "对不起" (page. 40). The passage shares many characters from 礼貌歌, which students learned earlier.

10/25 Class Review

We started today's lesson off with a little review. The students were asked to write characters they have learned in previous lessons: 是、什、么、书。 However, it seemed that many failed in this task and the teacher had to give hint as reminders. As our lesson progresses, the characters we teach get more complicated over time. Please make sure your children practice writing newly learned characters at least once or twice per week as part of their homework.

This week's new characters are: 子 (usually attached to the end of nouns), 这 (this),  不 (not), 你 (you). The teacher went through Pinyin, writing strokes, and word-making for each character and played "Beat the Teacher" game after each writing demonstration. 
 

We also added four more cards to their Pinyin Cards collection: zh, b, e, n. Students used their creativity and illustrated images on the backs of the cards to remind themselves of the proper pronunciation of each pinyin. 

In the second half of today's class, we reviewed some songs students have learned in past lessons. They did very well in performing those past songs! We also learned a new song, 礼貌歌. Since this song can be sung as a conversation between two people, each student practiced this song with a partner. 

10/18 Class Review

Today we began class with a simple game to review the words they have learned thus far. Students were each assigned a single character. Within a given time limit, students must "find their friend"or, in context of the game, the complementary character that would help them form a word. This game not only tested the students ability to recognize the characters, but also tested their ability to create words with the characters.

Next, students learned two new characters: 是 (is), 书 (book).

 Besides using their 声调cards while learning the two new characters, students added three more 拼音cards to their card collection: "sh," "i," and "u."  Each student was given a zip log bag to hold the cards. They are required to bring all the cards they made in class to the class each time. Today we had three students who didn't bring their 声调 cards for various reasons. Hopefully they will remember to bring them next time.

In the second part of today's class, students first took out their textbooks and worked on activities that examined their Pinyin knowledge. We noticed that this cohort of students have discrepant levels in terms of their mastery of Pinyin: some have no problem spelling out the pinyin combinations at all, some can read individual pinyin letters but were unable to put them together,  others may not be able to pronounce even some of the single pinyin letters. At this grade level, we will emphasis on character recognition (认字), writing strokes (笔顺笔画), as well as the pinyin system(拼音) throughout the school year.

After the textbook exercise, we practiced how to say sentences with the word "是" （是字句) through a circle game.  The teacher asked each student to contribute an item to a "mysterious bag." Then, in the group circle, students took turns grabbing an item from the bag and answered the question: "这是什么？（What is this?）"  Then, each participant was asked to find the correct card among several that were per-written in Chinese. After finding the right card (with the name of the picked item), this person then was given the following characters, each on a separate card:  这，那，不，是，我，的， to form a grammatically correct sentence. Some did all the tasks with ease; whereas others had a little challenge here and there. Everyone participated eagerly till the closing bell rang.