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. 

10/11 Class Review

We reviewed the characters taught last week and learned two new characters today: 什 and 么, together meaning "what." 

 

In the second part of today's class, we review Pinyin and made two pinyin cards: "a" and "o." The students wrote the Pinyin letter on one side of an index card and drew a corresponding picture or a spelling of a character on the other side of the card. Although most students said they'd learned pinyin at K level, we often found it's a weak point in their Chinese skills. So we will keep reviewing and practicing Pinyin in future classes.

10/4 Class Review

Today in class, we started with a little quiz on the ten characters we have learned so far.  Most students were able to memorize and write about six out of the ten, independently. Only very few of them, two or three, can do it all. We let the students to look at their textbooks for the difficult ones given it's the first time we are doing this (ting-xie). If the students could practice character writing at home regularly (at least once or twice per week), it would definitely help with their performance in the class if we do ting-xie again.   

The new characters taught today were: 气、太、鸟、儿。As usual, students learned the pinyin, writing strokes and word composition of each character. 

Something new we introduced today, for learning the characters, are the 声调卡, color-coded little index cards for the four tones. When learning new characters, the students were given instructions to choose a card/tone that they hear for a new character. The students usually did much better for the first and the fourth tone, but less successful for the second and third tones. We'll keep playing/practicing this game in future classes. 

In the second part of our class, we read the lesson 4 in the textbook together as a group. Then we read another piece of lyrics that is similar in content but has more words. After reading it loud for few times, we then learned the song. It's called 上学歌。 And here's a youtube link to this song: