LISTENING TO A VIDEO CLASS ACTIVITIES

Now, my grade 2 students are learning about “Chinese and western food.” They are exploring about common types of Chinese and western food. One of our class activities is listening to a video and doing some engaging activities related to it.

Ages: 7-8 years old

Objectives:

- Listen and understand the general meaning of a video

- Organize story based on correct sequence

- Visualize an ending of a story

- Create a mini book

Resource: “好(hǎo) 饿(è) 的(de) 小(xiǎo) 蛇(shé)” 

(You may consider using “The very hungry caterpillar” in Chinese version.)

1. I showed the title and asked a volunteer to read aloud. Since no one could read it properly; some of them only recognized some characters then I guided students to read together.

2. Passed next questions: “what the title means to you?”, “what maybe the story about”, “who is the main character of this story?”, “do you like snake?”

3. Introduced new vocabulary to students.

4. Played the video and paused sometimes to clarify meanings.

5. Played short quiz to assess their level of understanding.

                                              



   

6. Passed one sheet of picture and another sheet for a mini book template to students.

7. Students cut the pictures first and organized the order.

8. Played the video for second time so they could check their answer.

9. Now, they glued it to a template and wrote words in pin yin/ Chinese characters.

10. For the last box, everyone could visualize different ending and you could see how creative they are in doing this J

11. Decorated the mini book

12. Ready to be displayed or they could bring it home and shared the story to family.

TEACH CHINESE CHARACTERS FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

Learning Chinese characters could be very challenging for non native Chinese. I was born as Indonesian and I experienced how hard it was writing Chinese characters. It took many hours to practice the stroke order and another hour to memorize them.

Based on my teaching experience, I know that we can start to write once we can recognize the character itself, because every Chinese character is a piece of art by itself. It means, most of the character is made up of building blocks of pictographs or symbols, which can be visualized. The more exposure we got to Chinese characters the more easy for us to memorize them.

Here, I share some tips to teach Chinese characters for young learners:

1. Choose simple and easy Chinese characters from vocabulary list to teach to your students. There are no necessary forcing students to memorize everything from the list.

 2. Use picture or image to introduce the meaning of a character. You  can browse “Pinterest” to get more ideas.

3. Put the characters as classroom displays. You can ask students to create flash cards or posters. By doing this way student can have ownership with their learning and your classroom will look interactive.

4. Build classroom’s library where you can display many Chinese books and set activities in this corner. These books will be fantastic resources to help expand your student's vocabulary as well.

5. Show and teach the writing order. I usually use a website “www.bishunwang.com” to help my students visualize the stroke order.

6. Independent practice. Once they know the correct order directly ask students to copy and practice 1 to 2 lines. Move around and check their writing.

7. Repetition. Next day show the character, revise the meaning and ask a volunteer to write stroke order. Then, challenge students to think how they can use that character in form of sentence. By doing this way, they also practice their speaking skills.

8. Be creative in practicing Chinese characters. Prepare many tools/media in the classroom for students to practice their characters as this will sustain your student's interest. You may prepare play dough, brush and ink, magnetic sand or even puzzle.

9. Create classroom games. Everyone loves game and this activity can help students to retain their memory of Chinese characters.

•     Recognizing characters game: Prepare flash cards with Chinese characters only and divide students into some groups. Distribute the cards and ask them to spread them out on the table. The only rule is no one touches the cards. Teacher calls a word and they have to race to touch the correct card first. Those who win can keep it.
•     Writing stroke order game: Students sit in groups on the carpet. Prepare one small white board and one marker for each of groups. Show the Chinese character and then they have to take turn to write the correct order. Those who finish first show the white board to the teacher.

10. Involve parents in student’s learning. Build good communication way with parents because learning Chinese characters needs a lot of practices. Only rely on school time definitely not enough. Update your lesson regularly and ask their help to remind and encourage their kids to practice at home.

11. Create assessment task that allow students use Chinese characters. Even if you have a unit which focus more on speaking we still can incorporate Chinese characters into their assignment. Example:

Thematic unit: “Going to a doctor”

Assessment task: present a role play between doctor and patient

Criteria of assessment: 1. Use comprehensive vocabulary and correct sentence structure in writing the script. (This part you can ask students to write it in Chinese characters) 2. Pronounce words correctly 3. Speak fluently 4. Show appropriate gesture and eye contact.

TEACH CHINESE BODY PARTS FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

Ages: 7-8 years old

Objectives:

- Identify name of body parts in Chinese

- Use adjective words to describe body parts

- Recognize some of Chinese characters related to body parts

-Write correct stroke order for some of Chinese characters

Learning Activities:

1. Assess student’s prior knowledge: teacher shows the picture of body and asks the students to stand up. Students will need to listen to teacher’s words and then touch their body parts. From here teacher will assess very quick student’s understanding and design for next lessons.      

2. Students will learn new vocabulary by touching their own body parts while repeating the words after the teacher. (Facial parts): 头(tóu),  头(tóu)发(fà), 眉(méi) 毛(mao), 眼(yǎn) 睛(jīng), 鼻(bí) 子(zi), 嘴(zuǐ) 巴(bā), 牙(yá) 齿(chǐ), 耳(ěr) 朵(duo), 脸(liǎn), 脖(bó) 子(zi).

3. Pair game: they will face to face with partner, listen to the teacher and touch each other body parts

4. Labeling activity: teacher distributes a layout of body and students will add the missing parts and then label them use pinyin.

5. Sing “头(tóu) 发(fà), 肩(jiān) 膀(bǎng), 膝(xī) 盖(gài), 脚(jiǎo)” to review previous vocabulary and introduce new ones. 

6. Learn Chinese characters of: 口, 目, 手, 头, 牙by showing the visualization to help students memorize the meanings. While at the same time they also learn stroke order in writing those characters.

7. Teacher shows pictures of body parts with different sizes and asks the students to examine them and tell what make those pictures different even though they are same body parts. This discussion will lead to adjective words.

8. Use the same pictures, teacher shows the sentence pattern: 我(wǒ)的(de) 眼(yǎn)睛(jīng) 大(dà) 大(dà) 的.(de 姐jiě 姐jiě 的de 头tóu 发fà 长cháng 长cháng 的de。Then, students will directly use new words to describe their classmates/family.

9. Peer activity: This activity needs a bit preparation. Teacher provides some cards and clues on it (remember this activity is for young learnersJ). One person takes some cards first and then another one will listen and draw the pictures. By the end of this activity, they will compare the pictures with the cards.

她(tā) 的(de) 头(tóu) 发(fà)   (长(cháng)长(cháng)/短(duǎn)短(duǎn)) 的(de) 她(tā) 的(de) 眼(yǎn) 睛(jīng) ( 大(dà)大(dà)/小(xiǎo)小(xiǎo)) 的(de) 她(tā) 的(de) 鼻(bí) 子(zi) (大(dà)大(dà)/小(xiǎo)小(xiǎo))的(de) 她(tā) 的(de) 嘴(zuǐ) 巴(bā)  (大(dà)大(dà)/小(xiǎo)小(xiǎo)) 的(de)

10. For the final assessment, students will create a picture of me and write sentences to describe their physical appearance.

CRITERIA	Strongly Evident	Slightly Evident	Not Evident
1. Grammar Student used adjective words on the right context and wrote complete sentences about the topic.
2. Hanyu pinyin Student wrote correct hanyu pinyin.
3. Legibility of Handwriting Student wrote sentences neatly and clearly.
4. Time Management Student used the allotted time to finish project.