Reviewing the preview, some notes about this week, and some free Chinese lessons.
Heading in to Week 6 (not that I can believe it’s here) I thought I would take a moment to review my preview of last week and think about this week.Last week I…
1. Wanted to use my SMART Board in three different ways. Does this count:
*many of my students have been blogging on it and writing comments on other blogs. I almost had a few fights on my hands over who was going to use if for that class! Children! Back down!
*I made a SMART Notebook file that featured the Timer and StickyNote functions to time the whole Year 7 class to each write one goal as quickly as they could then drag a new sticky note over for the next person. 17 students took about 6 minutes.
*It’s not 3 ways, but there are more weeks to fill…
2. I wanted my students to know how to leave comments on technoChinese - this happened with most students. I got them to leave comments on Friday Vox Pop as well. Stats spiked that day!
3. I didn’t do much reinforcing to students that Chinese is an important thing to learn. The main class I think about when I say this is Year 8. I have them early in the day on a Thursday on Period 5 on a Friday. They’re a tough class (individually REALLY great kids!) and I’m going to have to set them some really engaging tasks. But, I’m still working on promoting what I teach more.
4. The intercultural knowledge that I got into a few (not every) class this week was that the character for ‘me’ is made up of two parts - a hand and a sword, indicating that ‘I/me’ am standing here with my sword, being me. I’m getting to kids to use this idea this week when they decorate their own characters and I put them all together on the technoChinese blog.
5. I did give most of my classes the ongoing assignment called ‘Where is China This Week?,’ which asks them to look out for anything in their daily lives that mentions China or Chinese. I posted the assignment on technoChinese, as well as giving each student a handout, as well as putting it in the newsletter - so no excuses for not knowing!
6. Hmm, didn’t get around to grabbing those iPods from the library.
So, this week will involve:
1. Some more intercultural knowledge! I’m setting a few year levels this assignment called ‘Different But The Same‘ where they have to find 2 images of China - one that is completely different to their lives and one that has some similarity. They have to post the images (we’ll talk about Creative Commons) on their blogs along with an explanation as to why they chose them.
2. I still want to get the ‘Chinese is a GREAT thing to learn’ message across to Year 8 this week. Am still pondering how exactly this is to be done. Tough audience.
3. Several blog posts! I am feeling fairly organised tonight and have planned most of the week, so I might just have some time to do some good old fashioned blog writing. That would be nice.
4. Getting those iPods from the library and putting my Chinese lessons on them. Should anyone reading this wish to learn how to ask someone what their name is, how old they are and where they live and give the same information, feel free to have a listen to:
And if, by any chance, you have made it this far down this post and you’d like to check out some of my kids rapping, click here. We had a Rap Party last week that was great fun! the kids had to rap their name, age and where they live in Chinese. There is also a pic of their very cool teacher.
My Week in Preview
It’s Week 5 already!!! Did you hear that? WEEK 5! Now, I knew this year would go quickly, just like all the other ones do, but Week 5?! I was sooo supposed to be organised by now.
My colleague, Anne wrote a post about her Week in Review last week and I thought I should do the same. Although, rather than adding to the list of things I’m meaning to do (all with the best of intentions of course), I am going to write about what I’m going to do NOW. That way I get a blog post written, I get to think about what I really want to get out of this coming week which allows me to focus my planning a bit more. I’ll be able to check back at the end of the week and see how I’ve gone and then start all over again for the following week. Hmm, could be a good process!
So, rather than starting another week feeling a bit lacking in the focus department and ending up with some ordinary lessons because of it, here is what I hope to achieve this week:
1. I want to use the SMART Board in three different ways
2. I want all of my students in Years 4 - 11 to know how to and leave a comment on the technoChinese blog and to actively use it to learn some Chinese. I’ve got 3 lessons on there for them at the moment, and will be adding another this week.
3. I want to reiterate to most of my classes why Chinese is a good thing to learn. The need reminding every now and again, especially if they are in Year 8.
4. I want to make sure each lesson contains some intercultural knowledge. One of the things we are reviewing this week is how to introduce yourself. The intercultural information I want to add in with this is about how the Chinese name people and how English names are translated into Chinese. I’ll get the kids to blog about this too. (Every student from Grade 4/5 - 8 and some 9/10s have their own blog which they will be using for many different subjects. Links to their blogs can be found on technoChinese).
The intercultural aspect of language teaching is very important and can often be a good way of engaging those students who are not necessarily interested in the language itself. I don’t think I do enough of it in my class, so I’m going to up the ante a bit!
5. Last of all this week, I think I’ll give most of my students an ongoing assignment - to find anything around them - newspaper and magazine articles, pictures, souvenirs etc that feature China or something Chinese and bring it into class. That’s one way I’ve thought of to show these kids that China and Chinese does not just exist in Room 14. I think I might also get the students in a few of my classes (I teach all levels from Prep to 11) to take turns at presenting something (in any way they see fit) they have found out about China or the Chinese language. 1 presentation per class per week will keep it going for a while and hopefully generate some good discussions and blog posts!
Hang on, I’ve thought of something else…
6. Bring the school set of video iPod into my class and load them up with Chinese lessons!
Hmm, lots to do! The more I write about what I want to accomplish, the more things I find to add to the list. Bring it on.
Image is ‘Everlasting’ by *Cati Kaoe*
