In doing so we are learning new useful words, reinforcing our colours, learning about the importance of tone, experiencing repetitive input of complex sentence patterns, making connections with things we’ve already learned…and having a laugh!
If you want to learn a little more about what we are doing, how the book teaches us about tones, or want scripts for the video, just click on the blue links above.
In both the Middle and Primary school, we’ll keep singing songs and playing games with numbers till we can recall them real quick! Don’t forget the number rap if you need more practice!
Here’s a video by Groovi Pauli, there are some words in this video that we will be learning the characters for soon…so sing the song and you’ll have a head start!!!
We are playing a game in the Middle School, higher or lower (高还是低?) , a student picks a number from 1-99, and we have to guess what the number is by asking the following:
这个数字是………….吗？zhège shùzì shì ……..ma？ (literally: This number is ………..?)
The person with the number responds with:
这个数字比……………..高/低。zhège shùzì bǐ ………gāo / dī. (Literally: this number compared to …………..is high / low)
Weird word order I know, but that’s just the way it is said in Chinese.
The game continues till the students can work out the number.
Teach someone how to count to 99 in Chinese, it’s easy when you know how to count to ten! Then play the game. No English allowed！
Below are some links to what we are learning in class, but middle (and senior) students are also encouraged to browse this blog for songs that the primary kids are learning too, they are fun, catchy, and help us to remember so much Chinese!
As well as our MYP question, we have been busy learning a little about stroke names and order – check out the Gong Fu Gary videos for the basic strokes, here is the first one but you can find lots more on the Groovi Pauli channel!
We are practicing our tones and syllable sounds…use this pinyin chart to hear the sounds and see video explanation for those tricky ones.
We’ve also learned a new hello song, lots of useful vocab that the students can link to as they make their Mandarin learning journey. All the words are on the video for you, just sing along!
We’re also learning how to add Chinese keyboards…depending on your computer/ software it is a little different. But basically in the control panel there should be a language section, sometimes called ‘clock language region’, in there you want to ‘change keyboard’ and then ‘add a language’ . You will see that there are lots of Chinese keyboards to choose from, you will need to choose Chinese simplified, PRC, and PINYIN input method. When you OK this, you will see on the bottom right of screen, a EN ( for English) which means your keyboard is on English input. If you click on that you will have the option to change to Chinese input. Add this to your devices at home and practice typing Chinese! Your computer will always default to English upon start up.
Students are learning how to type numbers one to ten to practice using the Chinese keyboard. It’s so easy and soon we will be setting up our blogs and typing away in Chinese!
The first characters that we need to learn how to recognise and write by memory are numbers 1 to 10. Click on the characters below (numbers 1-10) to see how we write them.
In the primary classroom we are learning Mandarin at a phenomenal rate! Don’t worry if your kids are coming home not quite perfecting one song, yet trying to teach you lots of unperfected songs! I introduce kids to lots of classroom phrases and lots of different songs, they may seem unrelated (un ‘themed’) like traditional second language learning…but don’t worry! The kids pick them up and naturally make connections. It is more meaningful for students to be exposed to a variety of language, rather than focus on mastering one set of words before moving on to another set. Here are some links to some of the things we are learning …
We will use this song ‘Where is my friend?’ often to play finding objects to nouns we are learning … Enjoy the song as it is, as it is a very well known Chinese song! But we will use it lots to substitute the word ‘friend’ 朋友 for any noun we want to find! This week it’s Mr Potato Head’s face parts!
While we have been learning to ask ‘where’ things are (在哪里？zài nǎli?) we have been enjoying ‘Where is the teacher?’ song. Future learnings from this song are up, down, outside and inside, and of course negation with 不, students are already understanding these, and will be reinforced and connections made in future lessons!
Every pre-school, primary, middle, high, senior school and university student in China takes part in a daily morning exercise ritual! Here is a video of a typical morning exercise routine. Search for some more on You Tube – just type in ‘China morning exercise’.
So we are doing our exercises in Mandarin class too. We sometimes do them to this morning exercise song, and sometimes to Groovi Pauli’s get up and move song. Both songs have so many very useful sentence patterns and grammatical concepts that are often really hard for the older Mandarin student to grasp…they’ll be second nature to our little ones!
We are reading ‘Go away big green monster’ in our primary classes. After building the monster’s face, we have to make each part go away by saying ‘走开!’ (Zǒu kāi!)
This colour song and face song will help children to make the links as we read the story. There’s also this other groovy colour song by Basho and Friends to tap your feet to, to help remember colours! This story also introduces students to the grammatical concepts of possession (的), measure words and changing 二 to 两 when counting – connections for the future!
Whilst our Middle School students personally think about our MYP question ‘How will connecting with others open up my world?’, we have enjoyed watching this video of Sophie Koh’s China tour.
We are finding out a little about Sophie Koh as an individual, who she is, where she was born, the places she has lived (including Darwin!), her ethnic identity, whether she can speak Mandarin, the journey of being accepted by China for her and her band to tour, and connecting with the people of China through the sharing of her music and language: how has this opened up her world?
Miss Donna’s ‘real’ Mandarin classroom at Kormilda College!
For the first part of term 1, we will be getting to know each other, establishing our safe and fun Mandarin learning environment, and bringing in the Chinese New Year of the Sheep!!
Students will experience the sounds of Mandarin through song and story. Meaning will be enjoyed through facial expression, body language, movement, props and visual aids. The songs and stories are chosen to scaffold vocabulary and sentence patterns, enabling students to make meaningful connections. Over the primary years, students will have confidence in singing rhymes, interacting in plays, and respond to variety of classroom language. These experiences will allow the students’ brains to network the syllables, tones and sentence structures of Mandarin in a meaningful context.
It’s a lifelong journey to learn a second language! Philosopher Laozi once said ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with one single step’, and with these first steps in the Primary Years we will have little bilinguals in the making!
Just click below to watch the ‘How are you’ song we use to start our lessons, once it opens just click on the big green button!
Enjoy looking around my previous posts as there are lots of fun things to see already! But I’ll post links to more fun things that we do as we go through the year.
