28 Aug 2019

Mandarin Monthly Update #1

Year 1 – Students in Year One have had an excellent start to their Mandarin lessons this week. Starting from next week, they will spend some time getting to know the routines in the Mandarin classroom and learn to use simple greetings such as “你好 Hello” and “再见 bye” as part of the Mandarin link to the Year One unit of inquiry “Who We Are”.

Year 2 – Students in Year Two started the year by revisiting the topic “My body”. By the end of this unit, they should be able to name various body parts in Mandarin and attempt to use them in simple sentences during role play activities.

Year 3 – Students in Year Three have started to learn the Pinyin system as part of the Mandarin link to the Year Three unit of inquiry “How we organise ourselves”. They are beginning to understand that Pinyin helps to facilitate effective communication and both the sound and the intonation affect the meaning of the words.

Year 4 – Students in Year Four have been learning 左手右手，前面一只小老鼠 and 我的同学. At the end of this unit, students should be able to give a detailed description of a person’s physical characteristics.

Year 5 – Students in Year Five are learning to ask and answer questions about telephone numbers and addresses in Mandarin. They will also revisit the “Family” unit and learn how to say uncles, aunts and grandparents in Mandarin.

Year 6 – Students in Year Six will be learning 唐人街，北朝民歌敕勒歌，王维的杂诗。They will practise using phrases and expressions such as 在。。。过。。。节，越来越。。。，为了。。。 to improve their writing skills.

Y1 – Students in Year One have had an excellent start to their Mandarin lessons this week. Starting from next week, they will spend some time getting to know the routines in the Mandarin classroom and learn to use simple greetings such as “你好 Hello” and “再见 bye” as part of the Mandarin link to the Year One unit of inquiry “Who We Are”.

Y2 – Year Two students begin each lesson listening to a Mandarin story book. Students are currently practicing speaking and memorizing characters through rhymes. We have also been working on character stroke order, building up their fundamental knowledge of reading and writing.

Y3- Students in Year Three have started to learn the Pinyin system as part of the Mandarin link to the Year Three unit of inquiry “How we organise ourselves”. They are beginning to understand that Pinyin helps to facilitate effective communication and both the sound and the intonation affect the meaning of the words.

Y4- Currently Year Four students are learning about the layout of the house, describing, drawing and labelling their own homes in Chinese. We are building up strong vocabularies about their homes, as well as building up their reading and writing skills.

Y5- Right now the Year Five students begin each lesson with a chapter of Roald Dahl’s “George’s Marvelous Medicine” to improve their listening and comprehension, the children are thouroughly enjoying the book. We have also been studying the biographies of famous figures, which will lead us to our next project of writing our own biographies on a notable figure.

Y6- Students in Year Six are working on their own personal timelines. Mapping their lives from when they were born to where they are now, utilizing new vocabulary and topics we have studied in the past. Meanwhile we are also celebrating the Mid Autumn festival with different activities in class.

Y2- Students in Year 2 have learned a song of 12 months and a rhyme of how different animals and people “talk”. They have been practising Chinese character recognition and writing following stroke orders..

Y3- Students in Year Three have started to learn the Pinyin system as part of the Mandarin link to the Year Three unit of inquiry “How we organise ourselves”. They have also been practising the expressions of “Being Polite”: 请，谢谢，对不起etc。

Y4- They have learned 4 riddles 谜语（中文3 第4课)。They have also been practising reading comprehension and story-telling in Mandarin.

Y5- Students in Year 5 have learned the text of “小猫钓鱼”。They have been trying to create and share their own stories in Mandarin.

Y6- They have been revising topics of “colours”, “vegetables” and “Chinese food”. Children in Year 6 have also been involved in various Mid-Autumn Festival activities like art work, lantern making and moon cake making,

Getting organised for Mandarin lessons

If your child has been given a Mandarin folder (including textbooks, activity books and exercise books), she/he needs to bring it to every Mandarin lesson.

Home Learning

All children are encouraged to take a reading book home on the days when they have Mandarin lessons.
All home learning should have been given out by the end of the last Mandarin lesson of the week. It is the responsibility of the students to complete their home learning in a timely manner.
The amount of home learning varies from class to class. It usually includes reading aloud, copying Chinese characters, writing sentences, reading storybooks, writing book reports etc. Some classes will have weekly written tasks while other classes may be given oral practice only.
Please let your Mandarin teacher know if you have trouble completing your home learning on time.

Taking Care of Books

The replacement costs for books lost are as follows: