10/5 Class Review and What to do for Homework

Today was our first "Unit Review" session, after four continuos lessons in a row.  It was an opportunity for me to observe how the students were doing in the past four lessons and plan for the future lessons accordingly.

We reviewed all the 15 "new" characters and their Pinyin by playing different games. I was amazed to see that almost all the kids who attended this class regularly (especially those who never missed a lesson) had no problem recognizing these characters at all. I guess some of them were learning Chinese characters somewhere else at the same time or in the past. But still, that was a little surprise to me. And based on this finding, I now am more confident to introduce at least four new characters per week and challenge them with writing tasks. 

One of the games we played today was "找朋友 (looking for a friend)." For those of you who are not familiar with this song,   here's an online flash video@ 

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzIwNTM2NTgw.html    It would be great if you child(ren) could learn to sing this song. We may play this game again in the future, with different content/rules/criteria for what kind of "friend" the students should look for.  

We started the story book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" at the end of today's session but didn't have enough time to finish. I challenged the kids to translate each sentence into Chinese after I read it aloud in English. And that was hard for most of them. For example, the "egg" in the first sentence was named by one child "鸡蛋," while the others kept silent. That was hilarious. We'll keep doing this exercise whenever we have time, since the kids seem enjoying it so far. I'm pretty sure it's a good way to improve their Chinese expression skills, as well as having fun with stories.  

Next Sunday, we may try "听写（dictation exercise）" for the first ten minutes or so of our class. Since we don't have required homework for this week, you may help your child(ren) to be prepared for this activity at home when time allows. Basically, you just need to say one word aloud at a time and let your child write it down without looking at any references. Of course, the best way to do it is to "play" with those words, in a relaxing and playful manner, rather than telling them anxiously to "sit down, now let's learn Chinese!" To keep it short, and have fun!  

(Here's the list of the words we'll dictate in next class:  大、小、白、云、中、文、再、见、上、下、天、气、鸟、儿、太)