The holidays are approaching. Today was our last class at Chinese school before the winter break.
Before introducing the new characters, we reviewed what we learned last week and did a quiz. The quiz was simply focusing on Chinese character writing this time. For the total of 22 characters we tested today, there were 60% students who were able to write correctly more than half of them. That means, about half of our students are still having trouble with their Chinese writing skills. Considering the fact that the average age of this group of students is around 5, I don't see anything particularly worrisome. Although our class is titled "1st grade" at the Chinese school, we really have to compare our class to the preschool level in mainland China, where the 5 years olds are the oldest among preschoolers, not the 1st graders in public schools. In fact, our students' character recognition skills are much more advanced than their writing skills. Most of them can read all those characters now, although the writing part remains a bit challenging.
［I wrote the above on 12/14 and haven't had chance to finish the whole thing till today, the new year's eve!］
Before introducing the new characters, we reviewed what we learned last week and did a quiz. The quiz was simply focusing on Chinese character writing this time. For the total of 22 characters we tested today, there were 60% students who were able to write correctly more than half of them. That means, about half of our students are still having trouble with their Chinese writing skills. Considering the fact that the average age of this group of students is around 5, I don't see anything particularly worrisome. Although our class is titled "1st grade" at the Chinese school, we really have to compare our class to the preschool level in mainland China, where the 5 years olds are the oldest among preschoolers, not the 1st graders in public schools. In fact, our students' character recognition skills are much more advanced than their writing skills. Most of them can read all those characters now, although the writing part remains a bit challenging.
［I wrote the above on 12/14 and haven't had chance to finish the whole thing till today, the new year's eve!］
Today's lesson of our text book talks about nationalities. But I personally found it's problematic asking a young child what nationality he or she belongs to (they usually don't have clear ideas what that means at this age). Worse yet, as adults, some people are expecting simple answers from those kids! Their identity is more complex than what we assume. Thus I always encourage my own kids (now my students, too) to think themselves as at least "both", or dual-nationalities. That way, it would be natural for them, at least, to speak both languages: Chinese AND English. If I were the author of this text book, I would definitely give one more sample to the students (which is currently missing from this text book): "我是中国人，也是美国人。” It's nothing about official nationality, or citizenship, it's more about ethnic-identity. I always had a hypothesis that for American Chinese kids who grow up thinking they are "Americans" only, it's more likely for them to pick up English quickly and diminish their mother tongue later on, even though they were born and raised in a Chinese-speaking environment. On the other side, naturally, no Chinese kids living in the US for their life time would think themselves as pure "Chinese." Thus, for these kids, a simple teaching on ethnic identity might be misleading indeed.
Long story short, we learned the following four characters today: 国、也、妈、们. Please try to help them reviewing these characters over the holiday break if you have time. (Optional, of course. )
In the second half our class, we watched a 巧虎video, learning about PinYin. The kids loved this! They did great job memorize the whole song right after. In January, we'll be reviewing this song a lot and rehearsal a performance that goes with it. Please stay tuned.
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| watching the Qiao-hu video, listening to the PinYin song |
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| Reading the PinYin along the song |
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| They were facing outwards when singing the song independently |
Last but not the least, THANK YOU so much for the thoughtful gifts from all you parents to us, the teacher and two TAs!!! We appreciate your warm support and kindness. It has been our pleasure and privilege to work with your lovely and wonderful kids this fall. We're looking forward to a fruitful and productive New Year of 2015! Happy New Year to you ALL!
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