MANDARIN PROGRAM ACTIVITES

MIDDLE SCHOOL AND HIGH SCHOOL

My Daily Routine                          Going to the Doctor                  Shopping and Bargaining         Daily Routines (2)

                                            

After students learn a lesson on a particular topic, they complete activities, such as performing skits to demonstrate their understanding of the materials.  The shopping skits contain the cultural components of bargaining, and the daily routine projects are closely related to student lives.  Sometimes students turn in rather unorthodox work, as you can see from the doctor skit.  The second skit has subtitles.

LIVE CHAT WITH BEIJING CONVERSATION PARTNER

  

                    

Every year students have a new conversation partner residing in Beijing.  The first video shows a beginner class conversation, while the rest of the videos show the conversation class in session.

CULTURAL TRIPS 

We make trips to Chinese cultural areas every year.  This is a trip to a modern Chinese tea house for the AP class.  We drank tea and learned about tea planting and other related customs of tea drinking.

     

         

   

       

FINAL FIELD TRIP

This is the last field trip we took and the high school students went to Chinatown (where middle school students used to go for their field trips) and then paid a visit to Rowland Heights on a Saturday.  We at dim sum and shopped at a supermarket, as well as a game place to shoot some hoops, which is a popular game in Taiwan and China.

         

         

         

         

         

MUSIC PROJECT

Students picked a favorite Chinese song approved by the teacher (the teacher also provided a list of preapproved song), then they complete an interview asking about their favorite Chinese music and then sing the song.  The project guidelines and related standards are attached here.  Attached is a sample project from second year Mandarin (this video does not contain the presentational part of the project discussing the lyrics).

DUMPLING DAY (10-11)

Michelle's Pancakes, the now famous Chinese restaurant in the area, came back with our parent volunteers to teach our students again for the third year in a row.  Thank you again!

                                                     

                                                     

                                                     

DUMPLING DAY (09-10)

Many parents came back again to help our students make dumplings.  One of the parents owns a Chinese restaurant nearby, and she donated all the materials for free this time.  Our Mandarin students will be selling food at lunch during Club Day to raise funds for field trips, T-shirts, and other items.

                                                     

DUMPLING DAY (08-09)

Organized  by our FLAP advisory member parent representative, several parents came to our classes to help us with our Chinese New Year Dumpling Day.  Dumplings are a common cuisine for Chinese New Year, and they are not as difficult to make as one might think.  Our students had a great time making them and an even better time eating them.

                                                 

                                                 

                                                 

COOKING PROJECT

Students selected a popular Chinese food they would like to make and described how to make it while demonstrating the steps, we then shared the food!  This is a sample video from a group that filmed their project.

DICE GAME

                                                                 

We played a dice game to practice vocabulary, this is the beginning class of the high school.  For details on how the dice game is played, please click here.

MEMORY

                        

Memory is a fun game that can be played several ways, one of which is described here.  Students also invented their own ways of playing the game in the pictures below.  It's a fun way to practice vocabulary, even though it does not replicate real-life usage of the language.  It is still useful in a classroom situation.

FAMILY PROJECT

At the conclusion of unit 1 in the first year class, students complete a family project that is usually presented orally with a poster.  However, some students created movies and some created PowerPoint presentations.  This is a sample of one of the presentations.  The topics learned include introducing oneself, asking and giving names, age, nationalities, school attending and grade level, and of course describing one's family.

BIRTHDAY PROJECT

                                                                 

This is a nice icebreaker project for students early in the semester.  Since the Chinese dates are easy to learn after the students learn the numbers, having students collect the dates of everyone's birthdays in the classroom and then writing it down to present to the class is a good function reading, writing, speaking and listening.  It's also a good way for students to find out more about each other during the early stages of the school year.

INTERVIEW

                 

When students learn about hobbies and sports, they interview each other using a video camera.  This is a sample of one the student interviews.  Some students are more camera shy than others, so I picked one where the student is hard to see because she is a bit camera shy.  The first picture is a video and the second one is a picture of the class doing the activity.

SCHOOL PLACES

                 

When students learn about school buildings, they tour around their own school with the teacher and make a video introducing their school.  Here is a picture of the students in front of the library.  One student was not actually in our Mandarin class, and her face is covered up in the picture.

FOR STUDENT WORK AND PICTURES FROM THE ELEMENTARY LEVELS, PLEASE CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING:

Chinese New Year Celebrations: Calligraphy Pictures

Chinese New Year Celebrations: Dragon Pictures

Huntington Library Chinese Gardens:  Calligraphy in Art Lab: Pictures

Huntington Library Chinese Gardens: Sketches and Character Writing in the Chinese Gardens: Pictures

Chinese Heritage Book Report: Pictures