After a month of selection, NASSZ 1st Chinese Poetry Competition came to a successful conclusion. Congratulations to the following award-winning "little poets":

Primary First prize: Candy Xu

Primary Second Prize: Sophia

Primary Third Prize: Rex Chen

Secondary Frist Prize: Ray Yan

Secondary Second Prize: (a group prize for) Amy Zhao, Irene He, YuanYuan Li

Secondary Third Prize: Weston Song

Surprisingly, the poetry competition is not just for secondary students. We were pleasantly surprised to find that there are many works by G1, G2 students in the exhibition. Such a small child can actually make poetry? It's incredible! To this end, we invited Mrs Jenny, the founder and organizer of this poetry contest, to reveal the secrets of the complementarity between poetry creation and language acquisition.

Mrs Jenny graduated from Huazhong Normal University with a major in Chinese Language and Literature. She has taught Chinese in international schools in Singapore and Beijing, and has more than 7 years of experience in first-line overseas teaching, bilingual teaching and cooperative teaching. She is familiar with the knowledge and ability framework of domestic primary and secondary schools, and at the same time have rich curriculum design and teaching experience for Common Core, PYP courses and British courses in the United States. And she also won the first-class excellent teacher.

 How do we achieve Bilingual Excellence in our school? 

The first is the arrangement of the course objectives and learning content. Before the beginning of the school, all relevant teachers cooperate together. We will compare and match English themes with Chinese themes, and connect them with concepts. For example, the first major theme of the G5 is "about people". The concept we chose is "connection". What children need to understand is that connecting people to each other can create a community. Through conceptual links, the integration of content and the adjustment of goals are carried out. Teachers of different subjects work closely together and support English learning.

Secondly, in terms of teaching and language teaching, we will consciously strengthen children's understanding of concepts, while consolidating key vocabulary, which can help them learn English.

Third, in terms of evaluation, this year we strengthened different forms of formative evaluation. Taking the G5 as an example, the first and second units of the fifth grade fit the big theme "about people", so I let the children design a city. The main purpose of designing this activity is to let students understand that the characteristics of the city are closely related to the people living in the community. Therefore, in addition to thinking about the urban structure, environment, character relationships, landmarks, etc., children also need to realize the integration of interdisciplinary knowledge through the design of works of unlimited form, such as the use of posters, Lego, and corrugated paper.

 What happened that the children taking a Chinese class outside? 

Children's learning should not be limited to the classroom. The last time I went to an outdoor class was a G1 pinyin class, and I asked the children to go out for a pinyin hopscotch activity. With the development of age, children's needs are different, but they all have one common need, that is, games. Compared with rote memorization, playing games will stimulate children's interest in learning, and their attention will naturally be concentrated. In the game, you can also learn to cooperate and learn to solve problems. This is especially true for children in G1 & G2 cause they have limited attention. Changing the environment and method of class will keep the children's attention and get better learning results. 

There are many learning resources available in the school. For example, I will let my G6 students go to the small theater in the library to give speeches, so that the children will feel more ritual and feel the atmosphere of the speech; I will also let my G5 students go to the computer room to find information for training their ability to extract information. Changing scenes to class is not about changing places randomly, it has a certain teaching purpose. The Chinese class can also go to the gym. As long as it is beneficial to the children's study, we will use the school's learning space and resources flexibly.

Thanks Mrs Jenny for the wonderful sharing in this issue, bilingual education is not only about language acquisition and use, but also through different forms of interdisciplinary creation to achieve the role of integration.

If you want to know more about our subjects and educational methods, welcome to our Tesla Open Day next Saturday. We will cooperate with Tesla to present a scientific feast about STEAM for everyone! Seats are limited, please scan the QR code below to make an appointment in advance.