Dear Parents,
It is a bright sunny day today. By 6:30am, the children were up, in their sneakers, and outside doing morning exercise. SiZhong has a beautiful large sports field surrounded by multi-story dorm and classroom buildings. We are fortunate to have a really nice and competent PE teacher who regularly teaches at SiZhong to lead our morning exercise. He engages the children very well and leads them run around the sports field and do some stretching and bending. It is nothing intense but excellent to begin a day with, especially because we are all in the shade and the morning breeze is fresh and soothing.
We returned to dorm at 7 and headed to have breakfast at 7:20. One of the children was not feeling too well and stayed behind in the dorm. (We saved some food for him.) Classes began 8:30. Today, Wang Laoshi (the head teacher from Yanjing), Bonnie, Jenny and I observed B and C Classes in the morning and I observed A Class in the afternoon as well. Li Laoshi, who teaches B Class, has established an excellent rapport with the students. This is technically only the second day of classes and it looks as though she had known the children for a semester! She reviewed a rhyme that she had given the class yesterday, introduced a tongue twister, reviewed vocabulary and asked the kids to practice writing. She appears to be a naturally talented, dynamic teacher, using varied volumes, gestures, error correction strategies, framing techniques and embodied language learning activities. There is a lot of enthusiastic student participation in the class. It was a pleasure to see how much the teacher and the students are in sync with each other and how much they enjoy their teaching/learning activities. My only concern has to do with the amount of materials that get covered and the transitions between different learning activities. But we all agree that nurturing a positive attitude toward learning Chinese is the most important goal for the program.
Compared with what I saw yesterday, today’s lesson in C Class clearly improved. The contents today included numbers, seasons, dates and time. Yan Laoshi is in better control of the classroom and is making better use of existing resources. Everyone was busy learning. We discussed the importance of enhancing Chinese language input in the classroom, appropriateness of AV materials, ways to better sequence teaching materials, and ways to institute a system to encourage the students to use Chinese. Yan Laoshi is a wonderful teacher to work with. She is very receptive to our feedback and works hard to make improvements. I only expect to see better and greater things in her classroom.
At about 10am, everyone got together in the big classroom. Tian Laoshi and Bonnie taught them to sing two Chinese songs. One of them is called “Friendship”, the other “Let us roar our ores” (a very popular children’s song). Tian Laoshi communicates with the children well, which is great. Bonnie plans for the children to learn these songs and in a week or two to perform these songs for the seniors when we visit a seniors’ home.
After lunch, I sat in A Class. Ma Laoshi began with a listening session on *The Three Kingdoms* (san guo yan yi). He played two segments of an audio recording of the book (it sounds like an abridged version designed for young readers); before he did so, he asked the children to keep in mind specific questions which he expected them to answer after the listening. The children were listening very intently and were largely able to answer the questions. This is quite a challenge; Ma Laoshi used excellent strategies to get the children ready for the listening materials beforehand and did a nice follow up activity after the listening. The next activity was to teach the children how to write a letter in Chinese. Ma Laoshi expertly warmed up the children to the writing activity by eliciting a discussion of their responses and reaction to the first few days at YiB, both positive and negative. He then provided the key vocabulary as well as a sample letter (presented in PowerPoint. BTW, all three classrooms have multimedia access) before proceeding to ask the children to write their own letters. As of today, the computers are not ready for use in the classroom (there are 4-5 computers but only 2 are functional now). We are fortunate to have Ma Laoshi on our teaching staff.
We had “self study” time 3-4pm when the children did their homework in their classrooms. Jenny supervised C Class, Gong Laoshi was with B Class and I was with A Class. Bonnie was up and down and all around to address various individual concerns and needs. (A and B classes are held on the 3rd floor of the classroom building, while C Class on the 1st floor). Tian Laoshi was sweating to try to fix the computers.
4:30pm, Tian Laoshi, Gong Laoshi and Jenny took the children to play jian4-zi and/or basketball.
Clothes are being washed every other day; the children put their dirty clothes in a plastic bag, put their names on the bag and give the bag to Jenny. Jenny delivers them to the person in the dorm building responsible for washing. Clothes get washed, dried, folded, and stuffed in the bag and returned to the children. Most, if not all, children have been taking showers. Everyone is eating and sleeping. Everyone is learning and playing. So, please don’t worry too much. My own children (very picky eaters) are certainly eating better than they do at home and I trust yours too. Other details: at every meal, we can get bottled drinking water right from the fridge (there is a fridge in the dining hall). We may of course also choose to have soups and porridges. We also wear name tags everyday with secure strings hung around the neck. The tag has the child’s name, the name and address of YiB, as well as phone numbers of two residence teachers. I took a look at the writing that the kids in A Class did today. Alex wrote, “I didn’t like it here that much the first two days but now I do because I have made lots of friends.” Luran, “Yinghua is a lot better than I thought.” And mind you, they wrote all this in Chinese.
After dinner, we went swimming at the indoor pool on campus (pool temperature 26 degrees C). It turned out that the pool is 2 meters deep and that those who wish to use the pool must be tested. The test is a 200 meter continuous swim. Those who pass the test will be allowed to use the pool. Ten boys and five girls were brave enough to take the test. Those who did not wish to take the test were escorted back to the dorm by Ruiduan, our student Counselor. The pool only let Tian Laoshi, Gong Laoshi and Bonnie inside the pool area to be with the children. Jenny and I were asked to leave. We took a peep though from the window. It looks like a tough test to me.
It is 8:30pm now as I end this message. The swim test takers are not back yet. I’ll therefore keep you suspended until I write again tomorrow.
Good night,
Agnes (aka He Laoshi)