Dear Parents,
Today for morning exercise, the children ran tracks and played basketball. Ma Laoshi is still sick; so Wang Laoshi subbed A Class. A few students tried different classes today and all eventually decided to remain in the class they were originally placed in. In addition to the routine language skills, we had a special session on Chinese calligraphy taught by Li Laoshi. She began with a display of calligraphy by two 11 year old children in China, then showed the children the use of brush and ink, and demonstrated on board how to write “da (big)” and its transformations “tian1”, “tai4”, “fu1”, and “quan3”. For each character, she let the children try by themselves first, and then showed them how to do it properly, and ask them to try again and see for themselves the difference learning can make. The majority of the children tried earnestly. Li Laoshi particularly pointed out Chloe, May, Ruiduan, Luran and Yiran for their excellent attitude and good work. The end product of the session was a “fu2 (happiness)” character written by the children themselves on a diamond shaped red paper, which Li Laoshi asked the children to take home to their parents.
In the afternoon, we had another session of language class, followed by self-study. Again, Yan Laoshi, Gong Laoshi and I were with C, B and A Classes respectively. A Class had quite a lot of homework today—writing 12 phrases, 4 times each; make up sentences with 5 phrases; read 10 stories from the Long Corridor (chang2 lang2 gu4 shi4); and do reading comprehension on “the Three Kingdoms”. Most of children in A Class could not finish their homework within the self-study time. I hear some students from B Class complain about the amount of homework as well. We will see if we can discuss with the teachers to make some work obligatory and some optional for those who are more competent and/or more motivated.
After self study, I gave the children a review of Peking Opera (which we saw last Saturday evening) and a preview of Ethnic Minority Park which we will visit tomorrow. We discussed the characteristic features of “sheng”, “dan”, “jing” and “chou” in Peking Opera as well as the color schemes of the face. The children absorbed the information fast and were able to quickly and correctly associate different sorts of painted face with different plot meanings. For homework, I ask them to choose a story they like, imagine that they are the producer of the story to be performed in the format of Peking Opera, assign each character in the story to a specific role and their face a specific color. To get ready for tomorrow, we also discussed Chinese and non-Chinese languages, dialectal varieties, writing systems and scripts, and ethnic diversities in China.
The issue that stood out today (from my perspective) is that not all children are equally motivated to learn. And there is great disparity among the children in terms of their attitudes or behaviors. We had an unpleasant and indeed unacceptable instance today where a child who was not interested in learning insulted a teacher, using foul language (in English, but the teacher understood it and caught it). I apologized profusely to the teacher. Bonnie is addressing these issues seriously and judiciously. I will keep you posted on this.
Yan Laoshi moved in with us. She shares a room with Gong Laoshi. She is a very responsible teacher and it’s great that we have an extra pair of eyes.
I’ll sign off here today. Bye,
Agnes (aka He Laoshi)