Students Teaching

The first day when Fan Xueli and Huang Lan taught out Chinese 4 class about lesons 14 and 15 was a real success. They began by teaching their peers the vocabulary of lesson 14. They began with a clever idea; each teacher would read out vocabulary words to introduce their students to them and test their knowledge of the meanings prior to learning them in class. I thought this was benefitial because the teachers introduced the new knowledge based on the students' prior knowledge. After the preview, the students were given a worksheet of three lists: pinyin, English, and characters. The teachers wrote the character for each vocabulary word on the board which the students wrote on theri character list simultaneously. Also, as each word was introduced, the teachers would pronounce it while stressing the pinyin, encouraging the students to decipher the tones used, which the students proceeded to write in our lists. After that, the students were given a worksheet to enforce the vocabulary they had just learned. First, the teachers told the students a sentence or phrase on English, which they were to complete in chinese using the characters recently introduced. This stimulated the students' critical thinking by forcing their brains to go over the vocabulary again in a quick, efficient manner. This activity showed the students how to use the vocabulary in context, making it more real and applicable to everyday life. The rest of the worksheet was a compilation of sentences, in which the students were to fill in the blanks using the new vocabulary. The students completed the sentences for homework, enforcing the vocabulary once again. The last event of the class was the most fun. Each student was given 22 index cards. Each student was to pick out a different colored marker and write all of the pinyin the students learned on the cards and write the characters on other cards. Then, they closed their eyes, and the teachers spread every student's pinyin cards across the floor. When the cue was given, the students scrambled across the floor in a race to match up all of the pinyin cards with the character cards. The first student to get rid of all of his character cards won. This activity was not only enjoyable, but it reinforced the vocabulary in various ways. The students reinforced how to write the characters and pinyin by making the 22 cards. Also, we learned how to think quickly by hurriedly matchine up the cards. One of the students says that I applaud the teachers for their creative, fun, entertaining ideas and fluent teaching. Way to go!