Specialists

Music

Year 5 attended a fantastic excursion to the new Ian Potter State Theatre.

The program included the Australian Ballet Circus Oz College of the Arts and various other performers.

LOTE

Empowering Student Voice Through Technology in Mandarin

From Year 3, we begin introducing digital tools into our Mandarin lessons to support students’ language learning and independence. We believe student agency is an important part of language learning, particularly when students are encouraged to express their own ideas and communicate what they genuinely want to say.

In this unit, students have learnt the sentence structure “我可以……吗？” (Can I…?) to ask for permission. They then use Google Translate, under teacher supervision, to help complete the sentence with words that express their intended meaning.

Through this activity, students have opportunities to:

• Take ownership of their learning by expressing their own ideas and making meaningful language choices.
• Develop grammatical awareness by considering how different parts of a sentence fit together to form a correct Chinese sentence.
• Build metalanguage skills by discussing with a partner which verbs and nouns to use and how to combine them appropriately.
• Learn through collaboration: Students learn to discuss and decide with partners. More importantly, they learn to cooperate with a digital tool to improve their learning.

We encourage students to use technology wisely and responsibly. With teacher guidance, they begin to reflect on how digital tools can support their learning, as well as recognise their limitations.