LOTE

Welcome back to school! We trust all our lovely families have had a restful Easter break and holiday! This term will be full of fantastic learning opportunities in the language classroom. Students will continue exploring strategies to improve their language skills by linking tasks. They will also inquire about the Dragon Boat Festival to deepen their understanding of the significant cultural traditions and celebrations.

Prep

In this term, Preps will be introduced to some cultural background knowledge and family values in Chinese, including home, dad, mum, brothers, sisters and pets. Students will keep exploring the ways to pronounce Pinyin through singing songs and playing various collaborative games. To celebrate their learning journey, learners will develop an understanding of family relationships and demonstrate an ability to introduce their family members to others using the Chinese language.

Year 1

In Term Two, students will explore the topic of fruit. They will use new description vocabulary like big and small, yummy and not delicious in communication. Students will learn how to pronounce Mandarin sentence patterns through recognising Pinyin and build confidence in speaking Chinese in various contexts. To celebrate their learning journey, learners will create a foldable fruit book which contains their favourite fruit and use that to practice speaking skill with peers.

Year 2

Year Two students will start to explore the topic of feelings. They will begin to listen to the story ‘The colour monster’ in Chinese, to discuss the colour related to different feelings. At the same time, they will improve speaking skills through a variety of forms such as songs, stories and interactive games. By the end of the term, they will be given the opportunity to create their own feeling rabbit and present it to their peers.

Year 3

Year Three students will learn the language used to describe their daily routine in Chinese. They will learn to identify the essential vocabulary for the target topic and develop conversational sentence structures. In addition, students will be practising their speaking skills through role-plays and language-based games. Finally, to celebrate their learning, they will create a bilingual booklet that allows them to demonstrate their understanding of learning.

Year 4 

This term, students in Year Four will focus on directional language in Mandarin. They will compare and contrast structural differences and similarities in sentence structures between Mandarin and English. In addition, students will work on creating conversations, such as asking and giving directions. They will also be allowed to choose a topic-related project that can demonstrate their learning, such as creating a map, making a movie and working on a role-play with peers. 

Year 5 

This term, students in Year Five will extend their knowledge from Term One learning - Clothes and Footwear. They will develop the ability to use a variety of verbs, nouns and complex sentence structures in Chinese to describe and give information about shopping for clothes and footwear and explore the features of Chinese Yuan  (Currency). Students will have an opportunity to create a role-play in a group to increase their fluency of speaking skills in Chinese. They will also continue to apply the Chinese keyboard to create digital texts with complex sentences in Chinese Pinyin and characters.

Year 6 

This term, Year Six students will extend their term One learning about Chinese food. They will discover Chinese dining etiquette and learn how to order food in a restaurant. The up-to-date Chinese food online order APPs and the main functions will be introduced. Students will also learn how to use adjectives and verbs  in order to speak and write complex sentences, and how to order food in everyday life. They will inquire into the key aspects of Chinese dining etiquette, and  compare and contrast the different dining etiquette cultures around us. At the end of the term, they will create a virtual presentation to showcase their learning.

How can you support your child’s Language Education learning at home?  

• Sing or exposure to Chinese Songs to gain interest in the language 
• Practice writing Chinese characters via App “Writer” 

• Borrow bilingual Chinese storybooks from the school library or local library