1. Lesson Overview
Topic Where are you from?
Grade level(s): Grade 9-10
Subject(s): Mandarin 1
1a, Students apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products,
or process.
1b, Create original works as a means of personal or group expression.
2a, Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts or others
Technology S
Standard(s) employing a variety of digital environments and media.
5b, Exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports
collaboration, learning, and productivity.
——NETS ● S
Content: 1.1 Students address discrete elements of daily life, including:
Greetings and introduction, family and friends;
Communication: 1.0 Students use formulaic language (learned words,
signs and phrases); 1.1 Engage in oral, written, or signed conversations.
Cultures: 1.0 Students use appropriate responses to rehearsed cultural
Content Standards situations.
Structure: 1.0 Students use orthography, phonology, or ASL
parameters to understand words, signs and phrases in context.
Settings: 1.0 Students use language in highly predictable common daily
settings.
—— California Standards
In previous lessons, students learned simple Y/N question with particle “ma”,
greeting to people and family members. They mastered about 20 basic words.
In this lesson, students are going to learn two new question patterns with
Brief description of question words who and which. They are going to learn the dialogues about
lesson:
introducing people, asking about nationalities. We are going to use various
materials, resources and technology to enhance teaching and learning. We will
use formative and summative assessments to assess the progress of students’
2. learning.
Given an example dialogue asking about someone’s nationality, students will
be able to analyze the question structure and learn to demonstrate the use of
Instructional question words “who” “which” to identify people and ask about someone’s
Objectives:
nationality.
Students will be able to create new conversations to introduce their friends,
family and others.
1, Study the Chinese characters for the new lesson
We use www.nciku.com for students to study character writing. The
writing of characters are really important and confusing at the beginning
stage, but we don’t have enough time to teach students how to write each
single character in class, so I introduced this useful website at a very
early stage. All my students know how to use Pinyin(pronunciation) and
drawings to find the target character, and study the writing for the
character from the website. This can be assigned before the new lesson
starts, so students know the characters already, it will increase effective
instruction time in class.
Procedures for whole 2, Study the key questions for the new lesson
group introduction:
The sentence pattern:
Na shi shei? = Who is that?
Ta shi naguo ren? = Where is he or she from?
The key question words:
Shei = who/whom
Na = which
2, Review today’s question patterns together with previous learned question
patterns
Pick a famous Chinese person and ask students to use all the questions they
have learned to find out the information about him/her.
I designed an easy to follow power point for this stage, it can be found on slide
3. share: http://www.slideshare.net/lidanhz/mandarin1-lesson3
I share this slides with students after class for them to review after school
(Ps: all of my students have a Google plus account, so we share resources
on that plat form, I will mention things we collaborate on Google+ later.)
3, Role play
Students use previous learned and newly learned dialogues to create their
own dialogues. The main elements for the role-play are to identify people
and ask about someone’s nationality.
4, Learning after school - Google+
After Lesson 3, students should master a certain amount of vocabulary
and sentences. Use the same vocabulary to recreate new sentences is a
big challenge. I designed an activity on Google+ for every student to
participate. I post one question that they have learned on the stream, any
student who sees the question first can answer the question by
commenting below my post. And they have to ask a new question. So it
goes on like this. I have three Mandarin 1 Classes, so it’s a very good
exercise to communicate with students from the same level but different
classes. And the other good thing about this activity is, as students study
more and more vocabulary and sentences, it can keep going on for the
whole school year! It records the progress students made during the
school year.
I will divide students into 3 groups
Group1: for students who are not good at memorizing and writing
characters. They will use flash cards and self-dictation to practice
characters.
Address diverse
needs of learners: Group2: for students who have no trouble of writing characters. They will
form questions by using learned vocabulary and create a class question
bank. They will use the question bank to practice speaking with their
partners.
4. Group3: for students who are capable and willing to learn extras.
Materials from <Chinese made easy>2 Lesson 1.
They are going to learn the vocabulary of countries’ names and new
sentence structure: I have been to = wo quguo......
1,Students use www.quizlet.com to create a vocabulary list of countries’
names. The vocabulary list needs to contain characters,
Pinyin(pronunciation) and English explanations. The vocabulary list will
form games and test automatically for students to practice.
2, Once they learned the extra vocabulary for countries, they are going
to create their own Google map. Pin the countries they have been to,
people they know in that countries, the country they want to go or any
country they are interested or feel related to, they can apply all the new
vocabulary and sentence structure they just learned. Then they can
share their Google map by sharing the links on Google+.
Depends on students’ learning pace, group 1 can move to group 2, and
group 2 can move to group 3. The question bank and quizlet vocabulary
list students crate will be very helpful for other students to study.
1, In class role play
2, Oral assignment on voice thread
At the beginning stage, good pronunciation and a good habit of speaking aloud
is very important for foreign language study. So I use the website
www.voicethread.com for students to practice their speaking and pronunciation.
Upload the power point I use in class to voice thread website. Students log in
with their account and comment on the slides by reading the dialogues on the
Student products: textbook and create 5 question and answers, they must include two new
questions they study today.
3, Homework, listening and speaking exercises on workbook
4, Question bank
5, Vocabulary lists on www.quizlet.com
6, Google maps only for group 3 students
6, Cartoon on www.toondoo.com
5. Formative assessment:
1, Ongoing classroom observation
Checklist: write characters in the correct way; able to recognize new characters
and new words; able to identify the new question words: who and which, and
use them in different sentences; able to understand and answer below questions:
who is that, where are you from and the questions in the similar forms; able to
use the learned words and patterns to create new conversations
2, In class role play
Divide students into pairs or groups of three. Each team learns the dialogue
from the textbook and creates a new dialogue. They need to employ some of the
knowledge from previous lessons as well, like: greeting, asking names,
questions like how are you, are you busy, do you want to drink a coffee, etc.
This is to assess students’ understanding of learned knowledge and their ability
to apply these language skills into different situations.
3, Dictation of new words, listening and writing exercise on workbook Lesson 3
which comes along with the text book
The main exercises on the workbook are: listen and distinguish between
Assessment:
different sounds, form the sentences with given words, interpretation, and group
words.
4, Oral Assignment on voice thread
Read the new dialogues on the textbook and create 5 questions and answers,
students must include two new questions they study today.
Checklist: Pronunciation, take down notes of difficult sounds that students have
trouble with and practice next day in class with them; Fluency, if students are
not good at this which means he or she is still not familiar with the new words
and dialogues, these students need more practice; Grammar and the choice of
words, these are used for checking the 5 questions students created by
themselves; Overall performance, see it’s easy or hard to understand.
Summative assessment:
Create a cartoon on www.toondoo.com
This cartoon includes: at least three characters and a certain situation;
The conversation includes: the two new topics in class, identify people and ask
people’s nationality.
6. Instruction: 1, I spend about 10 to 15 minutes with students in class to play
around on the website to log in, choose characters and backgrounds, type
Chinese, save and publish an example cartoon. 2, I give out the rubric for the
cartoon project to students, and discuss in class what I expected from them.
3, Students can use the dialogues they used for the role-play in class, especially
for students who are in Group1 and 2.
Rubric is attached.
Textbook materials:
New Practical Chinese Reader1, Lesson 3 and accompanied CD and
workbook
Chinese Made Easy2, Lesson1
Resources:
Flash cards, question bank, power point made for the lesson
http://www.slideshare.net/lidanhz/mandarin1-lesson3
Technology used:
For teaching:
Power pointed created based on the visual literacy
http://www.slideshare.net/lidanhz/mandarin1-lesson3
For study:
Materials, resources,
www.nciku.com for studying characters
technology used:
www.quizlet.com for studying and practicing vocabulary
Example of students’ work on quizlet: http://quizlet.com/_450y1
Both of them are very good for self paced study
Google maps for advanced groups to do more challenging and creative
work
http://maps.google.com/
For assessment:
www.voicethread.com for practice speaking
Example of students’ work on voice thread:
http://voicethread.com/share/2254128/
www.toondoo.com for summative assessment
Example of students’ work on toondoo
7. http://www.toondoo.com/cartoon/3807406
For classroom management:
Google+, we use this social website to create an online communication
between teacher and students, students and students. I post homework,
announcements, resource, questions, discussion, and etc. all on
Google+ page. Students always can ask me any question if they don’t
understand in classroom. I design activities like the question solitaire
game I mentioned above for students to learn after school as well.