Resources for Celebrating Chinese New Year with your students
Nǐmén hǎo
Chinese New Year starts on 19th February and these links may be of interest to you if you are going to incorporate this or other celebrations into your course.
- Chinese New Year resources on TKI
- Asia New Zealand resources
- This British Council resource introduces pupils to the differences and similarities between the lives, languages and cultures of people in China and the UK but could be adapted for New Zealand
- Top marks resource has some related resources especially for younger students including a sequencing maths game.
ESOL Lessons
- The Best Resources For Chinese New Year, Larry Ferlazzo, Larry has some great links and video clips that will be useful.
- ESL Holiday Lessons.com English Lesson Plan on:Chinese New Year's Day This site is aimed at older students and adults but it does contain some ideas for useful activities maybe using a simpler text.
- ESOL Courses, Chinese New Year :Vocabulary, Games, Worksheets and Online Exercises including vocabulary picture matching
- ESL printable s, Chinese New Year Worksheets including cloze reading exercises.
The Jan 26th 2015 Education Gazette Resources article Celebrate Chinese New Year at your school which links the NZ Curriculum pages above provides some curriculum contexts for incorporating this context for learning into your classroom.
2015 is the Year of the Sheep (or Goat). The Sheep is the eighth of the 12 animal signs of the Chinese zodiac. If you were born in 1919, 1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991 or 2003 then you are a Sheep (or Goat).
You may like to consider incorporating more Asian studies or languages into your school programme. I think this story about what Amesbury School, a year 1-6 school in Churton Park, Wellington is a good starting point.It is location on the Asia New Zealand Foundation's website.I love the starting quote “Right from the outset we felt it was essential to recognise and celebrate our multicultural community, but also to recognise the growing importance of Asia in our global world,” says Amesbury School principal Lesley Murrihy."
Please plan to share what your school does in the way of celebrating this event in 2015 with our community. A short description is all that is required and maybe a photo.
Zai jian
Janet McQueen
Comments
Thanks for sharing Janet. If schools are interested in having Mandarin lessons for their students then they can contact us at primary@vln.school.nz. We work with the Confucius Institute to provide access to online classes with Chinese Language assistants & teachers.
Also recommend Parnell School's blogspot with lots of great ideas for celebrating Chinese language and culture.
xièxie
Rachel :)
Thank you Rachel for sharing this information on accessing Mandarin lessons via the Primary VLN school. That is great to know and I will share that information with the primary ESOL community. What a great opportunity.
Also for sharing Parnell School's wonderful blogspot, it is exciting to see a school so fully involved in sharing the Chinese culture with their students across several years. I love the Great Dragon Challenge and learning about the Chinese Tea Ceremony. It is certainly worth viewing for ideas.
xièxie
Janet