‘I am American’: Student teacher offers sixth-graders Chinese language enrichment

Teacher teaching chinese symbolsStudent teaching at Minisink Valley often offers student additional opportunities for educational enrichment.

An example of this is Yiyi Chou, a student teacher from the New York Institute of Technology, who has shared her Chinese culture with Joanna Browning’s sixth-graders, giving students a renewed awareness of Chinese customs, communication and ethnicity.

ELA students have learned how to write and say their vocabulary words in Chinese characters. They also learned the history of Chinese writing.

Social Studies students keep a Chinese journal now and record in it different common phrases in Chinese characters.

students listening to teacher instucting in Chinese“They learn the pronunciation of such phrases as ‘hello,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘good morning teacher,’ ‘good-bye,’ ‘see you again,’ and ‘I am American’ as well as words such as ‘flower’ and ‘aloha,” said Mrs. Browning.  “The words are student generated. Each student submitted a word or phrase they would like to learn in Chinese.”

Mrs. Chou picks one submission per day to project on the promethean board as she teaches the students how to pronounce and write the Chinese characters for that word or phrase. She has also brought in various Chinese artifacts to share with the students, including an ancient Chinese yo-yo that is still used today.

“The students really love the daily lessons and are just devouring the new knowledge from another culture in their world,” added Mrs. Browning. “There are a couple of Chinese speaking students in the sixth-grade and the students are so enjoying being able to communicate with their peers in another language.  The students absolutely adore their time with her and look forward to each day learning about this new culture.”

To see more photos, visit the district’s Facebook page.