Page 6 - sample pack

The main feature of the Teacher’s Manual is our Reader Index. We have purposefully moved away from offering a lesson plan for each Reader as we want to encourage teachers to use their creativity and fair to help bring the Readers to life. However, what we have done is to pull the key points from each Reader to guide you through how to impar t the knowledge in the books to your students. The lesson index for each Reader contains the following:

Every new item of vocabulary in the Reader is listed here, as are any characters that are used to convey impor tant grammatical concepts.

Main grammatical points:

Key points of grammar introduced or developed by the Reader.

Which P3 theme the Reader falls under.

PYP curriculum link:

Which theme of the Primary Years Program curriculum the Reader falls under.

Key points of the Reader:

A bullet pointed list of the main vocabulary and grammatical features of the Reader.

Learning objectives:

Statements that describe what children should have accomplished by the end of the lesson.

Explanation of the specifc skills the children will gain upon completion of each individual Reader.

Provides measurable sentences to confrm what children have learned in the lesson (“I can” statements).

Gives ideas on how to make the lesson easier or more diffcult depending on children’s abilities.

Other Chinese Readers that follow the same theme or that cover the same grammatical linguistic concepts.

Differentiation & Pathways

A major emphasis of the Primary Mandarin suite of products is differentiation, that is, an understanding of different abilities in a class and tailoring activities to suit individual needs. A unique feature of second language acquisition is that, as a teacher, not only do you have to differentiate in terms of ability but also in terms of each child’s prior exposure to the language in question. Children may enter your classroom with absolutely no prior exposure to the language; others may know a few words, and some could be much more advanced. This is why the aims of our products are divided into three categories; Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced.

The English Schools Foundation in Hong Kong (with whom our Primary Mandarin products were initially developed) follows a three pathway approach to suit the needs of all of its students. Children come to Mandarin classes with varying prior exposure to the language. Their levels of literacy can also be vastly different. To this end, the three pathway approach aims to provide oppor tunities for children to learn at an appropriate pace. Each pathway covers the four key areas of reading, writing, listening and speaking.

Five Steps to Guided Reading

While the Primary Mandarin materials were designed to be used in a variety of ways in order to accommodate any teaching style, we recommend using Guided Reading in the classroom. Guided Reading sessions involve a teacher and a group of between two to six children, grouped by academic ability, reading levels, or needs. Each session should have a set of objectives to be taught through the course of a roughly 20 minute session. While Guided Reading takes place with one group of children, the remaining children are engaged in independent or group literacy tasks. This is so the teacher is not interrupted by the other children in the class while working with the Guided Reading group. Guided Reading can be a daily activity, involving every child in a class over the course of a week.

For those not familiar with how to incorporate Guided Reading in their classroom, we have created a document explaining the fve steps to follow in order to effectively use Guided Reading in your instruction. The document can be found immediately following Appendix C.