Lesson+1

Lesson 1
Thursday, Jan 27, 2011


 * **Content to be taught** || * Introduction to the Chinese New Year and Lunar Calendar
 * Dates and days of the week in Chinese
 * Vocabulary: days of the week, month, day ||
 * **Standards ** || This particular school asks that teachers pay close attention to student behavior and needs. These should be noted for later discussion in middle school team meetings. Due to the small class size (six students), the teacher is also responsible for being relatively personal with each student. Chinese is considered an elective at this school; therefore, the teacher should assign only light homework.

The Chinese elective has an emphasis on speaking and listening rather than reading and writing, so the Chinese romanization system, //pinyin//, is used for most lessons. The objective of the course is to introduce students to Chinese culture as well as the language. A notional syllabus is used that focuses on topics rather than grammatical constructions. Students are also encouraged to work together to solve problems and develop interpersonal skills. || **Level of Technology Use** || Students will be familiar with the concept of the Lunar Calendar from their Judaic studies. They should know the numbers 1-30 in Chinese.
 * **Prior knowledge &**

Students should basic skills with a computer mouse for this lesson. ||
 * **Technologies ** || Comiker - Used to create a humorous comic in Chinese between two characters arguing over what day of the week they should meet to drink tea together.

GoAnimate - Use d to create a cartoon demonstrating the days of the week, in which one character asks another what she is doing on different days of the week. GoAnimate will also be used to create a cartoon combining the voice recordings of students talking about what they will do on different days of the week.

Discover Education's Puzzle Maker - Used to create a word search to be completed by students in class. Words will consist of action vocabulary (singing, dancing, swimming, etc.) that students have been exposed to previously but have not yet mastered.

Google Calendar - Will be embedded in this Wiki for students to view while learning days of the week. Students will take turns adding events to the calendar in Chinese, such as "drink tea on Wednesday." ||
 * **Pre Lesson** || Students will be told ahead of time that they will be making a cartoon in today's lesson. ||
 * **Lesson Goals ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Students will understand how Chinese days of the week and dates are formed. They will be able to form sentences telling on which day of the week something occurs. This will also serve as a review of action vocabulary they have learned previously. The lesson as a whole will introduce technology in the classroom to students, as they have never recorded their voices or used a computer in class before. ||
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Activities ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(7 mins)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Students enter the classroom to find comics at each of their seats. The teacher instructs them to read the comics silently to themselves and refer to the board if they need to know the words for days of the week. Elicit from the class several questions related to the content of the comic strip.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(5 mins)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Using the classroom projector, display the Google calendar. Point to each day of the week and say its name, having students repeat (days of the week in Chinese are simply a word followed by a number, with the exception of Sunday). Monday, for example, would literally be "day one," Tuesday would be "day two," etc.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(5 mins)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Play the GoAnimate cartoon (embedded below). Students listen while the two characters in the cartoon talk about their plans for the week using actions the students are familiar with (play basketball, go swimming, etc.). Tell students they will make a similar cartoon as a class about their plans for the week including any vocabulary they wish.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(13 mins)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Pass out a word search with action vocabulary created with Puzzle Maker to each student. Vocabulary will include actions such as playing sports, singing, dancing, etc. While students are completing the worksheet in pairs, call one student up at a time to record his or her voice using Audacity for use in the class's GoAnimate cartoon. Each student should say something he or she will do on a certain day of the week, drawing ideas from the word search being worked on. Save the voice recordings and produce a GoAnimate cartoon later for use in the next lesson. The cartoon will show two friends talking about their plans for the week.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(10 mins) media type="custom" key="8059660"
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Navigate to the Google calendar again. Point out the characters used in the dates (like days of the week, Chinese months and dates are expressed with numbers). February 15, for example, would literally be "two month, fifteen day." Model the Chinese words for month and day and have students repeat several times. Navigate to the date for Chinese New Year (Feb. 3, 2011) and model the following sentence in Chinese: "The Chinese New Year is February 3rd." Pass out a slip of paper with an important date or holiday written on it to each student (Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year's Day, Halloween, etc.). Students then take turns coming to the computer and navigating to their date or holiday, while presenting it to the class telling which month and date it falls on in Chinese. Example: "Halloween is October 31st." ||
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Technology Samples ** || Comic created with Comiker
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Technology Samples ** || Comic created with Comiker

Google Calendar media type="googlecalendar" key="albertsonbrendon%40gmail.com" ARG0="&ctz=Asia/Shanghai" height="283" width="737" align="left"

Word Search made with Discovery Education's Puzzle Maker media type="custom" key="8056918"

GoAnimate Cartoon "What are you doing?" media type="custom" key="8057086" || media type="custom" key="8241004" ||
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Student Work ** || GoAnimate cartoon produced by students:
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Lesson Annotation & Reflection ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Prior to teaching this lesson, I had checked to see if each technology component would work on the school’s computer. I found that I needed to sign in to Google Calendar, which I did before class began to save time. At the beginning of class, students were intrigued by the comic and asked how it was made. When playing the GoAnimate cartoon, students became very excited. They asked to replay it several times. After playing it three times, the students all seemed to understand the Chinese conversation and were able to answer my comprehension questions. One student remarked that he had used GoAnimate before and also knew about Audacity. He offered to teach me how to make better characters in GoAnimate and asked if I could convince the school to purchase a GoAnimate account in order to gain access to better characters and items.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">To save time and eliminate the need to download Audacity and the MP3 converter, I brought my laptop to class for recording use. The portability of a laptop allowed me to carry it around the classroom to individual students when it was their turn to record, which I found convenient. Because the principal later asked me to give her a link to the GoAnimate cartoon created with the recordings, I wanted it to sound professional and give the impression of a learning atmosphere. Students were excited to have the freedom of choosing their own sentence to record, but many were asking me to help them translate sentences too advanced for their current level of proficiency. One student, for example, wanted to know how to say, "I tackle Daniel on Tuesday." I tried to help students simplify their sentences so they achieved the purpose of the lesson (learning to use days of the week) but at the same time were able to express themselves freely. Although I had given students a wordsearch puzzle to keep them quiet while other students were recording, they were very excited and it was difficult to get a recording with little background noise or without students speaking their sentence in a silly voice. However, the students did spend considerable time preparing the sentences they would record. No student had to be re-recorded more than two times, and all students were successfully recorded by the end of the class period. After class, I had no trouble uploading the MP3s, although GoAnimate crashed once while I was making the cartoon.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">After class, students seemed to be in a “technology mood” and chatted with me casually about such things as email and Facebook. One student stated she did not like email because it lacked images and sound like Myspace. Most students said they never used email because they did not see a need. I told them they would use it when they were older. ||