Teaching Demos + Interviews

--My "hand-made" poker cards. Now you know why I'm not an art teacher (of course I color photo-copied J,Q & Queen, there's no way I can paint that complicated patterns...). The reason why I used poker cards to do number games instead of just plain Arabic numbers on pieces of paper is to add the fun factor to the game.

Did 2 teaching demos today. The main topics today is reviewing numbers. I used different activities for Grade 6 and 12.

Grade 6:

Ss #: 18 students
Level: Beginners, only learn Chinese for 20 hrs/1 month

1. First showed the students the A4 size flash cards (or we can call them "poker" here) of Number 1~10 (plus Jack, Queen, and King, which represent 11,12 and 13). Ask the students to review these numbers by repeating after me.
2. While saying the numbers, asked the students to fix their eyes on the right hand corner of the cards, which the Chinese characters for number 1~13 were printed there.
3. Play "Heart Attack" after you make sure almost all the students remember the numbers. The winner won a prize ( I gave the winner a small bag of chocolate as the prize today).

Rules for playing "Heart Attack":

• The dealer showed the card one by one by saying the numbers 1~13 in sequence out loud.
• When the dealer showed the card whose number matches what he/she said, the players should do an action as the proof of catching it (in this class, I asked the student to stand up once they saw the card number is matching the number the dealer said).
• The last player to do the action is out.
• The last player who stays in the game wins the game.
• The whole process is very exciting, so your heart beat races, and probably will give you a "heart attack", hence the game's title--Heart Attack.

* You can substitue any action in this game. Since this is an early morning class (7:40 am), I asked the students to stand up every time they heard the matching numbers. You can do clapping hands, thumping the desks, stomping... etc. But, by doing standing up or sitting down, it's easier for the teacher to catch who's winning.

12 Grade:

Ss #: 4 students

Level: Learned Chinese for one year (about 150 hrs)

Bingo

1. Write 25 grids on a piece of paper,
2. Fill in numbers 1~25 randomly
3. Spin the marker, the person who is pointed by the cap of the marker will be the lucky person to start the game (there are many other ways to decide who starts the game...).
4. Each student calls out one number
5. Mark the number you or other students call.
6. The 1st student who connects 5 numbers in a line wins the game.

The winner who won the game today won a bag of "rice crackers" from me as the prize.

By playing above games, students get to review the numbers in Chinese in a much more fun way. Here are a few numbers many English speakers will get confused with:

6 六 liu (4)

9 九 jiu (3)

16 十六 shi(2)liu(4)

60 六十 liu(4) shi(2)

19 十九 shi(2) jiu(3)

90 九十 jiu(3)shi(2)

69 六十九 liu(4)shi(2)jiu(3)