Children had a great time performing in the Chinese Assembly in late Term 2. Items included songs and sharing about their Mandarin learning. It was impressive that children spoke Mandarin confidently on the stage. The highlight of the event was the Chinese handkerchief dance. It is a popular dance in the rural areas of China with a history of thousands of years. The original purpose is to celebrate harvest.
The Remuera and Epsom ALLiS cluster had a number of very successful cluster meetings in the previous two terms. The cluster is composed of eight schools, which included Meadowbank School, Epsom Girls Grammar School, Remuera Primary, Newmarket Primary, Cornwall Park School, Remuera Intermediate School, Parnell District School and Victoria Avenue School. All of these schools offer Mandarin and two of them offer Japanese as well. Each term the language teachers or cluster representatives get together to discuss about language teaching, learn about new teaching methodologies and enjoy various cultural activities.
In Term one, we made dumplings and used chopsticks to eat. It was the first time to make jiǎozi for some of us. It was a great team building activity!
In Term two, we were pleased to have Dr Julie Zhu (ALLiS Adviser, ILEP) to teach our group about Chinese calligraphy. We learned about the history of Chinese calligraphy and different types of scripts. It was fascinating to appreciate the beautiful handcrafted calligraphy tools. We had an attempt to write the characters on the special rice paper.
In relation to the calligraphy activity, Dr Jiwei Fu (Chinese National Adviser) has delivered two teaching pedagogy sessions about Chinese character learning. Teachers have gained a deeper understanding about the formation of Chinese characters, radicals and the development of characters throughout the past five thousand years.
Our knowledgeable teachers in the cluster have shared their expertise in Chinese and Japanese Tea Culture. We sampled different kinds of tea and learned about the benefits of drinking tea.
In November last year, over 200 students from Meadowbank School sat the YCT Level 1 and 2 exams. YCT is an international Chinese language test which is administered by the Confucius Institute. Meadowbank is the first school in New Zealand to have over 200 students sitting the test.
Students from Meadowbank have been working very hard to prepare for the test and they have achieved some fantastic results. Last Friday at the school assembly students were congratulated by our Principal Mr Peter Ayson and Mandarin teacher Ms Amy Ko. 13 top achievers received awards from the Confucius Institute Director Ms Nora Yao and Exam Coordinator Ms Meiju Wang. World TV has reported about this event in the Mandarin news.
Our Mandarin Teacher, Amy Ko attended a very successful
event at the Remuera Chinese New Year event in February and
Benji Lowe (Room 27/Year 6) presented his Mandarin speech
very well.
Fantastic results from the Lantern Competition where we won
$500 from sponsors Barfoot &
Thompson as we had the most finalists! Congratulations to the following Lantern winners:- 1st : Mary Meredith 2nd : Alyssa Bai, Frederica Chai,
Oscar Gong 3rd : Lilly Peeters, Rex Chu 4th : Ellen Loftus 5th : Monique van der Linde,
Zoe Fisher, Julie Qian Finalist : Oliver Blair http://www.remuera.org.nz/gallery
Welcome to the new Mandarin Room! We are now located at Room 32 on the Senior Campus, next to the Garden to Table Room. The artwork on display are produced by our children, these included Chinese calligraphy, paintings, fans and paper-cutting. The beautiful lantern are the winners from the recent lantern competition. We look forward to lots of exciting new learning this year! Xie xie.
