Xiaochen's Substitute Lesson Plan

Ms. Song’s Substitute Lesson Plan for 5th grade students (37 min)
Topic of the week: Family Members
Objectives of the day: Learn how to address your relatives in Chinese

How to address your family member in Mandarin? (5 min)
First, teacher need to tell students the differences of addressing a relatives in Chinese and in English. In the United States, uncle and aunts are used for both father side of the family and mother side. As well as “grandma” and “grandpa”. In China, it is very different, for example, we have different names for grandpa in mother side and father side. Today, we are gonna introduce how to call your relatives if you are in China.


Use the family tree to introduce family members (See attachment “family tree”) (10 min)
As teacher introduce the family members, students read after the teacher. Do it twice so students can have a impression on the correct tone of the language.

Take Notes (10 min)
Give each student a empty family tree, and ask them to fill in the blanks with Chinese characters and Pinyin. Then they can highlight the family members they have. For example, if one student has 哥哥 (older brother), he will hightlight that in his family tree.

Survey (10 min)
Give each student a survey with two questions.
1. 你家几口人? (How many people are there in your family?)
2. 你家有谁?(Who do you have in your family?)
Students need to ask these questions to their classmates. Since they have learned numbers and family members, they are able to answer these questions in English. Then the next day, we are going to have an activity with students’ survey result.

Getting Things Done

First of all, I am a very disorganized person. I like to put things everywhere and then I forget where they are; I can think of a idea in this second and forget it in the next second. Therefore,
I really need some convenient method to help me organize my data. Unfortunately, I am still looking for it...

Right now, the way for me to organize my process was traditional-post it and pen, and a small calendar. When I prepare for my lesson plan, I like to do backward planning. For example, I write a list of the objective for a topic and then I prepare lesson that can accomplish these objectives. I always write down what I did today in class and what I am going to do next day on a post-it then I stick it to my laptop. So when I got home and open up my laptop, the note is right there.

I also carry a calendar in my purse, it is for my personal usage. Sometimes when a good idea hit me, I would like to write it down otherwise I forget it. Like I mentioned previously, I am not a very organized person so even though I am constantly writing things down, I still forget things sometimes. When I collect the information, I always feel anxious because looks like that I have lots of things to do. But when I accomplish the tasks, I felt great as I marked off them on my calendar. But sometimes, when I sit down and go over the "to-do list", I have finished everything although I still have a feeling that something is not done.

I will keep using this method to organize my process although I am trying to switch my notes on my phone so when some events are coming up, it can automatically remind me.

Social Networks

Right now, in most of the industries, the competition is getting increasingly competitive. Therefore, having a connection makes it much easier when we are searching for a career or further education. Take myself as an example. After I fulfilled my teaching in TN, I was looking for something new. The Confucius Institute introduced me to my new school district and I am enjoying it very much. Therefore, having networks makes our lives much easier and it gives us a feeling that out there, someone is supporting us, we do not feel alone anymore.

Xiaochen's Calendar

RSS Page Reflection

Through RSS reader, I am able to collect more useful blogs and information more productively. The second picture in this page was a comment that I made when I followed a teacher's blog. She has many creative ideas on students' handcraft. I like the work that her students made because I think it is important when students are touching things and doing hands-on activities in their learning.
The first picture indicates some feeds that I collected in my google reader. There are feeds about education laws, how to use technology in teaching and also there are feeds about Chinese language teaching methods and ideas.
In these days, I checked my google reader very often. It really surprised me when I saw all the helpful information I got. I had stories about Chinese history or methods in teaching sentence structures. It has became my habit to checked the news in my google reader.
These materials inspire me for more ideas in teaching. Also, my RSS reader allows me to contact with people who are sharing the same experience with me. There are Chinese teachers, as well as students who learn Chinese. These students will write blog and talk about the strategies that help them in Chinese learning. Once, I read an article about using games in Chinese learning and the students recommended ZON. This is something new to me, but I am glad that I know this because I can in turn recommend it to my own students.
Moreover, there are teachers who upload their teaching material such as pictures, lesson plans and I can take what I need then make it my own.
The RSS reader broaden my vision in Chinese teaching and it also saved me lots of time and effort in looking for materials randomly online.