Chinese Cuisine Lesson Plan

1.              Content:

Big Picture and Essential Questions

Food is an essential part of the learning of Chinese culture. It is unique from the cooking materials to the cooking methods. Students had laid a foundation on some common cooking materials last year, in this unit, we will experience different kinds of cooking methods, so students will understand how Chinese dishes are prepared. In turn, they will have the concept of Chinese people’s eating habits. Then, they will have the opportunity to “create” some dishes by themselves. Afterwards, they will learn how to order in a Chinese restaurant, as well as the Chinese table etiquettes.

Challenging Areas:

There are many different cooking methods in Chinese. Students might have a hard time understanding them since they rarely cook Chinese food at home. Therefore I will provide the instruction with authentic pictures and video clips to assist my students.

2.              Pedagogy:

Project-Centered Learning: In this unit, students are asked to accomplish various tasks through cooperating with one another. For example, the role-play of going to a restaurant. There are also individual tasks that required students to organize the knowledge that they learned and create a handcraft project, such as: My Chinese Placement. Students will accomplish learning through task solving activities. These activities are designed to develop students’ independent and group working ability.

Utilizing the Technology: Students can organize information, collect resource, create their own product and communicate one another with technology.

3.             Content & Pedagogy:

The reason I choose project-centered pedagogy is because I want my students to develop the ability of problem solving, to practice on collecting and organizing the useful materials as well as to make connection between new knowledge to the old ones. For language learning, project-centered learning can motivate students’ interests. As they use the language to do things and accomplish tasks, they gain the sense of accomplishment. Last but not least, if students learn in an authentic problem-solving classroom, they will be able to use the language after they master it. However in the traditional language-learning classroom, students have a hard time transfer the language content into real life from the classroom.

4.              Technology:

Varies technology tools will be applied as we learn the Chinese Food unit.

1. To start the unit, I am going to show students a short video about Beijing Roast Duck. So they can have a impression on Chinese restaurants, utensils, the duck cooking methods and so on, in order to rise their interest in Chinese food. The video is more authentic and vivid than teacher’s introduction therefore it is necessary.

2. As we learn new vocabulary, I will upload a Jing video on our Edmodo profile so students can watch the video to review what we have been learning. Students need to answer certain questions to show that they had accomplished the work. This method is very efficient on helping students review since it provides them with their teacher’s pronunciation as well as the PowerPoint they learned in class. It cannot be replaced by other methods.

3. For the final project, students need to create a conversation about going to the restaurant. For this project, students can achieve in different ways. They may create a script and do a traditional skit, or using GoAnimate to create a cartoon clip or producing an IMovie. The technology for this part is optional.

5.             Technology & Pedagogy:

The main reason for me to select the technology I mentioned is to support students’ learning with the most authentic, convenient and real-life content.

In this unit, technology not only is a tool to accomplish the goal to communicate (Imovie, Goanimate and etc) but also the content and the reference that facilitate students’ learning. Students are learning with technology so even though the technology is not available they can still use mandarin to solve daily problems. In the process of achieving this goal, technology makes it convenient for students’ reviewing. It is very important because in order to help them accomplish the task, teacher has to give access to sufficient materials.

6.             Technology & Content:

First, technology makes the content authentic and vivid. Students can experience the food making closely.

Second, technology provides different content, which divergent from the same big idea. Therefore, it benefits students, who have different learning styles.

Third, technology allows students to work with one another more conveniently.

7. Assessment:

There are informal assessments such as: Class worksheets; Games and Activities; Question answering

Formal Assessments: Chinese Placemat (for new vocabulary wrap up); Menu Creation (Putting food and cooking methods together);Role-play (To order food in a restaurant)

Other than learning mandarin, students are learning to make connection between new learning with what they have learned before; to develop self-learning skills with given materials; to cooperate in role-play; to work with one another in projects and make contribution to the team; to create opportunities to speak Chinese in their daily life.

Story Telling for Reviewing

Here is my storytelling video.

Audio Interview

Please click here to listen to Xiaochen Song's Audio Interview.

WPP

      The purpose for my project is to promote students communicative as well as writing skills in mandarin. Moreover, to take this opportunity to foster a Mandarin learning communities for my 8th grade class through the usage of technology.

      According to “20 Ways to Use Edmodo”it allows students to communicate with each other anytime, anywhere in different ways. I would like to take advantage of that. Therefore, I designed a writing activity through Edmodo. The topic is posted through notes. Students can turn their writing work in by “replying”to the post. Then, they need to read their peer editor’s work and give suggestions on grammar errors, good points and how can the writing be improved. Later on, they need to go back to their original writing, revise it according to their peer’s comment and then finalize it. To complete this assignment, they need to have two writings, one is the original writing, and the other one is finalized writing.

    What’s more, students can also practice Chinese character typing, which is a crucial skill nowadays for 21st century learners. I also chose a topic that students are interested at “Describe an animal you like the best.”

     This project is designed based on the following information:

     Content Knowledge (CK): The process of mastering a language develops from Listening-speaking-reading to writing. This activity combines reading, writing, editing, reflecting. These four skills foster a cycle of learning while students collaborate on one another’s ideas.

      Technology Knowledge (TK): This activity requires students to be able to type in Chinese character, to give respond to one another’s post on Edmodo as well as to gather information from the resource that I provide online.

     Pedagogical Knowledge (PK): To ensure a smooth transition from learning the new language points to the accomplishment of the work, I scaffolded students from the usage of the words and sentences to analysis of the short context and then to short story writing.

      Moreover, I provide detailed questions that guide students on commenting on one another’s writing. The implication of my project is overall a success. My students were very excited from the beginning of the activity. They definitely put in their biggest effort. They loved typing Chinese characters in computer. As they worked on their writing, most of my students keep themselves challenged by choosing sentence structures that are complicated. Based on the commenting that I received, they all took responsibility to help each other on doing a better job. The comments they provided are meaningful as well. All these really surprised me and I have decided to keep this writing activity as part of my writing assessment for my students.

     In the process of the activity, I made a minor change.While I was designing this activity, I planned to let my students comment on 3 other students. However, I have 16 students, if they all respond to 3 others, the posts might be too long. So I decided to let students comment on 1 other classmate using our clock partner chart. These two students will be editing peers. In order to evaluate, I asked them to write what they like about their peer’s writing, what mistakes. Also, they need to contribute at least three more sentences to make their peer’s writing look better.

     In my WPP presentation, I have given an example of one of my student, Eric’s work. In his writing, he describes giant panda, such as its looks, what food does panda like, where does a panda live. His peer editor suggested him to give some information on “where does panda originated” as well as the activities that a panda likes to do. So in Eric’s final writing, he added the sentences that Maddie suggested and it not only makes his writing interesting but also develops some depth of the usage of this language.

This is my WPP presentation.

Professional Learning Plan

This is a prezi that I made for my ideas of professional learning plan. I used Jing to capture the video while I was making it. So the whole idea of my professional learning plan is to make connection with the technology we have learned; integrate them into different part of my teaching based on my teaching purpose. In this video, hopefully you can not only see the ideas, but also see how to make a presentation with Prezi :D

Group Project-Weebly Tutorial

This is the website that our group used to demonstrate the usage of Weebly. It includes five different tutorials, which focus on different aspects of Weebly editing. It also has a Sample page and a page that readers can give Feedback.

Wicked Problem Project: Part D - Findings and Implications

The goal of my project is to develop students' writing skill in mandarin, nurture their interests in literacy in a foreign language as well as form a community of collaboration in my 8th grade class by using Edmodo. The project achieved my goals. First, all my students were very engaged in the whole process of writing. They feel convenient to write with computer also, it is a useful skill to type Chinese characters. They had an easy time adapting to Edmodo and finding valuable materials there. They think Edmodo is easy to use. Also, they felt cool when they edited their peers' writing online. Since we use to read books or contents printed on paper, this is something novel and fun. When they provide feedback to their peers, the sense of responsibility is developed. They can also learn new things from their peers' writing. When they finally submit the edited version of writing, they can definitely see how much they have grown, which gave them a sense of achievement. I am really glad that I chose to work on this project. I will keep it as an activity that we do regularly. For me, the most important thing that teacher needs to do for this activity is to give students enough reference online to help with their writing as well as a meticulous guidance on how to use Edmodo as well as how to install the Chinese typing keyboard. Teachers also need to explain to students about the purpose of this activity. In the future, I would ask my students to brainstorm the topic of their writing assignment according to what we have learned and the objectives of what we are learning. I wish that this activity help my students to see how far they have went in Mandarin learning as well as motivated in the coming days!