This workshop was set for an advanced class that has only been using commas and full stops in their writing. It is a way to help the students use their punctuation properly through cooperative exercises, authentic materials, fun workshops, and to expand what they already know through language awareness.

The workshop consisted of twelve workstations situated around the room. Each workstation had a different topic, from commas to colons, and the formats were ranging from worksheets to activities that require getting up and moving around. The exercises covered the necessary forms of punctuation in English. We had 50 minutes to walk around and pick exercises, working in groups with a timer set to eight minutes for each exercise (although it probably should have been set to five!)

At the end of the workshop, we talked about how we would use this as future educators. We thought about utilizing these exercises separately in class instead of a workshop, starting with workstation G (the video of Victor Borg). This would hopefully get the students excited about using punctuation and would be a silly introduction to punctuation, while still being on topic. We thought about starting light by looking at periods and commas, which is apparently something they already know. We would group together A and E and B and K because we feel the exercises relate to one another and can scaffold one another. About 2/3 of the way through these exercises, it would be good to do the kinesthetic pronunciation activity to once again get the students active.

By Willow, Gerry, Sara, and Aaron

CAIS Reflection_Amy Ruoran Liu

On October 2nd, our Chinese class visited Chinese American International School (CAIS) in San Francisco. CAIS is a Chinese-English dual language immersion program from Pre-Kindergarten to 8th grade. In elementary school, Chinese and English is 50-50 while in middle school, Chinese is slightly less weighted than English. Students were fully immersed in a Chinese-speaking environment in the Chinese classrooms. They also study other subjects through the Chinese language. We spent approximately four hours at CAIS, and were fortunate to observe four elementary school classes.  

Innovation is my biggest impression about CAIS. Although CAIS might be one of the earliest immersion schools in San Francisco Bay Area, it is not old-fashioned at all. On the contrary, the teachers have been using very creative teaching methods, and the administrators are very proud of it. In Wang Laoshi’s (Teacher Wang’s) first grade class, she taught Chinese through songs. The class has learned three songs; one involved some dance movement (similar to the one in Spanish); one was about being a first grader (which is relevant to their life) and the most recent one was about the moon (because of the celebration of Mooncake Festival). All kids were engaged. The administrators said, teachers at CAIS are required to attend conferences on Chinese and language teaching in order to continue learning and improving their teaching skills. They also provide internal teaching training to keep the teachers alert on the newest teaching methodology. Now, the school is working on digital projects that assists flipped learning.

Chung Hui Kim Liao’s reflection on class observations at CAIS:

 The pedagogical implication I gained from the almost four-hour class observations at CAIS was really inspiring! I totally agreed with CAIS’s education doctrine—the ultimate purpose of language education is to “let students use a language comfortably.” Language learning should not be just about memorizing phrases, vocab, or doing exams; language teaching and learning should both be leading hands that “adapt students to the culture” of the particular language, or even to the country which speaks the language! I strongly agreed with and admired CAIS’s teaching goal of letting students “experience” Mandarin Chinese by leading them into the Chinese-speaking world. (For example, almost once each semester, CAIS would plan a certain Mandarin cultural trip for a certain age group of students; it can be a visit to the Chinese Town in SF, or even a two-week exchange-student program for older students to visit Taiwan). CAIS uses as many activities/means as possible to let their students truly “experience” Mandarin Chinese themselves, and that’s what inspired me the most. We, as language teachers, should teach students how to experience a language, and finally how to be a part it.  

CAIS Reflection_Kathy Yang

My biggest takeaways from CAIS are as follow：

1.     Content-based Instruction (CBI)

Although I have already heard about this teaching method for a long time and observed several classes based on it, I never saw a comprehensive educational system adopting CBI in any schools until I went to Chinese American International School (CAIS). We mainly observed Chinese classes in their primary school but according to their Chinese program director, pupils are assigned the identical amount of time in learning different subjects, such as math, science, artwork, and so on, instructed both in Chinese and English. The two languages are supposed to possess the same significance in the mind of kids; so they should treat their Chinese and English teachers equally in the context of the US is generally an English-speaking country. More specifically, students take math or any other basic classes in Chinese in the morning and then learn the similar content in English in the afternoon. I was extremely impressed that even in a math class when language teaching isn’t the top priority, that math teacher still encouraged students to talk about math problems in complete sentences in Chinese. I think especially at the beginning level, it is extremely important in learning a target language to produce complete rather than broken sentences and applying the language to daily usages as much as possible.

2.        The golden age of language learning

I never observed an international primary school before, so I was totally ignorant about what bilingual education for young kids looks like. As an English learner myself, I started to acquire it pretty late in my life in terms of the golden age of learning a foreign language. My English learning began after I entered the middle school when I was 13 years old, and was told although it was not the best time to start from scratch, it was ok and I can still make out of it. However, I was quite stunned by how accurate the American kids can produce each sound in Chinese, which is a tonal language that most Roman languages speakers find hard to learn its pronunciation. In CAIS, the Romanization system of Chinese sound, called Pinyin was taught when kids are 4,5 years old so it has laid a solid foundation in their learning process. Moreover, since they start so early, pupils have sharper ears and better imitation abilities than adult learners for the sounds and intonations; they seldom have difficulties in following teachers and producing correct sounds afterwards. I have to admit that from this observation activity, it struck me that the golden age of language learning does exist.

Co-authors: Amy Ruoran Liu; Chung Hui Kim; Kathy Yang 

Apart from being an interesting read, this task is a great tool for building vocabulary and conversational target language (through dialogue). It’s also a great way to bring the language to life, making it’s study interesting and worth while. I for one would want to get my hands on this book and read it on my own time. Was I an English language learner, it would also be a great way to study.
By bringing the language to life, students are introduced to the culture and the notion that, as a matter fact, people do operate in other languages (a point monolingual children, and even adults, seem to overlook). It sparks motivation. If they study, they can participate in this language, like these people, too.
If you’re a reader it’s also just plain interesting. And as a teacher, you have to meet the learning strengths of all your students and for some that might be reading.
Reading aloud made it fun and it was obvious our class was very engaged in this activity from the focus, volume, and animation of the classroom. However, I do foresee slight problems arising from timid young learners or disinterested adult learners (namely those forced to take English lessons by their company). The timid young learners wouldn’t want to read aloud and the bored adult learners might mumble their way through or even simply not play along. Should such a situation arise, I think I would try to come up with a back up plan for these students. Perhaps a Track A and Track B, two ways of completing the same task and students get to choose. I don’t really like this idea myself, but I’m wondering what I would do if students didn’t want to participate…
The discussion and follow-up questions are, for me, what make the task worth while. It’s the point, the reason, the mission, and good discussion questions can have students debating in the TL forever. Even though with weaker abilities, if they are passionate about a point or riled up, they jump over their language block and produce efficient output in the TL.

Brieanna