Article Details

Article Details

Chinese in Carnoustie

Author: Natalie Wotherspoon, Angus

Learning Chinese has been a great success this year in the Carnoustie cluster, Angus. Within this cluster, Burnside Primary will launch as a Primary Confucius Classroom on 28 June 2017, with support from the Hanban teacher, Liύ Yan. Throughout the year, Liύ Yan has worked closely with pupils and teachers to teach Chinese and share Chinese culture. Every Wednesday, she has spent time visiting all cluster primaries to support the learning of Chinese as L3. These include Woodlands, Carolgie, Monikie and Newbigging Primaries. Pupils have developed all four aspects of literacy and their confidence has progressed through the use of songs and games.

Monikie and Newbigging Primaries have embraced this opportunity and are using a whole-school, contextualised-learning focus on China. Pupils continue to take part in the daily mile and are recording how far along the Great Wall of China they would have walked. Classes have also created Chinese dragon displays.

Parents have mentioned the positive impact learning Chinese has had, with one parent commenting: “My kids are loving China as a topic. They started speaking Chinese at the dinner table tonight – I was shocked and very impressed as normally we get no information from the children about what has happened in the day.”

Carnoustie High School became a Confucius Hub in 2016 and pupils will have the option to continue learning Chinese at secondary school.

 

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