Curriculum Resource

Activity 1: Introduction

Know Want Learnt Part 1

Teaching and learning goal: Students demonstrate what they already know about the topic and what they would like to learn during the learning sequence.

Dimension(s): Writing

Teacher notes: Students work on computers to complete the KWL template In Microsoft Word. KWL stands for the following:

• K = What I Know
• W = What I Want to Learn
• L = What I have Learnt

In the K column, ask students to write down what language skills they already have to enable them to talk about travelling. In the W column, ask students to type in what they would like to order to describe their travel plans. Students will complete the L column at the end of the sequence.

Ask students to share what they would like to learn in this sequence. This will support you to plan supplementary activities to cater to your students' interests.

Animation: Where are you from?

Teaching and learning goal: Students revise two basic sentence patterns to describe where they are from and where a country is located.

Dimension(s): Listening and speaking

Teacher notes: As a whole class, watch the brief animated dialogue between an Australian student and a Chinese student. Students then practise the conversation in pairs to practise the sentence patterns below, inserting their own hometown.

A: 你来自哪里？ (Where are you from? )
B: 我来自悉尼。 (I come from Sydney)
A: 悉尼在哪儿？ (Where is Sydney? )
B: 悉尼在澳大利亚。 (Sydney is in Australia.)

Activity 2: Places

Countries

Teaching and learning goal: Students become familiar with the vocabulary for 20 countries.

Dimension(s): Listening and reading

Teacher notes: Students will already know how to say a few different countries in Chinese. In this activity, students independently explore the following Quizlet learning games to learn a wider range of countries.

Countries flashcards – Students read and listen to the country vocabulary in Chinese. They will need to click the 'Enable Audio' button to listen to the vocabulary.

Learn countries – Students listen to the English meaning and select the correct country in Chinese.

Countries scatter game—Students drag the countries in Chinese onto their corresponding English meaning to make them disappear.

Countries speller game – Students listen to the country in Chinese and then select the correct English translation.

Capital cities

Teaching and learning goal: Students become familiar with the vocabulary for the 20 capital cities of the above countries.

Dimension(s): Listening and reading

Teacher notes: Students will explore the following Quizlet learning games to broaden their vocabulary to include a range of capital cities.

Capital cities flashcards – Students read and listen to the vocabulary of the capital cities in Chinese. They will need to click the 'Enable Audio' button to listen to the vocabulary.

Learn countries – Students listen to the English meaning and select the correct capital city in Chinese.

Capital cities scatter game – Students drag the capital cities in Chinese onto their corresponding English meaning to make them disappear.

Capital city test - Students may test their knowledge of the capital cities with this online quiz.

Chinese is easy

Teaching and learning goal: Students become familiar with many words in Chinese that sound similar to their English equivalent.

Dimension(s): Speaking and listening

Teacher notes: Facilitate a discussion as a whole class about the fact that some of the vocabulary for countries and capital cities sound very similar to their English equivalent. Ask students to identify them and create a list of them as a class. There should be 10 countries and 17 cities on your class list. To check that they have identified them all, you may like to refer to the vocabulary list provided, which highlights those that are similar to English.

Explain to students that this means there are only 13 vocabulary items that are 'brand new' and require memorisation. The others simply require students to remember their characters.

What is the capital city?

Teaching and learning goal: Students practise using the vocabulary for countries and cities and identify which capital cities are in which countries.

Dimension(s): Reading

Teacher notes:  As a whole class, watch the quick animation demonstrating the following sentence pattern

A: 澳大利亚首都是哪儿？ (What is the capital city of Australia?)
B: 澳大利亚首都是堪培拉。 (The capital city of Australia is Canberra)

Students then complete the interactive multiple choice quiz which asks them to select the capital city for five different countries.

Once they have done this, students create their own multiple choice quiz questions and write them in the notebook. Students may use their quizlet resources or the vocabulary list to help them with this.

Activity 3: Who wants to be a millionaire?

Teaching and learning goal: Students demonstrate their knowledge of the vocabulary for countries in Chinese and their capital cities.

Dimension(s): Reading, speaking and writing

Teacher notes: Compile students' quiz questions from the previous activity into a 'Who wants to be a millionaire PowerPoint template'. You may have enough questions to create two games of 'Who wants to be a millionaire?' Alternatively, you can ask students to type their questions straight into the template and then just compile the slides.

You can play this game as a whole class, or you could divide the class into smaller groups to and have students facilitate multiple games simultaneously. If facilitating the game independently in groups, each group would need to nominate a game show host. If you have more than one template filled with questions, you may wish to allocate different games to different groups.

Activity 4: Cartoon story

Cartoon story interviews

Teaching and learning goal: Reinforce students' understanding of the sentence patterns covered and countries and cities vocabulary. 

Dimension(s): Writing

Teacher notes: Students interview three people who have come from a different country. They interview them in English, asking them what city they come from, what country that city is in and what is the capital city of that country.

They then translate the questions and answers from the interview into Chinese and write them in the notebook, using the following sentence patterns in the quick reference sheet provided.

Cartoon story

Teaching and learning goal: Students demonstrate their understanding of the sentence patterns and vocabulary covered so far and receive feedback on their spoken language. 

Dimension(s): Speaking

Teacher notes: Arrange with the teacher at your Chinese partner school to delegate a 'study buddy'¹ to each student in the two classes.

Students then select one of their interviewees and create a cartoon story showing the dialogue between themselves and their interviewee in Chinese. They record and insert audio into the cartoon. View these instructions for using the cartoon story maker. 

They upload their cartoon story onto your online collaborative space² to share with their 'study buddy'. Invite students in your Chinese partner class to post feedback on their study buddy's work, such as on their pronunciation, intonation, fluency and accuracy.

¹A 'study' buddy' system is one in which each student in the Australian class will have a designated partner in the Chinese class with whom to collaborate. You may wish to change 'study buddies' each term or each topic you teach.

Activity 5: Travel plans

Animation: Asking about travel plans

Teaching and learning goal: Students are introduced to a wide range of question structures to enable them to find out specific details of someone's travel plans.

Dimension(s): Listening, writing and speaking

Teacher notes: As a whole class, watch the animated dialogue between a Chinese student and an Australian student. The Chinese student is asking the Australian student about her travel plans. Ask students to identify any familiar words and sentence structures. Write these up on the board.

Then, give students the English translation of the dialogue. Students then watch the video independently, whilst looking at the English translation and add to their list of familiar words that they can hear. Ask students to identify the 'question words' in the animation and list them in their notebooks.

Asking about travel plans worksheet

Teaching and learning goal: Students practise writing the new question types introduced in the dialogue.

Dimension(s): Reading and writing

Teacher notes: Students fill in the gaps in the cloze activity to complete the written version of the dialogue presented in the animation. Students may watch the animation as many times as necessary, playing and pausing as required. Students may also refer to a Chinese-English dictionary for support.

If students are unable to fill in the gaps correctly, they should share their responses with a partner and compare and discuss the ones that they are having trouble with and the attempts they have made. Students may then complete the activity in pairs if they need extra support. A solutions sheet is provided.

Once students have completed the script, they find a partner and practise saying the dialogue together, using the correct pronunciation and intonation. They may choose to replay the video for support.

Activity 6: My dream holiday

Teaching and learning goal: Students practise responding to a range of questions about their travel plans.

Dimension(s): Reading, writing, listening and speaking

Teacher notes: In this activity, students will think about where they would like to go on their 'dream holiday'.

Before students get started, play a quick game to revise adjectives as students will need to remember these for describing their destination, in response to the question 'Why will you go to _____?'

In their notebook, students write their dream destination city and then describe the details of their dream holiday, including all of the following seven questions: where, why, how, when, with whom, how much it will cost and for how long they will travel there. They may use the dialogue transcript for support.

Once students have drafted their responses to the seven questions, students find a partner and practise asking the questions as in the 'Asking about travel plans' activity. Their partner will answer the questions with their own responses about their dream holiday. Students then swap roles so that they each have a turn at asking and responding to the questions about their dream holiday.

Schedule a series of video conferences with your Chinese partner school, so that small groups of students (about 5 Australian students and 5 Chinese students) can interact with one another in each session. Ensure that each student's 'study buddy' is in their group.

Hold a practice session with the Chinese teacher beforehand to ensure you are able to clearly communicate with each other using your selected video conferencing application³.

Discuss with the teacher the objectives for the sessions, including asking and responding to questions about the students' 'dream holidays'. Send the teacher a copy of the 'Asking about travel plans' dialogue so that they understand the type of questions that your students will be asking them. Plan any additional activities that will assist the Chinese class with their English studies or other projects they are working on.

³Two online platforms you may wish to explore for collaboration with your partner school are Wikispaces and Edmodo.

Activity 7: Video conference

Teaching and learning goal: Students ask and respond to questions about travel plans in an authentic and meaningful dialogue with native speakers.

Dimension(s): Speaking and listening

Teacher notes: In their groups, students connect using the video conference application and each take turns asking all seven questions covered, to find out the details of another students' dream holiday. Record the video conference, as the recording will be required in a subsequent activity⁵.

Students engage in further English discussion based on the needs and requests of the Chinese partner class.

⁵Ensure that you have parental permission to video record your students and/or the students in your Chinese partner school and permission to upload their videos to the online collaborative space. 

Activity 8: Study buddies

Video dialogues

Teaching and learning goal: Reinforce student' understanding of the seven question types covered.

Dimension(s): Reading, speaking and listening

Teacher notes: In pairs, students draft an interview in their notebooks, in which one person interviews the other about their travel plans, including all seven question types covered. Students then swap roles so that they take on the role of both the interviewer and the interviewee. Students video-record their interview. They then edit their video and create one version with English subtitles and one version without.

Students present their videos to the class without subtitles. Students in the class write down in their notebooks brief notes on each of their classmate's dream holidays.
They then upload their video with subtitles to the online collaborative space3 for their Chinese 'study buddies' to provide feedback on their:

• Pronunciation
• Tones
• Fluency
• Accuracy of vocabulary and grammar
• Creativity – how interesting is it

Australian students and other students in the Chinese class may also write comments on any of the videos in the online space to express their feedback.

Listen to our Chinese study buddies

Teaching and learning goal: Students demonstrate their comprehension of the linguistic patterns covered, in their natural spoken form during the video conference.

Dimension(s): Listening and writing

Teacher notes: Students find the section of the video conference recording which contains their study buddy's description of their dream holiday. They edit that section of the recording by adding subtitles in English to provide a translation of what is being said. Students may use a Chinese-English dictionary to complete this activity.

Some students may find it difficult to transcribe the video word for word. Such students may work in pairs to complete the activity or should be encouraged to transcribe the general meaning of each sentence instead of each word.

Students then publish the subtitled video on the collaborative space. Their study buddy in China reviews the video and provides feedback based on the accuracy of the translation.

Activity 9: Conclusion

Reflection

Teaching and learning goal: Students reflect on the video conference and the learnings from this topic.

Dimension(s): Listening and speaking

Teacher notes: Students report back to the class in English about their study buddy's dream holiday. Keep a tally on the board of the responses shared, as shown below.

Students reflect on the video conference and the class tally in their notebook or blog, responding to the following prompt questions:

• What were the most popular 'dream destinations' in the Chinese class and the English class?
• What differences and similarities did you notice about the dream holidays of the Chinese students (from the video conference) and the dream holidays of your classmates (from the video dialogues)?

Invite students to share their reflections with the class. They may also wish to share any other observations that they made or questions that arose during the video conference or the subsequent activities.

Know Want Learnt part 2

Teaching and learning goal: Students demonstrate what they have learnt during the learning sequence.

Dimension(s): Writing

Teacher notes: Students complete the L column of their KWL sheet, reflecting on what they have learnt during the learning sequence.