Daily+Refections+-+June+7+-+11

Day 5
==Jia Jia: I liked today's micro-teaching and the science activity -- scale weigh fruits. The workshop taught me a lot in the first week! I think I will keep reviewing the strategies, methods of Chinese teaching as a second language, and consider how to apply them to my daily teaching, design activities and so on! Thanks to all of the teaching staff for the wonderful first week workshop!==

==Jie Ding - Day 5: Thank you Dr. Lo for the wonderful and helpful lesson this week. I have definitely learned some new and interesting ways to teach a foreign language. The group activities were extremely effective and a great way to interact. I found it helpful to share techniques and be a part of a group that gave constructive criticism, which presented a lot of valuable insight. I now have more resources to use in the classroom. The balance and idea relay activities were very interesting. Being a part of the workshop and working with my colleagues has definitely been a fruitful experience! Jian Lin: The workshop of this week is very helpful for me. I learned a lot of new teaching strategies, methods, and benchmark of second language acqusition, etc. It is hard to summarize what I have learned in this week into a short paragraph. However, I would like to share my most remarkable experience in the lecture of this week. As a teacher, I believe we need to focus on academic words in all teaching contents. Our students need to lean certain numbers of obligatory words in every age-level. Special thank you to Ms. Lo for her outstanding work! (6-12-2010)==


 * Fang Liang-Day 5:** Kids are going to love to use balance to weigh different fruits. It’s easy for them to understand and fruits are familiar things to them. Idea Relay can help children to review all the words they have learnt. The most important part for today is the Balance Literacy Approach. For teachers, this is a systematic approach. I think I need more time to do some more study on it. As for the jigsaw project, it seemed to be a little bit confusing at first. But as long as teachers give out clear instructions before activity begins, it will do a great job in kids’ listening, speaking, writing, reading and understanding in target language. Thank Dr. Lo for bringing us so many wonderful ideas and activities.

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 * Sherry Lam - Day 5** - Thank you very much for a great lesson this week. I have learned a lot of various strategies and activities that I can apply to my classroom in the furture. I would like to suggest that if instructor can plan some activities and strategies for the younger kids as preschool learner and it will be a perfect training lesson for us. In science class today, it was so fun and playful to learn the math and I'll definitely to use this kind of activities to teach my students .=====

**Shelley, Day 5:** I have learned so much from this week’s classes. Today, we had more class and group activities. I have not only enjoyed all the activities but also learned a great deal from them. Participating the group activities and watching other group’s performances have helped me understanding the learning materials a lot better. It has also given me more ideas for my future teaching experiences. I will be using the balance literacy approach in the language classroom more frequently starting now on. I also enjoyed and was inspired by all the science and math experiments this week. I am fascinated by the fact that the method applied to teach math and science can be used to enhance Chinese language learning. Big thanks to Dr. Lo!


 * Veronica Garrido, Day 5:** I loved the "Idea Relay" activity done today. It's easy, competitive and keeps students very active. Besides, it could be applied to any subject or topic. Very nice. I agree with Hu in the sense that the Jigsaw activity might fit better in the upper grades as it turn out to be quite complex. I found very appropiate as well the fact that we started thinking and preparing our Language Objectives right away today and we won't wait too long, therefore we can start thinking at the same time in how we are going to deliver our lesson plan.

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**Amy Hilbert—Day 5:** Thank you Dr. Lo for an amazing week of information, activities, and ideas! I’ve learned a lot and am continuing to review my notes! The main points that I’m taking away today are: a) Continuously check for comprehension, b)Always choose the activities based on the learning objectives, c) Pause—give the students time to process and think, d) Provide background schema and draw on the students’ prior knowledge, e) Comprehensible Input!! Regarding the math/science activities: Thank you, Collin and Myles, for new twists on old subjects! The banana information was really interesting and the match w/the orange peel spray sounds fun –I’ll be trying that after I buy some oranges/lemons. I like how the balance and fruit activity could be extended for advanced learners (with the percentages) and how the bridge activity puts the experimenting in the students’ hands—figuring out how to build a stronger bridge. Much better than the “follow-these-exact-steps to get this outcome” lab manual approach. (I was one of those “let’s change it up and see what happens” students and back then experimenting in science wasn’t encouraged—following the lab manual was…so ironic!) The discussion as to why results might be different is part of the learning process. =====


 * Grace Hu - Day 5:** Today we learned two new methods in teaching literacy in the target language: Idea Ralay and Reading Jigsaw. Idea Relay can be used in different grades a lot, but Reading Jigsaw may be better used in higher grades due to its complexity. l would like to use both of the methods in my teaching when I have a chance. Today's science projects are weighing foods and building bridge. Weighing fruits is such a fun way to teach kids how to use scale and record the weight; and building bridge is a great way to introduce Newton's Third Law of Motion. The three mini-teaching sessions also inspired me in lots of ways, many thanks to the three teams!

​ **Qiongzi Wang:** 今天我们学习了关于怎么样去称重量的实验. 个人很喜欢后面建桥的部分，因为那样给学生很多自由发挥的空间. 很有启发！我们还了解了关于To/with/by这样的一个教学程序，了解了阅读过程中的几个环节，比如Read aloud,share reading,guide reading, independent reading .这些让我们在阅读教学上很有启发！谢谢！


 * chaoqiong wang day5**: 我很喜欢今天的学习内容，不管是理论的和实践的，我想在我以后的实际作中都会给我带来很大的帮助. 还有我们学员的出色示范表演，给了我很大的启示. I love the theories I learned today. Both of the theory or practice, all of them will help me to do my job better. Our peers' fish bowl activity are great! Their teaching will help me a lot! Thank you!


 * Fang Yuan Day 5:** Today I learned a lot strategies too. The Ideas Relay competition is a very good way for students to listening, speaking, understanding and doing the job. The reading: To, With and By activities are very useful and helpful for the different level. This theory will lead me to do the reading process with my students. I love all the science activities this week, the students will love to do every activity. Because all of them are fun activities.I will try the science activities with my daughter at home first. All the science activities will let students think about many "why". Thank you!


 * Yunn Pann -- day5** -- I like the description made by To/with/by. You help the students to learn, and when it is done they will be able to help themselves. I also like the measuring of different kinds of fruits...the whole fruit, the edible part and the peel. Students learn how to measure different fruits with the scale, record the result. One of the plates on our scale was not set right, we had a terrible time making sense of our measurements.


 * Belinda Li-Day 5:** How to teach our students to read and improve their reading and writing skills in immersion program is not an easy work. After today's learning, I learned the to/with/by reading skills and how to use it in my class. This is really helpful.


 * Wanbing Zhang-Day5:** Ms. Pat is a fantastic instructor.Throughout these five days learning, I learned a lot that I haven't heard before. That is really helpful in my future teaching experience. I will definitely use the strategies I learned from her to improve my teaching ability.


 * Ritu Thakkar - Day5:** Today was the last day of 1st week training. After the first week of our training, I have learned a teaching approach of making our students learn while they play. Today I learned Idea relay activity which is helpful in reviewing. Strategies which I learned in this week will help me to make my class more lively and interesting. Thanks Star Talk and Dr. Lo.

Zhe Zhang Day 5: It was a wonderful week! I tried to write down one sentence to summarize what I have learned, but then I realized that nothing should be left out as “less important.” So, I would rather write down my feelings about this week instead: teaching is fun, but not easy; it requires lots of preparation, energy, patience, strategies, and so forth. A small difference in your gesture or your tone may affect students’ engagement in class. When sitting in Ms. Lo’s class, an idea often comes into my mind that if I am talking there, can I engage my audience as well as Ms. Lo does? No, not yet. I have been using some of her ways of teaching, but what is more important than using is how to use it. There are so many details that I should pay attention to.

**Day 4** **Norman Kao – day 4** - Today we learned a few more activities, such as anticipatory chart and round robin discussion, which give me some ideas about what to do in my class. I am also inclined to think that we should start the introduction of hanzi and radicals as earlier as in kindergarten. I enjoyed those fun cultural riddles a lot. Making up new words probably something my students can do once a while too, which might spark their creativity in Chinese hanzi. Last but not the least is the catapult building. It was really fun and see how those balls flying out as close or far as predicted.


 * Veronica Garrido, Day 4: I**t's amazing! I feel like I could learn Chinesse some day! I really thank you Dr. Lo for being so supportive in our effort for being part of this wonderful group of Chinesse Teachers and Instructors. I learnt so much today. I now I can find some meaning and understanding in this wonderful and mysterious Chinesse Language.

**Sherry Lam Day 4** - When I started to teach Chinese character to my 4-year-old class last Aug. and I was worry and think about " how can they remeber these characters". Thus, I did a lot of research from the internet which is Youtube that Ms.Lo taught today,象形文字 and after a few months later,all my students who can look at the characters and tell me the meaning of the characters when I teach new words.Because they understand Chinese characters from 象形文字 and I really enjoy Ms.Lo's explaining of 象形文字 today.


 * Jia Jia:** The catapult activity was great! I learned how to make the catapult and apply it to my teaching in future. Myles and Collin made awesome catapult distance chart, it gave us an idea of the importance of this teaching method. Ms. Lo used anticipatory chart to gather our interest and attention at the point of transition from science class to language class. The chart is an interesting activity. It worked so well! I enjoyed reviewing Chinese characters formation, and the activities to teach Hanzi. Learning is so fun!


 * Yewei**: Today Ms. Lo talked about the "Radicals: Associated Meanings", whch I found very spectacular and gave me a deep impression of it. I think that if your major is Chinese, then this is particularly easy for you to put it into practice. By the way, I noticed that some people expressed their opinions in Chinese below. I feel that this is very exciting and touching. I know that their English is probably very good so I want to say thank you to them.

**Shelley Day 4**. Everyday is a brand new and exciting day! To me, Dr. Lo is like a treasure mountain. How lucky we are being able to explore and taking all the treasures effortlessly! We were told to write down one thing or a couple of things we would use. I have to say that is not just one or a couple of things I will use. It’s the whole package including the way how she explains everything to us!


 * Frances Maisonet 4** - I liked the activity of the catapult. The students can practice the scientific process and also is very fun. Today, I learnes really great activities that I can use in my classrrom: anticipatory chart, round robin discussion ( is a good way to practice the target language) and explicit teaching of the vocabulary ( model, the meaning of the words, sentences, examples, synonyms and practice). The Star Talk is an awesome tool for the teachers because sometimes we need to use more strategies to engage the students with the content and the target language. As a Spanish speaker, I couldn't understood 100% of the characters in chinese, but I learned the difference between the traditional and modify writing. I would want to see the others strategies that I learned during the training to have a better idea and more examples.

The catapult activity is very fun! Every kid is given the opportunity to be a scientist. I wish I was taught in this way.
 * Zhe Zhang** **Day 4**: Among the activities we did today, I like the Anticipatory Chart the most. It will be a great way to teach culture in class. Those cultural phenomena that students are not familiar with can be made into yes-no or multi-choices questions for students. In this way, we are not just instilling new knowledge into students’ mind, but encouraging them to think actively.


 * Jian Lin Day 4**: The "Activity Reflection" is a great tool for every teacher. As a teacher, we need to ask ourselves those questions in the reflection after each activity. I believe our teaching will be improved through this great reflection tool. (6-10-2010)


 * Jie Ding Day 4**: I enjoyed the activities we did today. We learned the formation and historical change of Chinese characters. It has emphasized the importance of telling the background, structures, and radicals of the Hanzi. It will enhance the students’ interests and make memorizing Chinese easier. I have learned that using a sentence to teach the four tones in Mandarin is very effective and fun. It is a brand new idea for me and I would like to try it in my classes in the future. Also, I think teaching pinyin is still a crucial part to learning Chinese, especially for English-speaking students and utilizing Chinese on the computer.


 * Ming Ge Day 4:** I love the science today, it is very fun! The kids will love to make catapult. The Round Robin activity is a great way to let students join the lesson and get listening ability. I wrote down most of the theories, because all of them are useful. I will try these theory in my classroom.


 * Fang Yuan Day 4:** How to create the Chinese characters clarify and review my Chinese language Knowledge, this helps me a lot. This will make me to think about what is the best way to teach Chinese. Four tones practice is a very good way to teach kids and adults, because this way is meaningful for them to understand the words. The Activities to Teach Hanzi, Explicit teaching, When to teach Hanzi, How to correct the writing....All of them can help me to do better in my classroom. The fish bowl activity always makes me to think about what should I make the change to be better? Thank you! Hope we can have Startalk next year!


 * Chaoqiong Wang Day4:**今天的活动很丰富，不但让我重温了许多有关汉语的知识，也让我进一步了解了中文作为第二语言在教学中出现的一些问题，使我受益匪浅. 我相信，这些宝贵的经验，对我在今后的工作中，一定会有大的帮助. We have a lot of activities today.I already learned a lot of chinese knowledge, and also know how to solve the problem when we teach chinese as the second languages. They give lots of inspiration. I believe those exprience will help me a lot in my teaching time..


 * Olivia Yu Day 4:** Today's lesson gives me a lot confidence of teaching Chinese characters. I got the answers of when and how we could teach writing of Chinese characters. That would be wonderful if we have more details in how much we could teach in different grade levels of immersion students.


 * Wanbing Zhang Day4:** 今天我们学习了一个关于调查表的游戏. 个人觉得这个游戏十分适合用来教学文化知识. 如果单一用做报告式的方式去讲述，比不上经过思考以后然后得到答案的效果好！ 同时我们还学习了很多关于汉语本体的知识. 这里知识很有启发，接下来的工作就是怎么样将他们运用到实际的教学中来


 * Belinda Liu-Day 4**: Today, I learned the formation of Chinese Hanzi. It's really great helpful to know about it. But I feel that I didn't learn as many activities I have learned in the first three days. So I am wondering if you can teach us the activities you skipped today, if you have time tomorrow. That will be great. Thanks a lot!! Really nice representation.
 * Fang Liang-Day 4:** I like the systematic introduction of Hanzi. As long as we understand it well enough, our kids can learn better from us. Using phrase like “ 中文好酷 ” to make them get familiar with the tones is brilliant.


 * Qiongzi Wang Day4**:中文是一种表意文字. 如何用词语组合的方式，偏旁部首的方法来教学是一种很好的启发. 以“字本位”为教学理念来进行教学，让我在这一年的教学收获很大，而且学生的成绩也有很明显的提高. 不要去质疑学生的能力，你说他可以，他就可以的. 另外个人想法上觉得除了用传统的各种造字方法来讲述汉字以外，我们还可以用意义关联的方式来进行教学！利用已知的汉字来进行意义联想. 也是很有用的方法.


 * Hai Wu Day 4:** I agree with the opinion that we can teach kids Haizi when they are very young. And no matter how hard the character or the word is, if necessary we still need to teach them. That is the question I feel confused for a long time. But how to teach and how to make the students remember, since we are not using those words very often in our daily life?

Amy Hilbert—Day 4: Another information-filled day! The catapult activity was engaging and tied right into the Anticpatory Chart activity. Also, I really feel the Round Robin Discussion activity can be used in many ways. Two of the guidelines I particularly liked were the “let each person speak without interrupting” and the “no pass”. These promote active listening, turn-taking, and the “can do” attitude—by scaffolding the sentence frame/structured sentence pattern, every student can contribute even if it is to say I agree or I disagree. Another point that stuck with me today was: Chinese is a language to express meaning not sound. I felt this was particularly important when discussing how to practice the tones: make the practice meaningful by using short phrases with appropriate vocabulary to demonstrate the tones. This was an a-ha moment for me.

Ritu Thakkar - Day4 - Today we learned the characteristics of Chinese language,ways of teaching Chinese and practicing tones with phrases "三十几个"等等 in the class. I like Explicit teaching vocabulary concept. New word with 5,6 examples will be easy for the students to memorize that new word.


 * Day 3 **


 * ia Jia (3):** The Bowling math and self-making abacus are very interesting! I feel we were young kids playing the bowling games during breaks, however, we learned how to count and add the scores according to the game rules. In terms of the second language aquisition methologies, I really love the ideas of "natural approach Q&A" and TPR. I have used these methods a lot in my teaching and I will keep doing them and adding more methods such as Gouin Series in second language teaching.


 * Grace Hu - Day 3**: For the science part, I like the bowling game a lot! I learnt how to use the Sky Rail to play bowling in the classroom and demonstrate Newton's First Law of Motion " Things at rest stay at rest until an outside force acts upon it". It really shows "Science is fun". I also learnt a lot from Dr. Lo about Second Language Acquisition & Instructional Methodology. My favorite part is the Bingo Game on Language Functions, which really is a fun game to learn language. At last, I want to say "thank you" to everyone in our team, becasue we successfully completed a mini-teaching session this afternoon. Special thanks to Shaohua, because Shaohua was the one who popped out the idea to talk about a current popular word and reminded me of the word "lei ren" I saw on the internet; also special thanks to Shelley, becasue she took time to prepare all the clothing and accessories to demenstrate what is "lei ren" and she did such a wonderful job!


 * Amy Lu Day3:** I enjoyed the science and math lesson --Bowling today, it connected math and physics smoothly. I like all of the methodology Mrs.Lo taught today, they classified my teaching strategies and clarified my thoughts. I had used "natural approach " in my teaching, I didn't know the name till today. Bingo game --taught me a new way to play Bingo game in Chinese teaching. Micro teaching- yes, the fish bowl activity, everbody is participating by using thinking, speaking,listening and writting .It's very effctive. TPR-a simple but powerful method in foreign language teaching. Gouin series made me think about how to use it in the unit teach food. Through Mrs.Lo's lesson today, again I understood how to use"a lot of teacher input". I also realized how important the methods of instruction is in language teaching. We are really lucky to have STARTALK come back this year, thanks!


 * Sherry Day 3 :** When we learned about the abacus, I thought that it was a wonderful tool to help children learn more about mathematics. It seems a fun and very interesting way for students to learn more about math and its hands on, so that way it can help them to learn better. Since this originated from China, and it is slowly being incorporated into American schools, this just goes to show how helpful learning how to use a abacus really is. Thank you Mr. McNicholas for reminding me about how wonderful a tool the abacus really is.


 * Qiongzi Wang Day3:** I learned a lot of theories about language acquisition. Actually, i already used the bingo game and TPR, but i still can get a lot of new ideas with the same game. The natural approach theory give me a lot of inspiration on how to arrange the context.I also have a lot of fun on doing the science experiment. Thank you for your hard work!


 * Jie Ding Day 3:** The Natural Approach and Qouin Series is great method for teaching and practicing second language. It is really helpful, effective and has allowed me to reflect upon my own teaching. I like the Qouin Series very much. It is very useful and fun for training students to speak and memorize the sentence patterns of a foreign language. The TPR Approach trains the students’ listening and speaking very well. It is helpful for beginning learners and young kids. Also it was a wonderful demo for “ 自然教学法提问顺序” . I look forward to adapting the strategies that I have learned these days in my classes. Thank you Ms. Lo for giving such useful knowledge and strategies. I enjoyed the bowling game and the abacus model is a so creative. Thanks Mr. Sasaki and Mr. McNicholas.


 * chaoqiong wang Day 3:** 今天罗老师向我们讲述了学习第二语言的理论与方法，通过学习，让我知道了自然学习提问法是学习第二语言的主要途径之一. 它是一种察觉不到的学习过程，像小孩子习得母语一样，学习者在有意义的交际中，通过对语言的理解和语言的使用，自然获得运用语言的能力. Today, Ms. Lo gave us methods and theory, let me understand that all the methods and theory are the natural way to learn the foreign language. The students will not notice that I am learning. This way likes the small kids learn the mother language. During the learners to understand and use the language, they get the languaga abilities naturally.


 * Fang Yuan Day 3:** I love to do the bowling game today. It is fun. The students will love it. I really want to try this game in my classroom. The bingo game is great game. We can use this game for names, animals, food, action verbs, body parts....The Gouin Series is a natural TPR way to learn and understand the foreign language. For younger kids, this is helpful. The activities Ms.Lo gave us open my mind, let me to think about students learning needs, and how to meet the needs.


 * Ying Wang Day 3:** I was quite excited as I was learning about the Natural Approach and Qauin Series. I reflected on my daily teaching and realized that some of the things that I found work reall well with the students were actually practice from Natural Approach and Qauin Series. It is great to connect practice with theory, and vice versa. I also enjoyed the "micro teaching" activity in the class. It will help us to turn these teaching strategies into our own and we will be more comfortable to use these strategies in our teaching practice.

my class. Language Acquisition, Natural approach, TPS (Think-Pair-Share), TPR (Total Physical Reaction?) … are all great tools. I have them now but will practic to use those tools starts now on.


 * Veronica Garrido, Day 3:** Great day! Knowing all these theories and realizing at the same time that that is exactly what we always do in our classrooms every day with our students is impressive. Without TPR or TPS or any other visual aid it would be even more difficult to teach a second language. Thanks Dr. Lo for pointing that out and for showing us the way in the Language Acquisition theories. I was also thrilled by the bowling game, the ramp and the abaco. It's so creative and fun. I can't wait to put all these ideas into practice!

The Bingo game definitely will be adopted in my classroom. Since my students are at college level and they are learning in a very intensive pace, I had to give them quizzes frequently to make sure they had remembered all the new vocabulary. The Bingo game can be used as an alternative way to help them review what they had learned.
 * Zhe Zhang** **Day 3:** After today’s presentation, I feel like being equipped with theories, which makes me more confident in designing classroom activities. And the demo for these theories, such as Natural Approach, TPR, Qouin Series, etc, gave me a lot of inspirations on how to put them into practice. Probably I will try the Natural Approach to teach “ni hao” and “My name is…” in the beginning day next semester.

**Jasmine Lin Day 3** - My knowledge of 2nd language was called back today, it reminded me of planning a lesson on the track of natural language acquisition. I also learned something new today, Qouin Series and Fish Bowl observation. Learning and teaching could be very creative and fun, like what we just did in the past three days. I am expecting to expore more tomorrow


 * Belinda Liu-Day 3:** I really like the natural teaching method today and the inquiry skills. I will use the inquiry skills to design my questions based on the students' level. This is a really good teaching strategy.


 * Hai Wu Day 3:** Natural Approach and Qouin Series could be very exciting for language teaching. Natural Approach is very familiar to all the language learners. Qouin Series could be very helpful for learning verbs and sentence structure. I think that the Micro teaching also can be used as an activity in language teaching class. Students can use the target language to think and speak when they play roles in the activity. And it is a perfect way to combine input and output together.

**Shelley Day 3**. Another harvest day today! What an innovative way of playing language learning Bingo games. I can’t wait to play it in my class. Language Acquisition, Natural approach, Th-P-S (Think-Pair-Share), TPR (Total Physical Response) … are all great tools. I am going to practicing how to use those tools in my classes.


 * Fang Liang-Day 3**: For the math and science part, I think kids will love the bowling game. Using abacus to record the score is smart, because kids can learn one more thing which has connection to Chinese culture. Bingo, TPR, Natural Approach and Gouin Series are all using different methods to help children to learn the target language in an effective way. They can try to get to understand new words, sentences and expressions by modeling the teacher. The theories on second language will help us to adapt our teaching in a better and suitable way.


 * Yanni Sun Day3:** Natural approach is a very good way to learn a language! The language as a tool of communacation, only then you need it and use it in the daily life, you will feel much more easier and fun! I enjoyed Dr. Lo's demonstration very much!


 * Yunn Pann Day 3:** I have used Bingo game frequently in the past. And I have been thinking about how to add another step before calling out the vocabulary that is on the Bingo card. Today we are shown some good examples.You can say a sentence for them to figure out the vocabulary to use. For example, for a Bingo cards with 12 Chinese year animals plus 4 more animals, you can say "the mythological animal that can fly but do not exist ", students can figure out that it is Dragon with the possible support of peers. Another example is "a small animal that is afraid of cats" for mouse...More samples of Marker Talk...and I like it a lot... both the activity and the repeat of the same activity Interesting to see how students respond to different title for each sheet. You get different understanding.

**Amy Hilbert—Day 3:** The bowling and abacus activities were wonderful. I enjoyed the interaction, group work, and content integration. I also found the Natural Approach and TPR (Total Physical Response) strategies to be very useful. Two points from the review discussion of the Immersion Teaching Strategies Observation Checklist that made an impact on me were: 1) Take every opportunity to repeat and reinforce the learning objective and 2) Regarding corrections: How to correct is an art. That’s a very important item to remember because the way we correct students has a huge impact on their output, participation, and overall learning environment. Suggestion: Regarding students who may answer “I don’t know”: to encourage a response, I’ve asked, “What would you say if you did know?”More than half the time, the response is appropriate.


 * Ritu Thakkar Day3: -** Today I learned about Total physical response, Natural approach, Visual clues, Bingo game, Instructional methodology, Gravity and different kinds of input balanced teaching. I teach Pre K and K1 classes. I think Bingo game will be helpful for me to teach simple Chinese characters to kids. They will enjoy this game and learn while they play.


 * Day 2 **

I thought about how teachers could help students gain knowledge on culturally appropriate natural response and I thought that maybe short video clips taken from Chinese TV shows would illustrate the real life situations in which authentic conversations and interactions are used.
 * Ying Wang Day 2:** I found the strategy of "explict vocabulary teaching" very helpful. Synonyms were used in this strategy, and I think that synonyms can really help students comprehend new vocabulary as well as increasing students' vocabulary.


 * Wanbing Zhang Day 2:** We've learned a lot again. Especialy the activities, Three-step Interview. Students have more opportunities to listen and speak in this activity. The Marker Talk is very good for reviewing what you learned yesterday.


 * Qiongzi Wang Day2:** I really like the Marker Talk.That's a good activity for the kids that feel ashamed about express themsleves. Even though i didn't write any things on the sheets.I still think and review the message !

**Jasmine Lin Day 2** - Going through today's lessons, I experienced how modeling and giving time to think can facilitate language learning, even for students with intermidate language proficieny. These are two parts that I did least while I taught in Taiwan, I feel sorry for my students, as their teacher, who is also a facilitator, I did not play this part well. And I will definitely keep this in mind for my teaching in the future. And I also like Explicit Vocabuary Teaching a lot, it showed a very fun way to introduce abstract vocabulary. I did Marker Talk in Taiwan for conversation class, but in my class there was lots of noise, as I grouped students and had each group take turn to write down what they saw from the picure on each poster. They shared and discussed what they saw and then wrote somehing down. At last, each group was assigned with a picture, they described the picture based on the words and phrases written on the poster. I learned this activity from a workshop I attended in Taiwan, This is how it is used for language arts class. My students loved it so much! Actually, As we all know, Marker Talk serves many functions, it helps recall/ review, classify, check/ self-check, report and so on,


 * Fang Liang-Day 2:** It is a productive day. I never know science class can be that interesting and impressive. Thanks Mr. Sasaki and Mr. McNicholas. If they were my science teacher when I was little, I would not hate science and math at that time. Besides I think Marker Talk and 3-Step Interview not only can help students to learn new words and sentences in target language, but also will be good methods and interesting activities for students to review what they have learnt. In class, Ms. Lo always reminds us what she has said a while ago, on one hand, this helps us to get a deeper impression; on the other hand, I realize that repetition is very important in language class. Thanks!


 * Jia Jia 2:** In today's workshop, I liked "explicit vocabulary learning", "three step interview" and "marker talk". I believe the first activity will faciliate new vocabulary teaching if I apply it to my teaching. The second activity is a good method of practicing interpersonal communication and the third one is a great idea of reviewing!


 * Grace Hu - Day 2**: Today Mr. Sasaki showed us the way to teach science in American schools, which is quite different from the way I learnt the same content back in China more than twenty years ago. If I was a student, I would prefer study science in American way; not only because this way has more fun, but also because it stimulates lots of thinking and involves lots of actions too. I also like the part instructed by Dr. Lo. She always inspired me in new ways. I love her passion, humor and efficiency in teaching!

I learned many different teaching strategies, methods, and effective classroom instruction in the class today. I really want to share my favor part with you all in this discussion forum. I love the observation checklist which encompasses the seven categories with the great benchmarks! I believe the observation checklist is a powerful tool for me to support the peer coaching in my school. (6-08-2010)
 * Jian Lin:** I feel like a sponge to absorb the ink from this big pool. The more I learned, the more energetic I became from this workshop!


 * Sherry Lam Day 2** - I really liked the Backward Design idea that we learned today in class, planning the lesson based on results I believe be more helpful to the children. By have pre-set results planned for the students I am then able to teach the lesson plan in anticipation of the result and if anything were to go wrong, since I have desired results already planned then I am able to change the lesson plan, on the fly to suit any problems that may arise.


 * Chaoqiong Wang Day 1-2:** The New York Immersion Programs are interesting. Their environment support their education. The environment is important for teaching and learning. The example of embarrassing often happens in our life. So the students can understand the issue quickly. Because the teacher's body language can help and tell more details. The novel idea only is a very fun game. It will help students listening and speaking.


 * Fang Yuan Day 2:** I enjoy Ms. Lo's training so much today. I learned a lot of activities, and I will try these in my classroom. I love Stages in the Backward Design Process. This will help me to do my lesson plan. And help me to know the goals and students need well. I love Novel ideas only also. Because this game can help students listening and speaking at the same time. Help students get listening ability is important. The 3-step interview is very fun game and the students will love to do it. The examples of all the skills Ms.Lo gave us are useful and helpful. Thank you! Ms.Lo!


 * Yewei:** Ms. Lo is a very energetic, humorous lady. I found her lecture to be very invigorating and when I listen to it time seems to fly by. She is a great immersion language teacher model in the classroom. Today, we learned how to teach science to the kids, and I believe that there are ways to make science fun for the kids.

**Shelley Day 2.** It’s another great day! I really like the “Marker talk” and will definitely us it in my class often. Thank Dr. Lo for going over the Immersion Teaching Strategies Observation Checklist with us. It helped huge! Once again, I really enjoy the class.


 * Frances Maisonet Day 2** - Today, I enjoyed the Science hands-out during the morning. It was creative, fun and the students can engage with the content. I'm going to use the explicit vocabulary in my classroom. Sometimes it's difficult to not translate during the beginning of the year because my kindergartens start asking the meaning of a lot of words. These way is awesome using synonyms. The 3 step interview the kids need to ask questions, listen, write down the answers and then report what the person said. So, they will be applying a lot of skills during the activity. The marker task is a great way to review what we discussed in class early.


 * Veronica Garrido, Day 2**: I loved science activities today; they were practical and easy to do at any grade level. I also liked the data collection handout which is something truly important if we want our kids start using their critical thinking skills. Dr. Lo's work today was amazing. I felt touched when she emphazised the fact that we, immersion teachers, have to avoid by all means going back to English and especially all the optional activities we can do in order to make ourselves clear regarding the understanding of the meaning of a word. Now, could that be done with concepts as well? Hmm, it would be interesting to know that.


 * Aura Reyes: Day 2** was another day full of ideas and resources to implement in our classroom. Dr. Lo is an excellent educator.


 * Geming Day2:** Learning the BD opened up my horizon helped me understand the lesson design process for teaching!


 * Hai Wu Day2:** The scientific method is very helpful for science fair preparation. Students can learn how to do an experiment with 5 steps. The 3-step interview which kids will never feel tied about can be extend and combine all the skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing together. Even if we use it on math teaching, it's still a valuable class activity.


 * Yanni Sun Day2:** I like the 3 steps interview activities. It makes everybody involve the activities. It requires listening, remembering, and telling the story. I think it is a very effective way to learn a language.

**Amy Hilbert--Day 2:** I have to agree with Zhe Zhang: The Marker Talk activity and Dr. Lo's teaching of the word "gan'ga" are exemplars to draw on for future planning (reviews of material covered and content vocabulary development). Thank you Dr. Lo! After reading through the "I Can" statements in the LinguaFolio Rubric, I have to add that this is an invaluable resource both for planning and assessing. It can also be used by the student to Self-Assess perhaps on an "I Can..." Day at the end of the unit, or adapted as a progress monitoring tool for parents at conference time or sent as a good news note home (with student work). (Minor suggestion: If delaying the break, please remember to offer it later. Thanks!)


 * Ritu Thakkar Day 2 : -** I like Marker talk. This is the best activity to review our last class work. Today I also learned how to introduce new words in the class like Dr Lo has given us "Gan ga" example which is really good. I think I will never forget "Gan ga" word in my life. Introducing new word with so many examples will help students to remember it for longtime. Another thing which caught my attention is how to interact with the parents like if you tell something about kid then you have to mention the reason like if you say to parents "your kid is active" then you have to mention some of kid activity to prove your point.

**Day 1**

Jian Lin: I really enjoyed Ms. Lo's lecture today. Ms. Lo gave us many practical activities which could be applied to the students of different ages in our Chinese classes. Her teaching strategies are geared towards meeting the different skill levels of our students in a classroom by using "Think-Pair-Share". I have taught the different academic subjects in the Chinese immersion program for seven years. Based on my teaching experience, I would always used the simple phrases and sentences to introduce a new concept instead of using the "Academic words" in science and social study subjects. In Ms. Lo's presentation, I realize that we need to focus on the "academic words" in our classroom use. That is the one great feature of "Immersion" education! Woo... I learned a lot today! I can't wait to attend Ms. Lo's class tomorrow! I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ms. Lo for her time and hard work in this wonderful workshop! (6-2-2010)


 * Olivia Yu:** I like the Novel Idea Only, I will try this with my second graders this year. And I will design this activity at the end of the Unit study.


 * Grace Hu - Day 1**: I had a great learning experience today! My favorite part is Novel Ideas Only. I would like to use this stratergy in my classroom, no matter what I am going to teach in the future. I also like those slides about New York immersion programs, which showed me lots of vivid pictures and descriptions, great examples in different topics! Many thanks to our instructor Dr. Lo!


 * Fang Liang-Day 1:** It is strange that the Day 1 reflection I wrote yesterday is gone? This is the makeup one. Pretty helpful! I’m excited that I can be part of this program. The ideas are all quite new to me. All the activities conducted today are very interesting. I especially like “Novel ideas only”. Although the target of this and other activities is immersion program, I think they will also be attractive to my students at college level. “Novel ideas only” can make students think, talk, write and speak in target language. It is also good for listening. I will apply it to the class I will teach next semester.


 * Ying Wang Day 1:** I thought it was a great session today! The activities like "Sign-in Sheet", "Think-Pair-Share", "Novel Idea Only" and graphic organizers that Pat did with us were great activities in which speaking, listening, writing and reading were all incorporated. I can't wait to use these activities with my own students. The introduction on different program models was very informative, and the students' literacy work samples were very encouraging!


 * Qiongzi Wang Day1:** I learned a lot of imformation and stragies about what is immersion and how to teach in immersion classroom! I want to know more about differentiate instrution and how to differentiate the students in the classroom.


 * Amy Hilbert--** The presentation today was wonderful! I really enjoyed the interactions and came away with several ideas. The techniques/information that had a particular impact on me were: the Novel idea activity (the practicality of it for the students I teach, the grouping technique, and then the group dynamics overall); the five C's of foreign language learning (the larger impact of the address example and cultural awareness/perspective); the sentence prompt and choral reading/recitation practice, and the information about the different immersion programs and strategies/structure of the program in NY. My question: Will there be a bibliography or recommended sources to further explore the advantages of language immersion programs? Thank you.


 * Hai Wu-** What a wonderful class today. Specially the activities. They really helped me extending my thought on how to fulfill the task in immersion class. Activity reflection is my favorite part. I found out not only the goals of those activities but ways to connect to my own teaching through other teather's opinion. After a year of teaching, there are a lot of questions about the immersion strategies in my head. I believe that I will get most of the answers during the training.


 * Zhiping(Amy) Lu**:I like all of the hands on activities Mrs.Pat did today. I especially like the culture part and practicing language by using current enents. In the future, after learned "name" and "address" ,I would definitely introduce the Chinese basic philosophy --sacrifice myself to achieve the goal of family/community/country/company and I would use current event in my Chinese teaching more.

I also have a question: does language immersion teaching work well for college students? Because I feel that many students in that age tend to analyze a language on a deeper level. If two words have similar but not exactly the same meaning, they want to know why. They often want to figure out the exact function of each word in a sentence. I am wondering what we should pay attention to if we want to apply language immersion teaching to older students.
 * Zhe Zhang Day 1**: It was a great opening day! All those activities that Dr. Lo designed for us were very inspiring. I learned from her many useful techniques, such as grouping students by letting them recite newly learned things, counting down to control time, etc. I will definitely incorporate these techniques into my own class in the future.


 * Ge ming:** It's a great session for me .The five activitities are so impressive. i will use it in my class in future! Thank you!

**Shelley Day 1:** It was an absolutely wonderful day today! It has exceeded my expectation. My favorite part of today’s class is Dr. Lo herself! I love the way how she kept everyone evolved and engaged all the time. It’s very inspiring. The “5Cs” activates truly are magical. I am sure that both my students and I will be benefited from using it. Can’t’ wait to go to the class tomorrow : )


 * Ritu Thakkar** : It was really a good beginning. I really enjoyed and learned many new things like Colorado teaching standards, grouping students to make the topic more interesting, novel idea concept, Think pair and share, sign in sheet etc. This will give me an idea how to design a lesson for the class and make it more interesting. I will definitely apply the same in my classroom.


 * Veronica Garrido:** Very enlightening day. We have just started and I feel we are already learning so much. Dr. Lo's approach on how to teach effectively in an immersion classroom are so helpful. I will definetely put all these techniques into practice with my students..


 * Jia Jia (1):** I loved the first day workshop! Dr. Lo gave us several good ideas of designing, organizing activities and games in the classroom. I think those ideas are really helpful for me to use in daily teaching. The details which Dr. Lo mentioned are very important to pay attention to when I apply them to my teaching!


 * Wanbing Zhang Day 1:** I have learned a lot today! I have learned how to organize my students and guide them to join the activities, and how to guide them to listen and speak more. I want to know more about the management of classroom.

**Sofia Vallarte Hernandez -Day1** I enjoyed all the activities we did today. They were all very structured and well managed by Mrs. Lo. I was especially fascinated by Mrs. Lo’s time management skill. She has the ability to keep things going within a time frame. She managed to get all of us out of our sits, in groups, engaged in the assignment and back to our sits within 10 minutes. I believe that observing how she is able to manage the class and set specific time limits is essential for these types of activities. In my opinion, if classroom and time management is missing in these activities the outcome will not be the same. The reflection piece after each activity was fascinating because it gave me the opportunity to explore and dig dipper. All the activities had endless options as to when, where and how to use them. Thank you for a great first day! Respectfully, Sofia Vallarte Hernandez


 * Yunn Pann Day1:** I liked many activities, especially Marker Talk. I also like giving each student a card of a unique vocabulary as a way to "group" them later for activities, while getting them to think about their vocabulary and its relationship with different "groups".


 * Ge Ming:** I know how to use the knowledge of the 2nd language acquisition to teach chinese! A lot of games give me inspiration,such as TPR, This game is real fitable for kindergarden students in my classroom. I will keep on using it in future.


 * Yanni Sun Day1:** The first day classs is an eye opening exprience for me. Dr. Lo's teaching and students' discussion are very helpful.I

**Fang Yuan Day 1:** Colodaro Standards and The Five C's give us a lot of informations. We can think about the standards when we set up our curriculum and lesson plan. About connection, Current Events ideas are great for teacing and learning.

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