Designing a Primary Mandarin Curriculum

Rhoda Pennington 潘老师 Highgate Primary MFL Subject Leader and Confucius Classroom Manager Third year of our Mandarin and Chinese Cultural Studies curriculum Element of trial and error at the beginning as there weren’t many models out there Non-native subject leader supported by a Hanban teacher Mandarin taught from Reception to Year 6

Curriculum delivery How is Mandarin delivered in your school? Alternatives: PPA cover lessons (usually 1 hour) Stand alone lessons (2 x 30 minutes per week) Short but frequent 15 minute language lessons Club / twilight lessons CLIL (Content Learning Integrated Language) eg. PE / Art / Music or other lessons delivered in Mandarin Alternating with the delivery of another MFL

Justification for Mandarin to be the sole language taught in your primary school. Teaching may be of any modern or ancient foreign language and should focus on enabling pupils to make substantial progress in one language National curriculum in England: languages programme of study - key stage 2

Discussion: Curriculum delivery models What curriculum delivery models have colleagues found successful in their primary schools? Consider lesson length, frequency and timing Is Mandarin integrated with the general curriculum of the school? Have class teachers been involved in your lessons? In what ways? Have you considered CLIL lessons?

Discussion: Government guidelines A very loose framework Appears to have been adapted for ancient languages but not for non-alphabet based languages National curriculum in England: languages programme of study - key stage 2 Hand out: Copy of the National curricululm programme of study

Refer back to the old framework for guidance For a more detailed and helpful framework refer to the archived Key Stage 2 Framework for Languages. It contains superior guidance and advice http://web.archive.org/web/20130410110431/http://www.primar ylanguages.org.uk/policy__research/policy_and_reform/key_st age_2_framework.aspx

Integrating Mandarin with your school’s topic based curriculum Will help to ensure Mandarin is retained at your school Increases pupil engagement and makes the Mandarin teaching and learning relevant Allows class teacher opportunities to repeat key words and phrases throughout the week Increases profile of Mandarin (more likely to be showcased in class assemblies etc.)

Exercise: Integrating Mandarin with a typical Primary Curriculum Choose key Mandarin topics ( Document 1) and match them against this Primary School’s curriculum (Document 2). Some topics may be hard to integrate in which case you may chose to ignore them. Now add in cultural content. What stories, rhymes, songs, games would fit? Try to make the cultural content central to your scheme of work for this topic Think about key words and sentence structures for the topics. Build in language skills progression through the years

Case study: Year 2 Class topic: By the seaside ／ Mandarin topic: 海边 Collaboration: I worked with the class teacher to establish key areas of study. Class teacher learns Mandarin with children so will use Mandarin for key words in her everyday teaching. Key vocabulary : 海边， 大海，沙子， 鱼星， 鲨鱼， 鲸鱼， 崖， 乌龟， 太阳， 冰淇淋， Further key learning for this topic - high frequency adjectives: 大， 小， 高， 长 Prior knowledge to build on: 很 ／不， 我（不）爱。。。 Building phrases: This group are at the end of their second year of Mandarin so move quickly to phrases: Example phrases: 大鲨鱼，小乌龟， 我爱大冰淇淋， 我不爱大 鲨鱼, 海边很长, 岸很高，etc.

Creative goals The key learning for this topic is the adjectives, so children will learn how to read and write 大，小，高，长 Children to reproduce one of these characters with an illustration (teacher provides characters for 鲨鱼） Teach traditional Chinese fishing song 渔家姑娘在海边 大鲨鱼

Bigger creative projects with cultural content Consider asking for some year groups to have the flexibility to do occasional more time intensive cultural projects Cross-curricular projects will give you extra time, resources and teacher input. Could you collaborate with the specialist art teacher? Work based around a museum visit? Collaborative work with a school in China

Your next steps Create schemes of work ideally with a creative goal for each topic with key vocabulary, phrases etc. for speaking and listening / reading and then a reduced number for writing. Ensure there is progression in the complexity of language used as students become more experienced. Create a grid to match the key points of the Key Stage 2 languages programme of study against your schemes of work . Consider a more rigorous checklist using the now defunct Key Stage 2 languages framework.