Music, Games, and Activities as a Whole to Build a "Joyful Learning Classroom"

With six students aged 5 to 7, of whom four are native Chinese speakers and two are English speakers, I have established the teaching principle of "repeating in cycle, progressing in a spiral", taking into account their individual situations regarding Chinese language learning. The teaching is conducted according to the topics, and a variety of tasks are designed to improve teacher-student and student-student interaction with the adoption of Chinese songs and games. Through these, the teaching is made more enjoyable, and the children are able to acquire Chinese knowledge and cultural enrichment in a joyful atmosphere.

Integration of Teaching Contents

Most of the children's learning begins with the things they are exposed to on a regular basis, progressing from the tangible to the abstract. Since there are both fresh and experienced students in the class, it is inevitable that the teaching contents get overlapped. However, in light of the learning foundation of the freshmen and the fact that language learning covers multiple levels of contents, the old knowledge is presented to the students again in different forms through different activities designed for teaching. This not only helps the freshmen acquire knowledge, but also enables the experienced students to consolidate their learning. This sort of repetition contributes to children's better retention, deeper comprehension, and ability of expression, in line with the law of cognitive development of progressing from the basic to the intricate and from the known to the unknown.

For instance, the children have already been acquainted with plenty of animal pictures. I incorporated the previous teaching contents into the song "I Have a Big Farm" and presented the names, physical features, Chinese characters and habits of animals through a series of activities such as songs, puzzles, handcrafts, quizzes and word games designed to equip students with extensive vocabulary of different animals, to sing and learn to talk about animals they know. The specific design is as follows.

Step 1: Song introduction. After listening to the song "I Have a Big Farm" twice, ask the students to name what animals are mentioned in the song and what the animals' sounds are like. Then invite students to respond to these questions, such as what other animals do you know, can you imitate their sounds, which animals do you like and what animals can you often see in Vanuatu?

Step 2: Chinese characters learning. Project the pictures of the farm on the screen and present the pictures of the eight species of animals and their corresponding Chinese characters in turn to facilitate students' recognition of the Chinese characters. By utilizing the whiteboard, review the Chinese characters for "cat" and "fish", and then write the names of other animals on the whiteboard and let students learn and read them again.

Step 3: Handcrafting. Give the students blank traditional Chinese tuanshan, or round fans, with different animal patterns printed on them, and have the students color the fans and identify the names of the animals on their fans.

Step 4: Learning to sing the song. The students read the lyrics of "I Have a Big Farm" along with the teacher, and then learn to sing it.

Before moving on to the next lesson, the "searchlight" game is used to review the previous lesson: Various animal patterns are displayed on the screen in turn, and I randomly stop the searchlight and ask the students to point out the name of the animal when they see it, and to express the relevant information about the animal in a complete sentence, for example "Kittens like to eat fish." Then we review the Chinese characters. In this session, students are given farm pictures with a variety of animals and Chinese characters cards, and they are expected to match the animals with the Chinese characters themselves.

Given the age of students in the class, the courses tend to be facilitated by a range of teaching tools such as videos, PowerPoint slides, whiteboards, pictures, and word cards, so that the children are fully engaged in the teaching with the use of their hands, brains, eyes, ears, and mouths. The courses are centered on a theme, with a high recurrence rate of teaching contents and a variety of activities, ensuring that students learn readily and happily.

Selection of Right Topics

There are two major considerations when I select a teaching topic. One is the children's familiarity with the topic. For children at this age, familiar things are more likely to engage them in classroom activities. Another is the addition of cultural contents at an appropriate time.

The first class of this semester we introduced the Chinese New Year and the 12 Chinese Zodiac signs. I started by having the children listen to the traditional Chinese nursery rhyme "Little Mouse Climbing up the Lampstand" and introduced the lyrics of the rhyme, telling them that the Rat is the first sign of the Chinese zodiac as well as referring to the students' birthdays to find out their respective signs for a preliminary understanding of the Chinese zodiac. Afterwards, I presented the traditions of the Chinese Lunar New Year and asked them to observe the newly posted Chinese character "Fu" and the Spring Festival couplets on the doors of the classroom. I finished by telling the story of the rhyme with the students and then leading them to read the lyrics aloud line by line.

The second Sunday of May being Mother's Day in the West, I opted for Mother's Day as the topic for that lesson on Saturday. I began by teaching the children a song called "My Good Mother", taking them through the words "mom", "dad" and "baby" in Chinese, and introducing them the Chinese characters "好", "家" and "节". Then, I encouraged the children to make little presents for their mothers for Mother's Day. After the class, the children cheerfully gave the gifts to their mothers.

Tackling the Pains and Difficulties 

The major challenge in the implementation of teaching tasks comes from the diversity among students. Due to different ages, interests, and language proficiency levels, children progress at different rates in completing the learning tasks independently. Furthermore, children's personalities vary significantly, with some being active and daring and others being shy and quiet. Therefore, teachers are expected to figure out how to calm the overly restless children and motivate the timid ones to express themselves more, thereby engaging each student in the teaching activities.

The second challenge is classroom discipline. When the class is out of order, the teacher has to draw their attention back through various games. The clapping sounds of games, rhythmic songs, and changes in the tone and speed of the teacher's instructions can all serve to quickly engage the students. I am inclined to draw the attention of some of the children first by using their familiar rhymes, songs, finger plays, etc. Gradually, the children tend to join in after hearing the familiar contents. And we do the games together for a while, then proceed to the next part of the lesson.

In order to make children relish learning, the first step is to ensure that teachers relish teaching. During the teaching process, teachers should accumulate teaching experience and resources to make classroom teaching both instructive and interesting, thus allowing students to get attached to Chinese and love it, and realizing the goal of joyful learning.

About the author: Wang Xiaoshi, Associate Professor of the Department of English, School of Humanities, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, has been working as an international Chinese language teacher in Fiji since September 2015.