Newsletter - Term 3 2007

Our school would like to thank you again for your support in attending our “Chinese Food Celebration” on Friday 31st August at the Oriental Expression Restaurant as part of our current lesson programme dealing with food The sponsorship from our parent Mr. Barry Young is greatly appreciated! The event was successful and we would like to hear your suggestions regarding the organisation of other events to enhance the students’ cultural awareness and language ability.

In weeks 8 to 10 all three levels of children participated in the Story Competition 2007 by preparing a story book on the theme of “Safe Neighbourhoods for Children”. The books were written and illustrated directly by the children with the best of their ability in Chinese language. This is a project of The Association of Illawarra Community Language Schools (AICLS) with support from the Wollongong Council. Best luck to all the children and congratulations for their hard work!

~ Teachers’ Report ~

Level K/1:
Term 3 we learnt “Food”, “Fruit” and “Drink” with some simple sentences which are used in our daily life. Such as “What is it?”, “I like to eat…”, “Does this food taste good?” and so on. We had many different class activities to help the students to learn. We also had a dinner in a Chinese restaurant to celebrate Father’s Day. This was good as we could all see the food we had been talking about in class. We also completed a topic “My city” to learn how to say the names of some places in Chinese and what we can do in these places. We made a story book about “My city” for the Illawarra Community Language School Story Competition. Students worked very hard as a team. I think they are the best. We will continue to learn festivals and birthdays next term. I hope students can use what we learnt at home or outside school, because it will help students understand the reason to learn the other language. I wish all families have a great school break. ~Ms. Teng

Level 1/2:
During the current term, our Level 1/2 students learnt about a variety topics relating to food. Students are able to ask and reply correctly about how they like some of the Chinese food, also daily food intake including popular deserts, confectionery, drink and fruit. We shall carry the last section of the topic in the book (“Festivals & Celebration”) into the next term due to the preparation of the story competition in the classroom.
For the story competition, a couple of the students with better language abilities are able to write a short story with contribution of ideas from other children in the class.
We will also introduce how to identify Chinese radical characters when reading and writing Chinese characters. For example, in the characters 姐 (older sister), 媽 (mother), 她 (she), each character has a common graphical element: 女 signifying a woman or the concept of femininity. ~ Ms. Yeh

Level 2/3:
Term 3 has been busy but abundant for all of the students of Level 2/3. As the advanced students of the school, they have set super examples for the younger ones. They not only have furthered the skills of reading, speaking, listening and writing at school by listening to the teacher, attending discussion and doing exercises, but also have taken the initiative in studying Chinese outside the class by using computers for research or dictionaries for practicing writing short composition.

Food was the main topic for this term. The students have learnt much food, including western and Chinese traditional food, also conversations in restaurant. They can read the texts smoothly, write the characters correctly, as well as be able to apply them into their own life. All of the students have also contributed their fantastic imagination and advanced literacy skills in creating their own story, and put it into Chinese characters and pictures by themselves for the coming community language story competition! The efforts of the team work were very impressed! Everyone is brilliant! Go! Go! Go! Go Level 2/3! I am really proud of all of you and can’t wait to see you soon again! ~Ms. You



Shao-Ping Yeh
Deputy Principal

Email: southcoastschool@gmail.com