Curriculum Update and Sample Texts

Dr. Danni Tsai (Superintendent of Spark Charter School and former Educational Services Coordinator of San Mateo County) has been working with Redwood City School District since the start of the program on developing the MI@JG curriculum. She kindly met with parents on April 17, 2015 to provide an update on teacher hiring, curriculum development, along with samples of instructional materials. Listen to an audio recording (Part 1 9MB, Part 2 32 MB) of the meeting.

Topics Covered in Audio Recording of April 15, 2015 meeting:
- Teacher training
- Sample monthly themes covered in Kindergarten and 1st grade
- Sample texts, literature, math/science/language activities
- Non-native speaking student/family support

Below are a few of the sample instructional material Dr. Tsai showed us. Please note that although some materials shown contain traditional Chinese characters and/or zhuyin (a system of phonetic notation using symbols), the MI@JG program will be teaching simplified characters and pinyin (phonetic system using a Latin alphabet). All materials, except for the supplemental workbook, were acquired from a publisher in Taiwan. Additional materials, available free of charge online from China, may also be used to supplement instruction.

Living Mandarin 生活华语 Language Text

Sample page of Living Mandarin ~3rd grade

Page from supplemental workbook for K/1st

Sample math text

Mandarin 华语 Language Text for ~3rd grade

Sample page from Mandarin 华语

Sample Instructional Materials

 
Living Mandarin 生活华语 is a text available free of charge along with posters and a CD for each student to take home.

The sample page shows a story on the left page and pictographic origin of characters on the right page.

 

In the supplemental workbook, characters are taught using scaffolding instruction: students first color in outlines of character strokes, then practice tracing characters, and finally writing the character in a blank box.

 
In addition to the math text shown here, the school district is considering purchasing enVisionMATH from Pearson in Chinese.

 
Mandarin 华语 Language Text comes recommended by Dr. Tsai for higher grades because the sentences sound more "native" (more likely to be spoken by native speakers, as opposed to being translated from English).


Not shown here, but was passed around in the meeting, was a sample of Little Golden Books and a catalog of familiar American storybooks translated into Chinese that students can read in class or purchase through a catalog. Better Chinese also publishes many popular storybooks.