• Middle School:

Activity: Puzzle Game - Building Chinese Characters and sentences.

1. Prepare a bowl of rice, eggs in the shell, and green onions

2. Have ready different colored paper and glue.

3. Actions:

A. Take some cool cooked rice from bowl and build the Chinese character for
the word rice by placing the rice on a sheet of paper

B. Use the outside shell of an egg and write the Chinese character for egg in
Chinese.

C. Use the straight green onion to make the different strokes to build the
Chinese character for green onion in Chinese.

D. Show and post your production on the board

4. By using the characters that were already made, we can start to build
Chinese sentences:

This is…I like…I don’t like…

• Upper School:

Activity: Describe the steps for making fried rice and write a short paragraph.

1. Divide the students into different groups.

2. Each group discuss the steps for making fried rice (Cooperative learning in
groups)

3. Use the important sequencing conjunctions “first, second…then and last 首先,
然后, 再,最后” to construct the sentences and the steps of making fried rice in
a short paragraph in Chinese.

4. Students say the sentences in Chinese while doing the cooking steps in their
mind. (This helps them practice and say the words in correct sequence in a
real world application).

5. Each group of students then makes an oral and written PowerPoint

presentation about making fried rice. (Note: students can do some creative
thinking and change ingredients and choose the ones they would prefer and
also tell the classmates the reason in Chinese)
6. Base on cultural information about food students collected before class, each
group gives a short comment about the food culture in China. This can be
done at the beginning or end of presentation.

• Learning steps in MS:

1. Show students the real ingredients in class.

2. Students see it, smell it, taste it, and describe it by using proper sentence
structure in Chinese: This is…

3. Play a puzzle game and build some characters by using the ingredients in
order to help students remember the characters.

4. Observe and follow the teacher to build the Chinese characters of various
ingredients.

5. Make some Chinese characters on colored sheets of paper: rice, egg and
green onions.

6. Build the sentence: I like…I don’t like… “What ingredients do you prefer to
put?”

• Learning steps in US:

1. Show a short video or the teacher demonstrates how to cook (or both)

2. Show the key words on board

3. Language function description: List the important “Sequencing words” in

Chinese.

4. Group activity—Prepare oral and written presentation in slides

5. Cultural information input

6. Presentation