NCLC offers different workshops for teachers of Chinese Immersion teachers all over the country for 4 days straight. My teammates and I were fortunate enough to have our district offer us this opportunity to go.
There, I attended a few workshops (apps for Chinese Immersion students and student engagement in language immersion classrooms are just a couple of my favorites and most memorable) and also observed at Broadway Elementary School's Chinese Immersion.
A few things I want to mention about the conference:
- Many of the workshops that were held were, at the most part, something that I already knew from my college courses. I'm not saying it's not beneficial, but a friendly reminders are never a bad thing.
- Broadway Elementary school started their Chinese Immersion the same year our school started ours. Question: how was theirs a qualified school to show the entire nation's Chinese Immersion what a Chinese Immersion classroom should look like? It was a good place to observe anyways. They were very well worth the time, though!
- They used traditional Chinese
- Kindergarten was doing guided reading during the time of observation
- 4 guided reading stations
- 1 listening: songs
- 1 listening: read aloud
- 1 listening: sounds like the teacher's previous lesson put on repeat
- 1 speaking: with another instructor
- 2nd grade was playing jeopardy
- very well organized
- everyone was participating
- the name of the jeopardy is 百分百
- 3rd grade was learning how to label different parts of a building and the names of it
- a lot of encouragement for students to speak target language was used
- half of the students were motivated to speak to each other in target language
- They are looking for 4th grade teachers next year, haha!
- Apps that have been used in the classroom that were beneficial
- Explain Everything (we use it in our classroom too! CHECK)
- Chinese Writer (check)
- PuppetPals
- Apps and online resources that were in the exhibition that were being sold
- SnapLingo
- MagiKids
- eChinese
- The exhibition had many books that were being sold and our district probably bought around a couple thousand dollars worth of books for next year. Talk about not enough books!
Overall, the experience was good. The networking was pretty successful in terms of getting to know other Chinese Immersion teachers and producers of potential companies that may or may not be the main sources of some of the immersion programs.
Something to note is that not all workshops are very applicable to all teachers and programs. All immersion programs are different in their own ways and it's very important to take or toss the information that is more applicable (I literally had to walk in to some workshops, decide, and either leave or stay for the entire thing. Yes, there were times when I walked into a workshop late because the previous workshop was not applicable.)
