Cooking on TV
I have never predicted that I had a chance to cook Chinese food on TV.
Last night, I was invited to the TV interview, covering things like school life and Chinese food, after the interview, it took me about 20minutes to show the steps of cooking stir-fried rice on th spot, facing the cameras.
It is really an exciting experience for me to share typical Chinese food with American viewers.
All this started with a short talk during the staff training with a teacher, Ms. Anderson, who teaches life skill in my host school,
I accepted her invitation when she asked me whether I was interested in going to her class, talking about or cooking some Chinese food. Then,I went to the three of her classes, cooked stir-fried rice on the spot as I explained to the kids, served the kids and happened to have one boy in the class, who tasted it and then tried the recipe at home for his family successfully.
The boy, who has been working with Grand Rapids TV-25 channel, hosting a program titled "Live with Mitch and Paige" for over two years, invited me to his progam.
Be ready to talk with people and be positive in accepting others' offer. By doing so, I have had some amazing experiences till now. Our Chinese and Arabic teachers are surely able to do better than I do, for you have much more advantages than I do.
Halloween
Last Friday will be the most unforgettable in my experience, for I witnessed the first Halloween in my life. Smiling faces, various scarecrows, lighted Jack-o-lanterns, colorful lights, bonfire and all kinds of costumes could be found in every corner of my neighborhood, Rockford Hill Village. I saw kids running back and forth, eager to get treated with their bags; I heard them laughing, shouting happily ; I noticed many parents joined them, waving their hands, saying "happy Halloween". All these gave me a strong feeling of cheerful and harmonious atmosphere.
I feel so lucky to be able to stay in such a wonderful community.
I feel really happy to have observed Halloween in Rockford.
after-class notes
Mr. Hayes and I did a high five, smiled at each other and felt extremely excited about the performance of our Chinese Two students in class on Friday afternoon. As usual, we started class with the review of the characters and basic sentences. In today’s class, the students practiced the characters and basic sentences used in a restaurant by acting as waiters and customers. With our modeling, the students in groups of four or five behaved just like in a real situation, using most of what they learned, such as “tea, beer, juice, coke, beef, chicken, rice, noodle”. “Welcome! May I ask how many in your group? Sit down, please! What would you like to drink? I’d like …”etc. The kids love this real situation practice and showed great interest in using Chinese. With the teaching of new characters, we made some changes today:
1. We read each character and students repeated in one voice.
2. We held up real objects (chair, bottle, cup, schoolbag, lantern or a card with characters on it), and asked students to shout them repeatedly to the rhyme, as we walked back and forth, one thing in hand at a time (kids enjoyed this very much).
3. We put the flashcards with the characters on the whiteboards in the front and the back of the classroom separately (before the class started).
4. The students were divided into four groups, with two in front and two at the back. Separately, we pointed at the cards and they identified and pronounced characters. We scored each group as they worked.
5. We reinforced the characters by leading students in a more competitive voice, encouraging them to shout the characters and to beat the other group (kids put all their energy, repeating, shouting and having much fun, extremely excited).
6. We taught them the song “ If You’re Happy” in Chinese, with body movements and they were able to sing it within 10 minutes.
By moving from one step to another, we presented as much enthusiasm as we could, using gestures, changing voices, shifting methods, and offering positive comments. All these worked so well that the students responded in a highly-motivated way, which greatly impressed both of us. Through weeks of co-teaching, we have arrived at the conclusion that we can stimulate the students’ enthusiasm with our enthusiasm; we can work more wisely, more effectively and much better through co-teaching than by individual work. We believe that by employing these methods in our Chinese class, we will surely achieve more success than before.
This website is not an official U.S. Department of State website. The views and information presented are the grantee’s own and do not represent the U.S. Department of State. Each grantee is solely responsible for his/her own uploaded content.