The main thrust of ChineseHomework is to aid a flipped classroom approach. Where the content is learned at home by the students thus freeing up some class time to be used to focus in on areas that the Teacher might not normally have time for.
You can of course refer to some of the lessons during class but we strongly recommend using a 10 minute slot (3 times a week) to activate the content that students have recently learned at home.
Take a look at our Teacher Resource area to help you build your TFL skills. A TFL approach to in-class activities is the best way to encourage your students to use the Chinese they have learned at home.
Feedback from our early pilot classes have indicated that 3 sessions of 10 minutes each is the optimimum amount of time for activation work during class time.
This typically entails a task based activity , debate or acting out the dialogue as a drama.
Keeping the time to just 10 minutes is sufficient to achieve activation. More than 10 minutes runs the risk of students quickly becoming bored and loosing focus.
All our lessons take their content from curricular Chinese. For a successful outcome in Chinese however we needed to reduce the lexicon to the most frequently used spoken Chinese.
As a direct result of this students will feel progress comes easy and they can reuse everything they learn frequently.
Just as a child learns their mother tongue the grammatical structures build up in a students mind quite naturally through repetition and self correction without the need to be taught grammar explicitly. This saves many hours of young learners time. (and teachers)
Learning any remaining curricular elements such as grammatical terminology or extended vocabulary will be greatly facilitated by the student first having a working model of spoken Chinese and applying that built in knowledge of what sounds right and looks right.
We also have a theme based menu of lessons should you wish to follow more standard educational content structure.
There are ample examples off how to encourage students to speak any second language on the internet. Our Teacher Resource page has some of the best examples of short activities you might consider using. These may seem a little opaque to Teachers new to the "Teaching as a second language" scene, so we recommend you give each example a trial and refine it through your own experience. You'll soon build a repertoire of activities for your students.
You should aim to have a fairly broad selection to avoid the students becoming bored and loosing focus.
A highly focused 10 minutes three times a week is far better than the cúpla focal here and there through out the day.
Any activity that allows the students to practice the Chinese they have just acquired is ideal.
The themes are suitable for students from 1st class and up.
Our lessons are divided into three levels. Whether your spoken Chinese is weak or strong we recommend going through all the lessons in Level 1 before moving up to Level 2 or 3.
Older students should be able to quickly work through the easier content and make their way up to Level 2 where the themes are more interesting for older children.
We have schools successfully using ChineseHomework.ie for students ranging from 2nd class through to 6th class.
The Status Dots capture at a glance if the student has comprehensively completed their homework and how well they participate during in class practice
Score < 40% results in a red dot,Score between 40% and 80% earns an orange dot. Score > 80% earns a green dot.
Setting a Lesson performs a number of your important weekly tasks
Your child will ...
...learn Chinese as a spoken language through our focused approach on spoken Chinese and the activation of this Chinese in class in 3 ten minute sessions per week.
...begin to enjoy Chinese through being able to use it to communicate with classmates.
...pass oral and aural exams easily. The standard curriculum will make more sense and be much easier to learn after Chinese has become an active language for your child.
...spend much less time on Chinese and have more time for other subjects or activities.
Your child will be set lessons by their teacher.
They should only spend 10 minutes on the site for their homework. We recommend 3 days a week. This will be dictated by the teacher however as this site serves as actual homework. Teachers can accurately view a students activity on the site. They can also measure their scores and see which vocabularly students are struggling with.
More than 10 minutes per night, 3 times a week can lead the students to become disinterested and loose focus. Every 10 minute session should be intense and the object is always to learn all of the content on every lesson, thoroughly.
Only you, your childs teacher and the site moderators can view your childs use of the site.
We don't share any information with third parties for any purpose.
Our site is designed to allow your child to learn autonomously. It will still help them however if you show an interest and perhaps encourage them to focus on mastery of the lesson before trying to get 100% in the lesson tests.
Clicking on this link will bring you to our reset password page Reset password
You can create your new password by clicking on the link in the email we send you.
No, any internet enabled device is ok.
Using a computer is probably the best way to use out site. All other devices work fine though even if you have to scroll around the screen a bit.
The most important thing is that you have either a good mobile network connection (at least 3G) or a good broadband connection (at least 1Mbit/s). Otherwise you will have to be a little patient while the lesson page loads. When you click on a button give it a moment to respond.
Yes. You can attempt the Game and Test of each lesson as many times as you like.
Please remember that the test is designed to prevent you from getting a good score until you understand the Dialogue and Key Examples completely.
If you get a 100% without knowing the lesson well, let us know so we can make the test harder. :)
No. Only your teacher can see your activity and scores.
Every week we take a few marks off your lesson scores.
Lessons with a high score only have 1% taken off.
Lessons with a medium score have 3% taken off.
Lessons with low scores have 5% taken off.
You can loose a lot of marks if you have several lessons with low scores.
After several weeks one of your high scored lessons might fall into the medium score category, in this case you will need to refresh this lesson in your mind, and do the test again.
High score lessons will stay in the Coasting Zone even if they are going down just a little each week. When they reach Medium score level they will appear in the Dropping Zone.
We like to keep everything in English when it comes to finding your way around the site.
If we tell you exactly what you get wrong in the test then some students would just do the tests over and over, learn how to pass the tests, and not learn the lesson properly.
Instead we just show you your score for each section of the test. You can see these section scores when you submit your test BEFORE you click OK on the result.
If you don't get a high enough score, you need to learn the lesson more carefully. :)
Your password is usually your first name. (upper or lower case are both fine)
If your browser automatically uses your old password even when you type in your new password, have a look at How to Make your Browser Forget your Old Password.
If you don't remember your password choose Forgot my Password from the Login page.
