Ages 5-12: Prep/ Kindergarten – Year 6 Primary

The classes for Primary School-age children are very much tailored to the needs, dynamics and level of Mandarin within the group. Generally, classes for 5 to 8-year-olds are an extension of the Preschool program in that the teacher will adopt the same approach and activities but will start to spend more time on fun language games and role-play to develop phrases and sentence building related to the themes and vocabulary taught for the term.

From the age of 7+, we start to introduce Pin Yin and, if the class is ready, character strokes and more complex radical characters. Over a term, children are generally taught (over an average 10-week term) through emergent topics decided upon by our teachers and according to the interests and needs of our learning groups. Over an average term, we teach:

• 4 x Topics over 2 Weeks plus a Festival/ Cultural topic and a Revision/ review Session
• Each topic specifically targets Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing activities and includes the teaching of:
• 24-30 word vocabulary per term (up to 120-word vocabulary per year)
• 6-10 Chinese characters per term (up to 40 Chinese characters per year)
• A range of phrases and sentence structures

Through this approach we lay the foundations for developing long term memory retention and fluency in Mandarin and also a genuine passion and love for learning Mandarin Chinese for the future.