Into the Classroom | Integrating Traditional Chinese Culture

Teachers in the Nest encourage the children to fully enjoy the culture by letting them experience it through activities. In Pre-Nursery’s classroom activities, the children made a long Chinese-style dragon out of various  materials, and held a special “eye-drawing” ceremony. The Head of Early Years drew big, round eyes for the dragon in front of all the teachers and children to help them learn the Chinese idiom "painting the eyes of the dragon" (画龙点睛) in the most straightforward way. What impressed us was that many expatriate children also actively participated in activities such as learning these Chinese traditional idioms, a true blend of Eastern and Western  education.

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In addition, as a part of our Mandarin programme, teachers and children read traditional Chinese stories that are closely related to the theme they are studying. While enjoying reading, the children can also learn about life through ancient Chinese literature. Furthermore, traditional Chinese poetry also plays a big part in the curriculum in the Nest. The children even draw paintings based on the poems so that they can feel what is called “painting in a poetry, poetry in a painting.” (诗中有画，画中有诗)  As effective extensions and supplements to the children’s learning of Chinese traditional culture, they read stories about Chinese idioms, attend Chinese cultural After School Activity classes (ASA), and participate in different kinds of shows and traditional Chinese festivals.

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The six years of Junior School are critical for pupils to develop good learning habits. Learning traditional Chinese culture enriches a pupils’ knowledge, helps them to develop a habit of reading and lays a solid foundation for their study in the future.

Starting in year 4, pupils have fixed cultural units to study every academic year. Every unit has a different theme, such as tea culture, water culture, and couplet culture. Teachers take the most common cultural elements in daily life as the entry point and design a variety of classroom activities to let pupils explore traces of Chinese culture by themselves. 

In the unit of “water culture”, the teachers lead the pupils step by step  through how to explore the ways “water” influenced Chinese people: from the radical as parts of Chinese characters, to the image in Chinese literature; from the story of Dayu who solved the problem of floods in ancient times (大禹治水), to the hydropower technology nowadays; from the trade ports where hundreds of ships come in and out every day to the huge offshore oil rigs. As  pupils learn more and more about the theme of “water”, their knowledge and vision also develops. It is said that, “A door-hinge never gets worm-eaten and running water never gets stale.” (户枢不蠹，流水不腐) One of our pupils wrote in his notebook: “I think Chinese culture is like running water, sometimes gurgling, sometimes rushing, but the sense of belonging and pride that is embedded in the blood is never changed.”

Ancient poetry is also an important part of the traditional culture course in the Junior School. The pupils need to understand not only the meaning of each verse of the poems but also the thoughts and emotions that the poets are trying to express. In the Junior School, our final goal of learning poetry is to let the pupils resonate with the thoughts of poets. When that goal is achieved, despite the barriers of time, the traditional Chinese culture can let young pupils communicate with, and understand, the poets from thousands of years ago; this is our ultimate aim of learning traditional Chinese culture.

Traditional Chinese culture programmes become a required course for pupils in year 7 and above. In year 7, the course covers six themes, including food, festivals, and clothing. Over the year, the course allows the pupils to develop their knowledge and build a solid foundation for their study in the following academic year. In year 8, another important task is added to the course: learning research skills. In this year, the teachers help the pupils develop research skills, such as how to analyze data, how to use search engines, and how to design questionnaires. 

Last year, the research project for our year 8 pupils was how to run a Chinese restaurant in a foreign country. The pupils showed great interest in the project. Some of them designed questionnaires to collect advice from the owners of local restaurants in Tianjin; some of them designed the appearance, menu, and uniforms for waiters for their restaurant; some of them searched for information on the internet and in the library to summarize the experience from others’ success. As a wrap up of the project, many pupils finished detailed research reports and gave presentations about what they have learned during the project. Seeing this, the teachers believe that they enjoyed their research and learning.

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Year 9 is a turning point for this traditional Chinese culture course. The main task for the pupils shifts from embedding knowledge and becomes focused on free research projects, based  on certain themes. The pupils  select topics that they are interested in, then explore them in-depth with their applicable research methods. They  finish their research reports in the last term of the academic year for teachers to grade. The pupils have to evaluate each other’s work as well as communicate what they have learned throughout the year. They can also learn to be inclusive and share from this learning experience.