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Grade 5 students in my class are non-native speakers medium level.

Grade 5 students have finished their mid-year test by Dec 12. The test is mainly a vocabulary test. I have already had reading comprehension exercise and writing assignment frequently in daily class work so these two types of exercises in not included in the test.

 Within the 13 students I have, 5 are above average level, 3 are medium and 5 need more effort to meet the request. Each one of them will have an individual talk with me and check the test paper with me as well. I wish they can realize what their weak part is and how they can improve. Taking the initiative in learning is what I try to promote in my classroom.

Grade 2 students in my class are non-native speakers advanced level.

Grade 2 students have finished their mid-year test by Dec 12. The test included three parts: word spelling, sentence pattern and Chinese character. Within the 14 students I have, all of them meet the request of “word spelling” part. They can name the word in Chinese when they see the English meaning and most of them can spelling the Chinese word 80% correctly.

Grade 1 students in my class are non-native speakers and it’s beginner level.

Grade 1 students are going to have an oral test on Dec 17 and Dec 18. They have finished learning four stories so far and they have been able to retell 3-4 sentence of a story. The students will be asked to name 10 Chinese phrases which are selected by teacher from all the phrases that they have learned and supposed to remember. They will also be requested to retell or read a story by themselves. There will be no written test by now since the students are still trying to get familiar with Chinese spelling system—Pinyin. They are encouraged to remember the word spelling and try to spell the word without referring to the book but they still can if they have any difficulty. Recognize and read the word will be more important than pushing them to remember every word in their brain.

Getting Chinese text in Windows is quite easy. Providing you have administrator rights, you can simply enable it in the control panel.

1. Open the Windows Control Panel.
2. (If the Control Panel is in “Category view”) Select “Date, Time, Language and Regional options.”
3. Open the “Regional and Language Options” icon.
4. Choose the “Languages” tab, and ensure the “Install files for East Asian languages” is checked, as per the screenshot below:

   

5. Click the “Details” button to open the “Text services and input languages” dialog.
6. If “Chinese” is not listed in the “Installed Services” box, click “Add”.
7. In the “Input Language” list, choose “Chinese (PRC)”. The “Keyboard layout” should default to “Chinese (Simplified) - Microsoft Pinyin IME 3.0″. Click “Ok” on both dialogs to return to the “Regional and Language Options”.
8. Click “Ok”, you will probably need to insert your Windows CD for the files to be installed.
9. The language bar should now have appeared in the bottom right of the taskbar. It should default to English - “EN”.
10. Click on the “EN” button to show the available languages:

    

11. By changing the language to “CH”, you can now type in Pinyin. You can change the current language by pressing “ALT” + “SHIFT” on your keyboard.