教育委员会 Textbook Evaluation Team discussions(originally posted on Jan 05 2012)

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Dear All:

Thank you very much for attending the 1st general meeting last time. We had a productive introduction and discussion. As a summary, we discussed:

1. Recap our education committee structure, tasks, and get to know our members

2. The current status of our education (教材, 教法, 评估)

3. Brainstorm, and discuss projects / education events and projected working progress (timeline)

These examples of our brief discussions included a). midterm/final tests linking with other standard tests, i.e., HSK, YCT, AP test; b). HSK, YCT review materials/resources ; c). more projects for each grade level; d). textbooks related to kids’ daily life and Chinese learning in English school; e). listening, speaking, reading comprehension and writing (need to emphasize the latter two aspects); f). Introducing good/effective teaching methods from Chinese teaching in English school. In addition to our general meetings, we plan to have more individual group meetings, either teleconference or face-to-face for the detailed discussions for each task. We target to have concrete recommendations and reports from教材, 教法, and 评估groups within the coming three months.

As we discussed, we will have a face-to-face general meeting this Sunday (Dec. 4th) from 9:45am-10:30am in the room: AAB-104. This is a good opportunity to get to know each other and have more discussions. Please make every effort to attend. I will list and print out discussion outline for each group on this Sunday.

I would like to thank all of you for your tremendous efforts and valuable time to contribute HXNY education improvement! Parents and children will be proud of our HXNY education quality because of the great contributions from every one of you!

Sincerely,

Mark Yin

[ Edited Thu Jan 05 2012, 09:20PM ]
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lilin
Thu Jan 05 2012, 07:37PM

Joined: Thu Aug 20 2009, 09:50AM
Posts: 32
Dear all, first of all, I would like to thank Lin Yu and Huang Yue Laoshi, Xu Jun and Shi Lin two parents who took time and joined the “textbook” group discussion last Sunday. Unfortunately, since the other 2 members had teaching obligation so we did not get to meet each other in person last week. Now that we have the contact phone #s and email address, please feel free to call or send emails to keep in touch with our group members. I may schedule couple of meetings or conference calls in the future to get the progress reports.

It has been agreed that our group will focus on 2 main topics:

1) Continue to assess/review textbooks, discuss with and get feedback from teachers and parents, then draft a proposal for next year’s textbook/grade selection and class assignment.

2) Build up school’s Mobile Library and gather/organize online resources for teachers/parents/students

Based on the discussion, here are some of my proposed task assignments for the team members. Please take a look and let me know if you are OK with the assignments (as we tend to assign challenging works for people not present ).

Textbook Review :

Goal – to provide a comprehensive review of each textbook set, make an assessment, list out pros and cons, and write-up a proposal to the school in term of next year’s textbook/grade selection and class assignment.

Task – Currently we already have complete sets of textbooks for Standard Chinese and Meizhou Huayu. Will order higher grades’ (G5-G9) MaLiping textbooks. The team will need to systematically review and compare these 3 textbook sets, and fill out the attached template. Members are encouraged to borrow the textbooks from school and study them.

a) Lin Yu and Cao Laoshi will focus on Meizhou Huayu as we may consider using Meizhou Huayu for the CSL students as they don’t have any textbooks after G4.

b) Huang Yue Laoshi and Xu Jun will focus on Ma Liping.

c) Ju Xiaopeng Laoshi, Lin Li nd Shi Lin will review Standard Chinese.

Target Delivery Date – End of Jan. Will schedule a weekly meeting starting Jan 7.

Would like to discuss about the design of the textbook comparison tempalte before the Christmas. So would greatly appreciate it if you can provide your comments to me by next Wed. All members’ input are welcome. In order to tie with other 2 teams’ work, Lin Jun and Mingbao please make sure that you review our template. I plan to schedule a conf call next Thursday from 9:30-10:30pm if it works for most of the members. Thanks!

Reading /Practice Resources:

Goal – to provide appropriate supplemental materials – books, videos, and online resources to encourage students to read and practice more at home.

Task – recommend good books/videos, and gather from teachers and parents helpful online resources.

a) Li will order some test related reference books – SAT Chinese, AP Chinese and HSK Chinese

b) Li will order more supplemental reading materials based the team’s recommendation

c) The team to provide a recommended reading list per grade or breakdown by lower/higher grades

d) The team to provide a list of online links/resources. However, the list needs to be proper categorized/sorted, such as by level (lower or higher grade), content (reading, audio, stories), usage (reading, games, practice)…

Shi Lin will be the Champion for this task. For this task, we particularly need helps from other groups. I would suggest that each Committee member send Shi Lin at least 2 recommended book names and 2 online Chinese study links/resources.

Target Delivery Date – End of Jan.

The above are some of our early ideas. Welcome all members to give us suggestions and advice. Thanks in advance for your time and effort!

Best regards,

Li Lin
Textbook group leader

[ Edited Thu Jan 05 2012, 09:21PM ]
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lilin
Thu Jan 05 2012, 07:40PM

Joined: Thu Aug 20 2009, 09:50AM
Posts: 32
I would like to thank everyone for taking the time out of their busy schedule to join our TEXTBOOK team’s 1st group meeting. It is very productive. Below is the recap.

Attendees: Mark Yin, Jun Lin, Li Lin, Holly Huang, Yu Lin, Xuchu Cao and Lin Shi.

Topics covered:

1) Textbook Assessment: here is the assignment of textbook review for each team member

Standard Chinese – Lin Shi: book 1-3; Xiaopeng: book 4-6; Li Lin: book 7-9
Meizhou Chinese – Xuchu Cao: book 1-5; Yu Lin: book 6-9
Ma Liping – Jun Xu: book 1-4; Holly Huang: book 5-9

The team went over the assessment template. Jun Lin, Mark and Yu Lin Laoshi all gave very good suggestions on the template. Attached is the revised version. Again, the template only serves as a framework and each should feel free to add more points when she or he sees necessary.

2) Reading/Practice Books/on-line Resources

Per Shi Lin’s suggestion, we will ask our Dean Mingbao to help solicit 1-2 book names and online resources/website links from each language teacher. Each member of the Education committee is also welcome to contribute 1-2 names/links. Then the team will go into those recommended websites and provide descriptions of the sites, so that we can categorize them properly for easy access/usage.

3) HXCS Training Overview

At the end of the meeting, Lin Yu Laoshi shared with the team the information she got from last weekend’s training sessions. For example, she mentioned about 朗朗中文 and the website that we may be able to leverage off. She would share with Ma Liping class teachers the notes on student writing from Ma Liping. She also introduced Meizhou Chinese based on the seminar given by the editor and teacher of this textbook. We learned that this set of textbooks focus on 5Cs – communication, culture, connection, comparison and community. The structure of the textbooks is 3 folds – words build up; basic language build; then practical daily life usage and american chinese history education. One potential shortcoming of this textbook that Lin Laoshi noticed is the lack of writing practice… I bet Lin Laoshi’s summary will be much better than what I could skim up here.

Lin Yu Laoshi, if you already have something write up, greatly appreciate it if you can share with the broader Education committee team. Thanks.

Should I miss any point, please let me know. Thanks again for everyone’s time and effort!

Wish you and your family a Happy Holiday Season!!!

Best regards,

Li Lin

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