Sessions

The presentation will include step by step of how to adapt the Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting and Closing Circle structures to an immersion early childhood classroom to increase students' language input and output, build up a strong classroom community and gradually release classroom responsibilities to the children. Early childhood teachers will be able to learn concrete examples to guide and help the students become independent learners. Songs and activities will be shared in English and Chinese so that all early childhood education teachers could use them in their classrooms immediately.

Why do we teach young children about race, diverse family structure, president election, disability..etc? How do we talk about it in an age-appropriate way? What kind of teaching strategies and learning materials do we have to support children’s learning in both content and language? In this session, teachers from CAIS preschool will provide practical strategies, including teaching guidelines, instructions and materials, for integrating issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion into the Chinese immersion preschool classroom.

Supporting students to express themselves naturally and freely through the interpersonal mode of speaking is still a critical need in the field. Our interactive online game is set in a virtual city where students practice vocabulary and have unscripted conversations with each other to solve daily life "quests" using their target language. As proficiency in speaking leads to proficiency in reading, we also offer a companion online leveled library.

Two Early Years teachers from Silicon Valley International School will present to you their studies in the mixed age classrooms of Preschoolers and Pre-Kindergarteners, focusing on children’s literacy development. Teacher Ying will share her approaches on assisting children to develop a memory and a passion of learning Chinese characters and phrases. She also includes a list of resources for teacher’s references. Teacher Wang will share methods of guiding children to develop their early literacy skills and scaffolding them to create their own stories. She will inspire you with various ideas on how to help children understand the concepts of books, how to facilitate open discussions with children, and how to promote their literacy development in the story making process.