Our Brains Love Patterns!
Posted by Yajuan Zhang
As language teachers we are taught that our brains love patterns when we are learning a different language and trying to maintain the expressions and sentences to enjoy the freedom of conducting conversations. I still feel very excited to see how the theory works effectively with my student learning practice in various grades, especially when these patterns are associated with rhymes, songs, chants and body gestures. This has also motivated me to use the digital storytelling to share with the whole community the excitement and the pride our students have experienced in their learning journey.
We all believe that the older students do a good job learning the sentence patterns. Sure, they do, as we can see from the following video of the fifth graders. Students actually did even more with the sentence patterns. They also acted out the meaning of the sentence patterns. Students were practicing a rhyme about the pronouns for people of different genders, creatures and objects in class. One group of the students told me they added the body gestures to show the meaning of the sentences and it helped them remember the rhyme very well. After their performance, this group of students were happily welcomed by the whole class. So they taught their method to their classmates. Then we all were excited to make the lovely video with a beautiful collaboration of the rhyme 你,我,他,她,它 (you, I, he, she, it).
However, the younger students also have their ways to impress me with how quickly and naturally they learn sentence patterns and make me think out of the box. So here we are with the video of the kindergarteners describing the twelve months in a year instead of thirteen months. The PreK-4 students were describing the body parts of the little rabbits, what they eat and how they walk. The PreK-3 kids were very happy counting the numbers from one to thirty in one video and practicing their Mandarin greeting skit in the other. It is amazing to see how patterns leverage the acquisition of the language learning. When you hear the words with patterns, surely enough it also adds the taste of rhythm, joy and confidence for an engaging learning experience.
← Riding Into Spring Spring Has Sprung →