This project will create an Arabic Club where students will demonstrate competence in using Arabic before a large audience. Parents and community members will participate in curriculum night and cultural events. We will host a forum where the community and school staff will learn about the education, culture, cuisine, customs, traditions, and daily life in Egypt. The project will promote and reinforce the Arabic language, students' fluency, and knowledge of the Egyptian culture.
Lifting Arabic Language Awareness is intended to introduce, teach, and grow the Arabic language skills among members of the Winooski, VT community. Adult participants will have the opportunity to learn Modern Standard Arabic through weekly conversational classes led by a qualified instructor, while children and their families will be invited to attend bilingual story-times followed by an activity centered on the culture, practices, and traditions of the Middle East.
Cai Qi's home school and host schools were willing to establish a long-lasting sister-school relationship. Therefore, they decided to do a series of activities to help students and teachers in both schools understand and learn from each other better. First, they arranged a culture box activity to help groups of students and teachers to get to know each other and learn the culture and practice target language from each other. Second, they paired students and teachers in the U.S. with students and teachers from China to help them establish long-lasting communication.
Sister School Virtual Bilingual Video Class aims to bridge the geographical distance between two sister schools and create a platform beyond classrooms for students on both sides to improve their target languages, their cultural awareness, and their cross-cultural communication abilities. The virtual bilingual video class meets the needs of both Liuyang No.1 High school, which lacks native English teachers this year, and Chariho Regional High School where students of Mandarin classes can't have Chinese field trips beyond classroom during this special year.
Li Ning (2019-2020) received a Round 19 CLP grant to support the purchase of instructional materials for Chariho Regional High School. With CLP support, CRHS acquired new Level I and II instructional materials including textbooks and workbooks in Spring 2020 and is currently purchasing additional Level III instructional materials based on a communicative teaching approach and thematic content. Mr. Li worked with his TCLP mentor teacher to map curricula for each level and began using the new materials with his Level I and II students starting in Spring 2020.
John Pecoraro received a CLP grant to support a field trip for Chariho Regional High School. Students visited a Chinese market and purchased items for their graduation ceremony. Students appeared to enjoy this, as it was a different experience than they were accustomed to in their home town. After the Chinese market, we went to the Rhode Island School of Design to tour the Chinese portion of the Asian art galleries. Students were able to view and appreciate various works of art, and also document the artwork using the walkthrough reflection tool.
Ivy Yiu received a CLP for “A Taste of China,” which is a unit of study and part of the curriculum for the Mandarin Chinese classes. Students currently enrolled in the school’s Mandarin Chinese class learned about Chinese Tea history, Gongfu Tea Ceremony - how to conduct the tea ceremony, and Chinese tea culture. The culminating learning activity was to show case what students have learned of language and culture at the North Warren Regional Multicultural Fair. Each year, North Warren Regional School hosts a community-wide Multicultural Fair.
Roxana Rivero-Taube (Plantation Middle School, 2018-2019) and Zhao Xin (Plantation Middle School, 2018-2019) received a CLP grant for a Chinese Reading Club for students, teachers, and faculty. From a series of reading activities (such as cross-cultural fair, language art classes, Chinese Club, and Chinese classes) the learners in the community received a basic understanding and engagement with Chinese culture. It was intended to increase people’s interest in Chinese culture and language learning. Some of the activities will continue yearly for the Chinese program.
Sean Fredericks (2016-2018), a mentor teacher from John W. Lavelle Preparatory Charter School in Staten Island, New York, received a CLP grant to take, with Adel Ghattas (2017-2018), the 34 Arabic students at Lavelle on a field trip to the United Nations in Manhattan. The field trip will occur in 2018, the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On this field trip, students will have the opportunity to learn about the history of the United Nations and Middle East Policy from a UN representative.
Passant Aly (2017-2018) organized an Arabic Club in which participants got the chance to learn communicative Arabic and experience Arabic culture. The club met at Anne Chesnutt Middle School once every week, for eight weeks. Each week there was a different theme. For example, the first week focused on language and traditions and the second week students explored food and festivals. For each theme participants learned through doing: they cooked, performed dances, learned Arabic letters, and much more. Arabic Club members also went on field trips and virtual tours of Egypt as well.
