Not just music: about teaching Musical Mandarin

Musical Mandarin was more than singing or acting out the motions of the song, although we did do the hand motions of "The Wheels on the Bus" and larger motions of "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes". Behind the singing, adding movement, using manipulatives, how often each song or story was repeated and the interval was based on research-based teaching strategies. Poems or stories selected for each session were complimentary to the general theme and based on the growing vocabulary of the students.

A teacher who enjoys their students and teaching and has good tones is essential. Using a teacher who is fluent in Mandarin is preferred.

MOVEMENT
For the two to six-year-olds, each session included dancing or playing with scarves or musical instruments. Many classes for any age included dancing or playing a game with larger movements like "Simon Says" or "Red Light, Green Light". I also used manipulatives with many songs and stories, especially, but not only, for the youngest. 

 

Most terms term also had a story, or at least a song that could be acted out, if not a story and a few poems. It does not take long to learn enough key vocabulary to understand many simple stories or folk tales. Each session had a different tale. They included:

• The Little Rabbits (vocabulary: fruits & vegetables, open, door, fast) There are many versions, this is not exactly what I used: https://ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/chinese/littlerabbits/)
  
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears (vocabulary: mama, papa, baby, eat, hot, cold, bowl, chair, sit, big, medium, little, bowl, bed, sleep, wake up, run)
  
• Let’s Make Rabbits by Leo Lionni (body parts, prepositions (under, over, on, behind, in front of, “after” and the past tense, colors if you provide colored pieces) For older students, it can be an exercise for following directions – or having someone give directions verbally and see what the other students create.

Chinese Jump Rope supported the concepts of in, out, left, right, as well as vocabulary for ankles and knees. Acting out the points of the compass was critical. The new words for North, East, South, and West are not stated in that order in Mandarin!

MANIPULATIVES 

Some songs and stories lent themselves easily to being told with a felt board. Sometimes when we did vocabulary substitutions in songs, I had a set of words were ready to be Velcro-ed on. More often we chose and called out the change on the fly – once students were comfortable with the song and had vocabulary to make substitutions. For example, “One frog has one mouth, Two eyes and four legs”, what about one bird and then two? Or one and then two spiders?  “Yi zhi qingwa, yi zhang zui, …”.  Can you sing Two Tigers" (两‘x x, Liǎng zhī lǎohǔ) if one is missing a nose instead of a tail? 

I used many manipulatives to support vocabulary or storytelling, not just a felt board and the song and poem posters. They included:

• A beloved two foot long stuffed turnip with leaves that pulled off when we acted out "Ba luo bo" (萝–m, "Pulling the Turnip"), 
  
• Plastic animals for “Wáng lǎo xiān sheng yǒu kuài di” (‰¤ ˜V   —L 块 ’n ™Þ, “Old MacDonald had a farm”) as well as when we were doing substitution on any songs that mentioned animals. 
  
• I developed a large collection of Mr. Potato Head(tm). Students put on the same number of eyes and ears we sang about – or made their own and sang a verse about their one mouth, three eye, has no nose creation. It supported fluency and forced them to calculate numbers on the fly.