NET Scheme News 2025 Spring issue 48

14 NET Scheme News Issue 48 For most P6 teachers, the idea of getting students to engage in a reflective discussion about Chinese cultural appreciation in English might seem challenging. That was exactly what we aimed to do when teaching Treasured China, a Development of Text Sets (DTS) unit, this term. Our goal wasn’t just to get students to engage in discussion, but to make it meaningful and to get the students to think about how the unit content relates to them. It wasn’t easy. Our school, like most schools in Hong Kong, has students with a wide range of English abilities. However, by employing a range of scaffolding techniques, we were able to complete the unit and make this reflection much easier for students. Allow me to explain the context: Our school implemented the Treasured China DTS unit in P6 for most of the second term. Students engaged in an inquiry-based unit about Chinese culture, using a multimodal text set to learn about regions of China, including famous places, food and important aspects of art and history. Students were each assigned a region to research, and then they used the resulting information to create an e-book. I will focus on one of the later lessons in the unit in which we made connections with Chinese culture, but many of these techniques were useful throughout. Treasured China: Sharing Good Stories First, background knowledge was essential! To discuss anything meaningfully, our students needed vocabulary and language to share their own thoughts. Throughout the unit we introduced vocabulary related to Chinese culture: students learned content words related to food and art forms from different regions. When introducing this unit, it was important to acknowledge that we were teaching Chinese students about Chinese culture.As NETs we leveraged our unique position to become an authentic audience for the students’ sharing. This also had the benefit of activating students’ prior knowledge and experiences. Drawing this connection between what students already knew and what we were learning helped motivate students who might otherwise be less willing to communicate using English. The local English teachers also helped us translate ideas and concepts to ensure that familiar Chinese-language concepts were accurately connected to English vocabulary. Students writing their e-books Treasured China