Chinese New Year Celebrations
Following on from the successes of our Chinese New Year celebrations in recent years, we took time out of our usual curriculum in the Prep School to find out about Chinese culture. This year, we marked the Year of the Snake by telling the story of the Legend of the White Snake. As has become a lovely RGS Dodderhill tradition, Year 6 gave an assembly explaining the story of the Chinese New Year celebrations, and after that, the Prep School went off to do a carousel of cross-curricular activities celebrating Chinese language and culture. In Art and Design, the pupils contributed to making a snake which is now on the banister of the Goodman Building, in Music Technology they used the Garage Band app to explore Chinese musical styles and compose their own music, and in Languages they learned some greetings and Chinese scripts to wish each other “Good Luck!” Pupils also tasted Chinese cookies as a gift from our visitors, Mr and Mrs Chow.
Meanwhile, as a development of our whole school assembly conversation with two guests from Hong Kong, we followed up on the experiences of our friends, Mr and Mrs Chow, who came to the UK from Hong Kong as legal migrants three years ago. The pupils in Year 10 asked questions about their favourite foods, how they manage long-distance relationships with their daughter and other family members and whether they had experienced any negative events like racism as part of their life in the UK. Mr and Mrs Chow replied openly and honestly about their experiences in the UK since the 1997 hand-over of Hong Kong from Britain to China, explaining why they decided to migrate and how they have settled into life in Birmingham and what they do to maintain their cultural heritage – largely through food, calligraphy and marking cultural celebrations.
In Key Stage 3, pupils used Linguascope and some online resources to learn some Chinese vocabulary for animals and colours and also tried their hand at making some bookmarks with calligraphy on them. We used paint charts to label a wide range of colours in Cantonese.
The value of these activities is huge – opening the minds and hearts of our pupils to new and different cultural experiences. We are thrilled to see the way that they engage with new ideas and the quality of the learning that comes from these special days. This day ‘off-timetable’ enables the pupils to explore a range of aspects of Chinese life and culture in depth, and opens the way for questions and curiosity with the help of our visitors.
For older children, it is of great benefit to listen to migration stories with positive aspects. It counters the typical narrative that all migration is negative. The fact that the pupils considered which questions to ask means that they really engaged with the topic, ranging from politics, family relationships, emotions, practicalities, cultural changes and racism. This is particularly valuable in a small town in Worcestershire, where immigration is not an especially visible issue in everyday life. It is therefore integral to our efforts to prepare our pupils as global citizens with real-world experiences of important social issues.
