Along with mandarins still being in season, there are many other exciting learning experiences in Mandarin classes around Lindfield campus.

“I will ask for a Diabolo for my birthday”, Sam Schultz commented as he tried to play a Diabolo during the 5W Mandarin lesson. (Belated Happy Birthday, Sam.)

Every year during the summer holiday in northern atmosphere, the Taipei Youth Folk Sports Group visits different countries around the world. Their last Australia visit to Sydney was in 2008. It was our pleasure to have them visiting our campus.  

The performance was outstanding! The highly trained and talented boys and girls from the Taipei Youth Folk Sports Group treated the staff and the boys to the most sensational and exciting cultural experience. The dance about the spirit of sport to never give up trying, the traditional dance about the dragon boat festival, the demonstration of shuttlecocks and skipping ropes was a visual extravaganza. Due to the ground restriction, they could only show us just a tiny bit of the performance of the shuttlecocks and skipping ropes. But even then, we were all so overwhelmed at the of things they could do with the rope and the shuttlecocks. At the end of the performance, some lucky students in the audience received a shuttlecock as a gift from the Taipei Youth Folk Sports Group.

But wait, there’s more! The music changed, the boys and the girls from the Taipei Youth Folk Sports Group came back to the centre of the stage with their Diabolos in their hands, the “Wow” and clapping sound rarely stopped! We saw them play Diabolos with different formations; we saw them throw the Diabolos to each other, then two, then three Diabolos were played by a couple of single players; we saw them throw Diabolos up high in the air to the other side only to be caught by the players some distance away. 

The performance was just amazing! It was so amazing that the boys could not stop talking about the performance for days! As a teacher at a PYP school, I am proud of our students who are able to apply concepts in PYP from this experiences. For example, boys make connections about different sports – On a typical Saturday Sports day, I overheard a group of Year 6 boys who were able to make the connection of the skills required to play Shuttlecock with their soccer playing. The boys apply their learning and higher order thinking skills in their daily life – Year 2 boys, like Liam, talked about the representation of blue flags from an artistic angle and Lorcan reflected the experiences on the day. From Kindergarten to Year 6, boys there were boys talking about the function: How does a diabolo work? In Kindy and Year 1, we talked about the attitudes they observed from the performances.

In Newington Lindfield, we are not just learning the language, we are striving to enrich our boys with a variety of learning experiences and elevate their views to embrace cultures from around the world.  

Eva Angel – LOTE Teacher