On Tuesday we had a large number of Year 4-6 parents attend a workshop on how to use Mandarin Matrix with their child or children at home. Mandarin Matrix is an online platform that the school purchases to support our Year 4-6 children to learn Chinese and can be used at school or at home.
A number of parents commented to us just how useful they find Mandarin Matrix and a surprising number of parents did not know about it despite us having used it last year as well. It made us realise we have to do a better job of promoting it and advertising it – hence why it is in my blog!
Sarah Bower, one of our parents who attended the presentation, kindly sent through a summary of why she thinks it is such a great program to use at home and I thought I would share it with you in case you are not aware of the program.
Why I thought Mandarin Matrix is so useful by Sarah Bower :
- Each digital book should take about 10 minutes (manageable for kids)
- It is broken down into manageable bite-sized pieces (reading, writing, listening/comprehension, test)
- The listening/comprehension part is what many western families struggle to provide
- As it’s a digital program and test, many kids are very comfortable with this environment and find it fun – very little resistance
- The test at the end of each book, allows us (as Western parents) to much more objectively monitor their progress, than the Chinese newsletter (I’m not suggesting we replace the Chinese newsletter, btw)
- The kids earn “coins” for each test; they can keep doing the same test until they get 100% if they want (thus increasing their coins) – my boys are competitive and love any game that allows them to earn coins etc). Each class group (Ox, Piggy, Rabbit etc) has a leagues table for the students with the most coins.
- They can chose to do additional books and earn extra coins
- The Parent dashboard provides us with very clear data on how much time they have spent, how they have done at each test, how many coins they have, whether they have received additional feedback or rewards from their Chinese teacher etc)
- The teacher dashboard, would be even more useful, I’m sure
- 10 minutes a day of this, is very manageable for us to integrate into their homework schedule. We are every motivated to improve the progress are kids are making with Chinese and we think this is a great tool to do it.
Please check the Chinese Newsletter sent out every two weeks via Planet Peak which outlines the home learning so that you can learn more about how to access this excellent resource (your child’s username and password cannot be published here on an open forum but can be accessed via Planet Peak).