About this Story:
This story is about the little horse encourages independent thinking. The little horse wanted to cross the river but he did not know how deep the water was. What should he do? Ask Mr. Cow and Ms. Squirrel, or try by himself? A popular Chinese tale for children, Little Horse Crosses the River encourages children to think independently and not to fear challenges.
Download the story in PDF version here to print for classroom or home use.
Download the narrated iBook here for use on iPad and other electronic devices.
Culture:
In this story, students can learn that Chinese characters are made up of images of real objects in the world. For example, students will learn that the three dots are representing water drops when the teacher explains water radical. Plus, the Chinese language is unique because of the tones. In this unit, students will learn a Chinese chant which does not lose tones and matches well with Chinese culture.
Connections (Subject Area):
Science: How animal moves, animal habits, and animal foods
Math: Measuring the depth of water, comparing sizes of animals and other objects, survey, and graph favorite animals
Social Studies: Pictograph characters, fables, and identify characteristics of animals in Chinese cultures
Music/Arts: Sing animal songs of animals, make masks of animals and listen to songs and chants
Language Arts: Read the story, recite chants and rhymes, retelling story, write a similar story, identify radicals and stroke order
Comparisons:
Community:
Communication:
This unit focuses a lot on communication between teacher and student as well as student to student. In the first lesson segment, the teacher would ask students to vote for animals on the graphic organizer, by which students get to know each other and talk about the same topic. In the read-aloud activity, students would be encouraged to talk in the target language by making natural inquiries about the book cover, main animal characters and the story itself.
Language Functions & Forms:
Vocabulary: cross (something), run, jump, try, big, small, ox, horse, river, squirrel, tall, short, deep, shallow
Grammatical Structures: Both … and …(又…又…), 过得去(can cross the river), 过不去(can’t cross the river)
Character & Word Study:
Examine work networks using the “water” radical:河，深，浅
Culminating Assessment:
Interpretive Task: A matching task. In the task, the teacher shows several pictures of different animals and two sentence chunks: both big and tall; both small and short. Students match and categorize the animal pictures with the right pattern.
Interpersonal Task: Students work in pairs to get pictures of three animals and discuss if these three animals can cross the river. Students then do pair exchanges and share what their partners believe. Teacher models the conversation and provides the sentence patterns and key vocabularies before students work in pairs.
Presentational task: Students work in a small group of four to write parallel stories. Each group picks three or four animals different than horse, ox, and squirrel, then they rewrite the story by matching the chosen pictures into the story skeleton. Students will have a gallery walk, ask questions and fill out the worksheet. They will also do a role play to present their story after the gallery walk.