Before you begin to teach Mandarin Chinese to your pupils, it is wise to check out our “Chinese Ways of Thinking & Living” scheme of work for yourself, especially if your own exposure to the language and culture is limited. You can always use this later to show to your pupils, but we recommend you work through it yourself first, too. Click HERE to view the unit of work.

1. A good way of introducing Mandarin is to teach pupils how to greet each other in the language. Here are a few different PPTs you could use to start:

(Above resources by Mitian Chen and Xueling Qi, Hanban Teachers)

2. For some children, China may be somewhere they have little or no knowledge of, so teaching them a little bit about the country is important in the early stages to put the topic into context. Below is a really handy PPT. It is written for use in an extra-curricular club but can easily be adapted:

3. Children always find it fun and exciting to pick a Chinese name! Use the below PPT to lead that activity.

There is also a website you can use to generate Chinese names:

https://www.mandarintools.com/chinesename.html

(Above resource by Huiling Liu, Hanban Teacher)

Once you have taught your initial lessons and both you and the pupils feel a little more confident using beginner-level Mandarin, you can try:

1. Topic-based lessons – our vocabulary topics in the Resource section will help you, click here to see it.
2. Educational visits – click here for some examples.
3. COMING SOON: How to get non-Chinese speaking teachers involved with lessons and helping to promote the subject across the school.