In my former life as a special educator, data was king. Subjective measurements of who is learning what, what they are learning, and how they are learning all serve to inform and guide future lesson plans.
At home, with my three children, we focus intensively on literacy skills. Which basically means we read like CRAZY!! It could be graded readers, or just Chinese picture books. Either way, we read a LOT.
We rely heavily on the Sage Books Basic Chinese 500 series (which by the way I think is a great set of readers to have to teach children to read). Hence, I created this simple assessment guide to check my children’s reading and writing level.
What's in the Sage Books Basic Chinese 500 Assessment Pack
- 5 x 100 Chinese characters word list
- 5 x 100 assessment sheets
- 1 x assessment overview
How to use the Sage Books Basic Chinese 500 Assessment Pack
- After finishing one level of the Sage Book Readers, check your child’s reading of all 100 Chinese characters with the wordlist. Don’t use the books, as the pictures and sentences will give them contextual cues.
- For the words they can read independently on the wordlist, check it on the assessment sheet.
- If you are teaching them to write the Chinese characters as well, ask your child to write the Chinese character without showing them the word. You can prompt by giving them a related phrase. For example, 手， 手指的手。给，把玩具给我。
- You can use this A4 Chinese writing worksheet so you can keep it as a record of their progress consistently with this assessment pack.
- For the Chinese words they can write independently, check it on the assessment sheet.
- The last column is for any observation notes you may have.
How to interpret the data
After my most recent assessment, I realise that even though Xiao Bao had finished the Sage Books Basic Chinese 500 Beginner Reader (Blue), she only retained 56 of the Chinese words. That meant that I should revisit the books after a couple of weeks to make sure she has really learnt them. In the meantime, I will be reading other readers with similar basic words, and not move on to the second series.
Download your FREE Sage Books Basic Chinese 500 Assessment Pack
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(I solemnly swear to not spam you, and will only send you useful Chinese teaching tips and information!)
Happy Assessing!
