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Photo by Courtney Lousley

Otakou Mandarin Cluster working hard on Calligraphy in 2019

Courtney Lousley —

Once again the Cluster School students have worked hard on creating wonderful calligraphy with their Mandarin Language Assistants.

Well done to all the students at St Clair, Musselburgh, Tahuna, Tainui, St Brigids, Andersons Bay, Macandrew Bay and Broad Bay schools during our past few lessons in calligraphy.

Seeing schools work at the ancient craft of calligraphy and develop their skills has been great fun said Man Lao Shi.  She has really loved working with Broad Bay, MacAndrew Bay, Tainui and Tahuna during her calligraphy lessons.  Man Lao Shi has included traditional Chinese music in her lessons which the kids really loved.

Xu Lao Shi and Zuo Lao Shi have also had fun during this very busy time as in addition to the calligraphy work they has been tutoring students for the Otago Chinese Bridge  Speech Competition.  They had a really good group of kids and a successful standing too.  Olivia Duffy made it to the South Island Champs which was awesome!

In the Cluster we have had Andersons Bay make a Sister School connection and they were lucky to visit China.  It was an amazing trip and the school will now develop their connections via digital conferencing and will look to host students to visit their school.  The school also has an extension class who were lucky to have a chance to drink tea and cook their own dumplings this week.

Our MLA are looking forward to beginning the language lessons that are focused on playing the game of Guess Who in Chinese.  We are looking for the best class and players as there will be some cool prizes up for grabs.

We are also almost ready to launch our new site which will have blended learning focus as our MLA are recording learning tools for students  to use.  

Xie xie,

The Otakou Mandarin Cluster Team