Snakes and Dragons Education Pack
29 January 2013
The Chinese Spring Festival and Chinese New Year begin on 10 February when we will enter the Year of the Snake. As we prepare for this, the British Council have created a ‘Snakes and Dragons’ education pack for primary schools across the UK to explore Chinese culture and language with pupils in the run up to the Chinese New Year and beyond.
Focusing on China, the materials which were prepared in connection with the IOE Confucius Institute for Schools will help introduce primary school children to some of the differences and similarities between the lives and culture of people in the UK and China.
Each education pack contains an array of resources for the classroom including; lesson plans, Chinese poems, assembly plans, posters and activities to keep your young people engaged throughout. The China pack also complements international work that your school may be involved with such as Connecting Classrooms, Language Assistants and the International School Award.
The British Council has been working with partner HSBC to promote the study of Chinese language and culture in the UK since 2000. Monday 4 February sees the 10th anniversary of the HSBC/British Council Mandarin Chinese Speaking Competition, which rewards students who have made the effort to master Mandarin from scratch. The two organisations also run annual Chinese summer schools for primary school pupils at two UK locations, and support Mandarin teaching through their Chinese Language Assistants programme – native speakers who have been coming to work in UK classrooms for the past 11 years.
