Outside the Box – Ashley Bleeker
As part of Renascence School International’s trilingual immersion program, students celebrated the Chinese Moon Festival in class. This is an important festival in Chinese culture and students and teachers alike were excited to celebrate. Here is some background on this festival from one of our Chinese instructors, Xiong Laoshi:
“Mid-Autumn Festival, Zhongqiu Jie (中秋节) in Chinese, is also called the Moon Festival or the Mooncake Festival. It is the second most important festival in China. The ceremony is held to give thanks for the harvest and to encourage the harvest-giving light to return in the coming year. It is also a reunion time for families, a little like Thanksgiving. Chinese people celebrate it by gathering for dinners, worshiping the moon, lighting paper lanterns, and eating mooncakes. RSI will also celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival in Chinese classes with a variety of activities.”
Students celebrated this festival in an immersive environment while enjoying mooncakes with their classmates. The day also included time for creativity as they made lanterns together and greatly enjoyed the process of learning. The L10 class created their mooncakes out of playdough as well! It is truly a fun experience for all.
These in-class celebrations are an important part of what makes trilingual language immersion successful at Renascence School International. Our educational team merge different educational facets to increase student learning while encouraging a fun academic environment. As students engage with Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and English, we aim to partner language acquisition with a cultural understanding behind each one. When both language and culture are taught together it creates a rich learning environment as well as a depth of understanding for each student.
This practice of combining these two facets creates a strengthened empathy for students and a curiosity to learn. Our goal is to prepare students for the global environment, and this is just one way we are supporting our students in that journey.
