ASPENDALE GARDENS PRIMARY SCHOOL
Dream, Believe, Achieve
An IB World School
We are Balanced, Reflective, Principled, Courageous, Thinkers, Inquirers, Caring, Communicators, Open minded, Knowledgeable
Additional Language (Chinese Mandarin)
We understand the importance of embracing other cultures and languages and pride ourselves on our Mandarin program and Asia connections. All students from Foundation to Year 6 partake in one hour of Mandarin instruction per week by one of our qualified Language Teachers. These lessons, where possible, connect to the classroom’s current units of inquiry, while ensuring basic language instruction is occurring. It is of greatest importance that Language is integrated into the general classroom and addressed by teachers conversing with students in Mandarin regarding everyday questions and observations.
This program is complemented by our accreditation as a “Confucius Classroom” school. We have established strong partnerships with China to develop a wider perspective of the world for our students.
We have two sister schools in China - Youfu West Street in Nanjing and Yucai Primary in Yangzhou. We have an annual China Tour for a group of Year 5/6 students to visit our sister schools, and we reciprocate their hospitality by hosting them with us for one week. These international partnerships allow our students and staff to have access to a broader range of learning opportunities that are absolutely life changing.
Through the power of our Information and Communication Technologies we are able to maintain and enhance our relationships by ‘Skyping’ the students from our sister school. This is a very exciting part of our school program and one that promotes globalisation and cultural learning amongst our students.
We enjoy the expertise and experience from our intern from China every year who is billeted with our incredibly generous school community. Each intern brings authentic Chinese culture to our school, something the students find both fascinating and educational.
