By Pu-mei Leng
Our school had two half-day classes for us to get used to online teaching and last Friday (March 27) was my first day of whole day class. I watched CNN to check the pandemic numbers in the morning before the class. And I made a quick slide intend to teach the current event. As I was teaching, I realize it is the best time to teach Chinese big numbers as a routine as long as we are having online school. The big number in Chinese is confusing to students as we all know. I usually teach big number to high level students when we teach world population. Now if you have students who love to watch contemporary television show may ask you about “几个亿.“ Other than that they do not hear enough big numbers for acquisition.
So I seize the opportunity to teach big numbers as our routine, the daily pandemic report. By the time I heard the congress finally pass the 2 trillion economic stimulus, I was overjoyed that I will teach the word “zhao” for 1 trillion. So I made three slides now:
Page 1： change the data daily (my newer slide added Maryland state’s numbers) since my school is in Maryland.
Page 2: Congress Pass 2 trillion
Page 3 Show this as information. Better yet, challenge your students to compare the Chinese way of counting big number with the English way and find out the “pattern” themselves.
Each day, you can insert a new slide to add in the updated information for that day.
If you’d like to access the PowerPoint, download it here, it is free.