On Monday 21^st February 2022, Lancaster University Confucius Institute delivered a Chinese Day to all the students at Willow Lane Community Primary School. The Confucius Institute team who delivered the Chinese Day was Haiyang - a Chinese language teacher; Sam - a second year student studying Chinese and Spanish at Lancaster University with an interest in teaching and Emily – our new Confucius Institute Admin Assistant who was a pupil at Willow Lane Community Primary School and has recently graduated with a degree in Chinese language and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).

As Mandarin is taught as part of the curriculum in Key Stage 2 at Willow Lane Community Primary School, it was impressive to discover how much Mandarin and facts about the Lunar New Year that the students already knew!

During the Chinese Day, each of the students were given a Chinese name based on the pronunciation of their name. Then the key stage 1 students learned how to say some greetings in Mandarin such as “ 你好 - Hello” and “ 新年好 - Happy New Year”. The whole school was also taught the Chinese New Year song ‘ 新年好 ’, which the students enjoyed singing.

To finish off the sessions, the students learned how to write the character ‘ 福 ’, which means ‘good luck’ in Mandarin. The students had fun writing the character on red paper to make lucky decorations to take home.

It was wonderful to be able to go out into the local community again and we hope to be able to deliver more Chinese Days in the future.

For more information about our Chinese Days in schools and extra-curricular language classes, please contact us via email: ci@lancaster.ac.uk .