By Casey Neill
Students from China and Dandenong North have been learning from each other.
Wooranna Park Primary School hosted 16 students from Grade 2 to Grade 6 from Monday 23 July to Friday 4 August.
Wooranna student Daniel, 11, has helped Chinese boy Tony, 11, to practice his English and understand the Australian way.
“It’s a good chance to get a bit more multicultural minded,” Daniel said.
“It’s hard to communicate with a different language, someone who doesn’t know as much English, and I don’t know any Mandarin.
“It was quite fun and enjoyable communicating with Tony. We’ve used some sign language!
“We also use Google Translate sometimes.”
Daniel said he’d learnt that he could make friends with anyone around the world.
“You don’t have to know the language,” he said.
“You can be friends with anyone no matter what language they speak.
“I was very surprised at how good they were at maths. They were doing Year 11 maths.”
Tony said he’d enjoyed his time in Australia and had made some new friends and learnt new things.
“In China we have eight classes a day,” he said.
“Here it is very free.”
Wooranna student Tavi, 8, hosted Chinese girl Jojo, 10.
“She’s learnt about the Murray River and how the Aboriginals lived there first, but then other people came and took all the Aboriginals away,” Tavi said.
“It’s fun and it’s made me make new friends from different cultures and countries.”
Jojo said she liked maths class the best.
Teacher Ivan Xiong said the students hailed from three different cities – Shanghai, Ningbo and Suzhou.
“They’ve had an amazing trip in Australia.
“Their parents want their children to study abroad.
“They want to send their children to different cities, different countries, like Australia.
“They want to get involved in the English environment. Everybody speaks English all the time so they learn a lot.”
Mr Xiong said their parents wanted them to have more opportunities in life.
He said the children also learnt different ways of studying.
“In China it’s really different. They just focus on doing homework,” he said.
“In the morning we get up so early. At night you have to do more study.
“Here, they don’t have so much homework. They focus on creative things.
“They can choose their favourite topics and they can do research.
“When they come back to China they can use this thinking way.
“They can maybe try it in their life. Maybe it can make a big change.”
Mr Xiong said teaching methods were very different.
“In China, the teacher stands in a high position. Whatever they say, we just do,” he said.
“I saw the teachers in this school, they’re so kind, they’re free to communicate. If you have any problems, you can just talk to them.”
He said there was fierce competition between Chinese students because there were so many of them.
“If you want to get a good university, you have to get quite high scores,” he said.
He said there were about 56 students in each class, they had to learn three main subjects – English, Chinese and maths – and were ranked against their peers.
“I saw in this school there was no ranking. Everyone was equal,” he said.
Wooranna Park principal Ray Trotter said the school had a focus on “student agency”.
“It involves students taking more responsibility for learning and pursuing their interests and passions, and a stronger focus on creativity,” he said.
“They develop curiosity.
“The interchange between teachers and children is different (to in China).
“Our teachers have to be learners themselves because these children are wanting to study a vast variety of things that are well outside the normal curriculum.”
Mr Trotter said: “I think it’s the cultural exchange that is important in such a short period of time.”
“We want our children to be global citizens and this is a good step,” he said.
