Suitable for: 6+ (lower elementary and up)
What better time to review your curriculum than when you’re selling them?
I wrote about Greenfield series years ago and it is still a good, if not horribly formatted post on all the Greenfield curriculum you can get. Back then I hadn’t actually used most of the curriculum. But now that I’ve collected and used quite a few, I can review!
Oh wait, so here’s the TL;DR: This is a good series to use if you want a Chinese equivalent of Writing with Ease to teach narration, dictation, comprehension, and character recognition after Sagebooks.
What is the Greenfield Rainbow Series?
The Rainbow Reading series is a reading comprehension series. The books are split into 7 rainbow levels 紅橙黃綠青藍紫 (red, orange, yellow, green, tortoise, blue, purple) levels, for K-6th grade. I’m guessing it’s K-6 because HK is on a British System, and not the original 1st to 7th grade as I thought.
Each level with 4 books for a total of 28 books. Each book contains reading comprehension passage that are 1-3 pages long. At the end of each passage, there are comprehension questions you can ask your child.
The passages are varied. There are jokes, cultural stories, riddles, short stories, fables, etc. The only thing to note is that this is written in HK Chinese, so sometimes the word usage isn’t what we’re used to in Taiwanese Chinese. It’s still comprehensible to me.
A picture is worth a thousand words. So here are sample pics from each level. You can see how by the last purple series, it’s now a lot of characters. And because of the content, even when the passages are short, I’d often had to explain the cultural or historical reference to Astroboy.
How Did We Use Them?
First some background….
As I mentioned, I used this as a Chinese version of Writing with Ease. Writing with Ease is a method of learning to write with 4 weekly lessons. In WWE 1, the kids:
- Day 1 – Copywork. Learn spelling and punctuation through copywork.
- Day 2 – Narration. Ask leading questions to help the student learn how to summarize. Then have them tell you one thing they remembered from the passage. Everything must be said in a complete sentence.
- Day 3 – Copywork. similar to day one.
- Day 4 – Similar to Day 2
Levels 2 & 3 get progressively harder, where the children eventually summarize themselves and copy their own narrated sentences.
Three years ago…….
So, similarly, what I did with Astroboy was, we’d read a passage, I’d point out the characters he didn’t know how to read, then I’d ask him the comprehension questions at the end of each chapter and ask him to repeat it back to me in a complete sentence.
The next day, we’d read the previous chapter and a new chapter.
Answering in a complete sentence was actually really really really hard for Astroboy 3 years ago. Plus he also had problems with the comprehension questions. He was super frustrated and I was super frustrated. It’s one reason we eventually dropped it in the orange level. Because learning Chinese should not be maddening.
Part of the problem is that as a kitchen-Chinese speaker, I didn’t know how to make sure the answer to the comprehension questions are good complete sentences!
BUT! If I were to implement it now……..
I would do it a little differently.
On Day 1, we’d do copy work of a sentence in the passage. I will point out character components for reading purposes and radicals, plus punctuation marks.
On Day 2, we’d read through a passage and circle the characters we didn’t know. Then, I’d pick 3-5 characters for him to learn/write before Day 4. In Taiwan, the schools have them write 25 characters a week!
We’d do a summary exercise and then I’ll ask him to tell me the one thing he remembers from the passage in a complete sentence.
On Day 3, we’d do another sentence for copywork. This time, instead of me picking out components, maybe have him show me first.
On Day 4, we’d repeat read the same passage as review, then I will ask him the 1-3 comprehension questions in the back. We’d also pick an additional 3-5 characters for writing and 造詞. The number of questions I ask will be based on the frustration level.
Optional. There are also often extension activities for each passage and based on the child’s interest, they can do those. Because the WWE method isn’t asking the child to come up with original thought content from a young age, it isn’t quite appropriate if you want to follow the method. However, if you want to do a more traditional Chinese learning approach, these creative writing extensions are good exercises to do.
The most important thing about the Writing with Ease curriculum is just consistency. It doesn’t need to be frustrating or too hard. With repetition and reading books in spare time, the children will get better and better at answering in complete sentences and summarizing.
In fact, there have been instances where we just stop WWE and take a break for a few weeks when the level gets too hard. I think something similar can be done in Chinese as well.
Would I Recommend?
Yes? You know, after 6 years, my general conclusion is, while some curriculum work for certain children vs others, ALL curriculum work for all children (unless special needs) if a teacher knows how to adapt it to the child.
That said, I do like this set of books because of the comprehension questions and extended activities. The comprehension questions are split into two parts, one is straight comprehension, and the other is critical thinking. You don’t usually find these in the comprehension workbooks.
Also? since I think narration matters in learning a language, I think it is a better way to work on comprehension than the multiple choice format in many workbooks.
Where to Buy It?
I bought it straight from Greenfield’s website. And Greenfield is horrible about giving discounts last I checked years ago. It looks like their website doesn’t carry all of it anymore. So you may have to contact them directly and see what’s up.
