Ms. Xu’s Advanced Chinese: Health & Environment class held their own Shark Day. Similar to Beavers’ Shark Day and the television show Shark Tank, groups of students presented their prototypes and ideas to a panel of two judges Rachel Summer P’21 and Wen Chen P’19.
Students created prototypes and solutions after researching the health and environmental issues currently in China and tried to come up with ideas that would improve the quality of life. Each student chose an issue they were passionate about and worked for seven weeks on research in both English and Chinese, interviewed people by phone in China, and gathered data about their issue. From there they built prototypes of their ideas and created a pitch in Chinese to present to the two judges, who are parents of current students that speak Chinese.
“The benefit of this project is that a student can find an idea that is something they are passionate about and believe in, and it takes them beyond the classroom environment. They can learn terminology and ideas in areas that are relevant to their interests.” – Ms. Xu
The projects varied from an educational video teaching people to recycle, breathing masks, a health app, a website with ways to help save giant pandas, and more. After they presented the judges then asked questions and gave suggestions in Chinese. The judges then graded each of the pitches on prototype idea, language accuracy, pronunciation, delivery, and responses to questions.
When asked afterwards about their experience being Shark Day judges and listening to the pitches, Wen Chen said “the kids are so energetic and creative, and every single one of them was extremely serious about their work.” Both judges were impressed by the classes language skills. “Their pronunciation was incredible,” said Rachel Summer.
The judges chose the winning project by Ben Moscowitz ’20 and Nicole Kelly-Aligio ’20 of a mask with a light system that lights up to tell you if the air is clean or not. An honorary mention went to the “Nose Pod 鼻子子” by James Morse ’19 and Max Bergstrand ’19, and the language distinction for great pronunciation went to Teddy Duval ’20.