Our 22nd Annual Chinese Teaching Conference ‘Evolving Classrooms – Adapting Methods of Mandarin Teaching to Keep Pace with Changing Contexts’ is coming up on 11th October 2025.
In this year’s programme you’ll find plenaries, speeches, performances as well as workshops covering a wide range of topics. In the run up to the conference, we are interviewing some of the workshop presenters to get a better idea of what can be expected at the conference.
Jing Wang is the Deputy Head and Head of the Chinese Programme at Kensington Wade, the first and only immersive English-Chinese bilingual prep school in Europe. She has created the school’s unique Chinese programme and has played an important role in making sure that school’s whole curriculum helps to develop the children’s biliteracy and bicultural awareness.
Can you tell us a bit about your workshop content?
My workshop will focus on how visual thinking routines can be used in Mandarin classrooms to support speaking and creative writing. I will introduce a range of routines—such as Show and Tell frames, Story Maps, See–Think–Wonder, Comic Strip Sequencers, and Paragraph Planners—and demonstrate how they can help students generate ideas, expand vocabulary, and structure responses with greater confidence. The session will also connect these strategies to GCSE-style speaking and writing tasks, showing how visual organisers can scaffold progression from simple responses to more extended, creative, and well-structured output.
What style of workshop are you planning to deliver?
It will be a highly practical, interactive workshop. I plan to model several visual thinking routines and invite participants to try them out briefly, as students would. The style will be hands-on and teacher-friendly, with a clear focus on classroom application. Attendees will also receive a set of ready-to-use templates to take back and adapt for their own classes.
What made you choose this subject for this year’s conference?
As a bilingual school leader and Mandarin teacher, I often encounter the challenge of students having ideas in their heads but struggling to express them in Chinese. Visual thinking routines have been one of the most effective tools to lower the barrier to speaking, give structure, and encourage creativity. I chose this subject because it responds to a real, common need in Mandarin teaching: how to move students from single words or short answers to more independent, extended responses.
What will attendees take away from your workshop?
- A practical toolkit of visual thinking routines that can be applied immediately in Mandarin classrooms.
- Ready-to-use templates for speaking and writing tasks.
- Strategies for differentiation and scaffolding in mixed-ability classes.
- Ideas for linking visual organisers with GCSE-level speaking and writing prompts.
- Most importantly, inspiration and confidence to use visual tools to make students’ thinking visible and their Mandarin more fluent and creative.
Many thanks Jing!
We look forward to welcoming ticketholders to Jing’s workshop on Saturday 11th October 2025 at the IOE. Book your conference tickets here.