我的城市
Wǒ de chéngshì — My City
Grade 4 opens by stepping outside the home entirely. Students name the buildings around them, say where they live, and learn to describe a place rather than just point at it.
Unit objectives
- Name ten places in a town or city
- Say where they live using 我住在…
- Describe a place with two adjectives
- Read and write twelve new characters
Key vocabulary
城市 商店 医院 公园 银行 饭馆 超市 路 住 热闹 安静
Addresses run big to small
The same habit as dates and names — largest container first:
中国 北京 朝阳区 建国路 8号
Country, city, district, road, number — the exact reverse of an English address. Once students see that Chinese does this everywhere, it stops being a rule to memorise and becomes a way of thinking.
The place you live
Ten buildings
Flashcards, then spotting the shared characters — 馆 turns up in restaurant, library and museum.
Where do you live?
住在 plus a place, and the big-to-small address order.
Lively or quiet?
Describing places, not just naming them. 热闹 is a compliment in Chinese — worth explaining.
Map of my town
A drawn map, labelled in characters, with three written sentences describing it.
Why “noisy” is a good thing
热闹 translates literally as “hot and noisy,” and it is unambiguously positive — a busy night market, a restaurant full of talk, a street during a festival. Somewhere quiet might be praised as 安静, but a party that was 安静 would be a failure. English has no single word that carries the same warmth about crowds and noise, which makes it a genuinely interesting one for students to sit with.
Unit 1 progress check
A light, no-pressure way to see what’s sticking:
- Can your child name six places in town?
- Can they say where they live?
- Do they order an address big to small?
Naming buildings on the school run is free practice and takes no preparation at all.