Grade 4 · Unit 8 · Capstone
我的地区
我的地区
Wǒ de dìqū — My Region
The Grade 4 capstone: a guided tour of the student’s own town, presented in Chinese as though to a visitor who has never been. Everything from the year gets used, and for the first time the audience is imagined rather than the class.
What students produce
A visitor’s guide to where they live, in two parts:
- Written: an illustrated four-page guide, 12–15 sentences in characters
- Spoken: a two-minute tour presented to the class, with the map as the only prop
What it has to include
- Where the town is and what it’s like — Unit 1
- How to get from one place to another — Unit 2
- Where to shop and roughly what things cost — Unit 3
- A local celebration, compared with a Chinese festival — Unit 4
- An animal or park nearby — Unit 5
- Where to eat and what to order — Unit 6
- Something the student did there recently, using 了 — Unit 7
In this unit
Four lessons to build it
📋
Lesson 1 · ~35 min
Plan the tour
Choosing five places worth showing a visitor, and deciding the order to walk them in.
🗺
Lesson 2 · ~35 min
Map and directions
Drawing the route and writing how to get between stops — Unit 2 doing real work.
✏
Lesson 3 · ~35 min
Write the guide
Twelve to fifteen sentences in characters, illustrated. Pinyin allowed only for place names.
🎤
Lesson 4 · ~35 min
Give the tour
Two minutes each, from the map. Classmates ask one question at the end, in Chinese.
How to assess it
Three things, weighted evenly
- Would a visitor be able to follow it? Could someone actually find these places and know what to do there? This matters most.
- Is the grammar of the year present and mostly right? Specifically 了 for completed actions, position words after places, and 是 versus 很.
- Did they answer the follow-up question? Handling an unrehearsed question, even imperfectly, is the real Grade 4 milestone.
End-of-year check
A student ready for Grade 5 can:
- Read about 280 characters
- Write about 160
- Complete a simple transaction — shop or restaurant — unaided
- Say what they did yesterday using 了
- Read a short illustrated story and get the gist
Grade 5 assumes 了 is solid. If Unit 7 was shaky, revisit it over the summer before moving on.