Chinese Zodiac

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 I will make a little film for the Zodiac. 


I have created a really sweet and unthreatening Memory Palace with the 12 animals of the Chiense Zodiac. They work so well together and they even come with their own narrative. 

And then when I looked into using the 12 animals to learn 12 special Chinese characters called 'The 12 Earthly Branches' I found out that that was the point all along. They are a mini 'alphabet' used in navigation, dates, and as components of characters. You just plonk them down into a location and hey presto, instant memory palace. 

They are really attractive to my students as the Animals are associated with Lunar New Year, and LNY is associated with getting packets of money from all the adults and that's a really positive association! At the same time, I played a game with some classes this week to see if they remembered all the animals and could get them in the right order, and very few kids could. Some had a rhyme they could go through, but they certainly couldn't get them in reverse. 

It's also very short. The other accessible MP I have is the alphabet in the hall, but I can only cover half of the letters in one lesson, so I can't move forward quickly with using it. 


Uses for the Zodiac Palace I am trying out:
- the LNY animals, of course

- the 12 Earthly Branches

- the Chinese national anthem

- 12 Axioms of Math modeling

- 12 words of vocabulary

- 12 topics of vocabulary useful for speaking exams (I think these would have to lead into secondary Memory Palaces and that might be unwieldy. But I'm thinking about how to make it work. Associate the animal with the topic in some narrative way. 

- most important, it's a nice, fast, cute way to introduce the concept and anyone would like to be able to remember the order of the years without effort. 


I will make a little video here of the locations. Also my lesson plan. 

I'm an artist-writer-teacher. I live in a village in the New Territories of Hong Kong. I teach English (EFL) in a local secondary school.

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