Frequently Asked Questions
THE ORGANISATION
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Are you a community school teaching Chinese?
Although most of our volunteers are the mainstream teachers and qualified Chinese teachers, we are NOT a community school teaching Chinese. Our members either attend their local Chinese schools or home-educated by their Chinese parent(s), or learn with an online tutoring platform.
​The challenges of running a community school are staff recruitment, training, development, and retention. For this reason, we partnered with the online tutoring organisations, i.e., New Oriental Education Group, which has 40 years experiences in the bilingual education industry. We would recommend our members to take a trial lesson but there is no obligations to sign up their service.
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Are you a childcare service provider?
We are lucky to have qualified teachers and DBS checked volunteers to run our holiday club, but we ONLY provide childcare service when there is a genuine benifit to our members. For example, when we have an art integrated project with many cultural elements to deliver, parents, especially working parents, can’t accompany their children for such a long period. Day camps would be a good option. Moreover, research shows that immersive learning in consecutive days benefit children more than weekly learning. Vast majority of our events require parents’ present, even online-event, for the purpose of safeguarding and child protection.
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Are you a charity or a company?
We registered with Companies House as limited by guarantee and this is by law a not-for-profit legal entity. All profit needs to be invested back into the organisation and it also a fair way to protect the people who runs it. The company’s income mainly covers the operational costs, and we still rely on volunteers and donations at the starting up stage. In long run, we aim to recruit trustees and set up a charitable company which entitles public fundings. If you have the experience of operating a charitable company and would like to help us, please contact admin@litupmandarinbookclub.org
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What is EYFS? What is KS1 , KS2?
We encourage age-appropriate learning. Therefore, all our events and activities follow the National Curriculum in England and Wales where the Key stages (KS) is set up according to children’s age.
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Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) – ages 3-5 (Nursery and Reception)
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Key Stage 1 – ages 5-7 (Years 1-2)
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Key Stage 2 – ages 7-11 (Years 3-6)
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Key Stage 3 – ages 11-14 (Years 7-9)
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Key Stage 4 – ages 14-16 (Years 10-11)
We strongly believe that reading is a lifestyle and children should enjoy reading at every key stage during their precious childhood time. There is no book too silly or too simple, as long as they have had a great time.
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THE STORY CLUB
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How long is your session and how many stories are shared?
The session is about 40 mins via Zoom. We follow one rule: everyone should have a go, no matter big or small. All volunteer families will be put into a rota to share the stories in turns. Each volunteer family share two stories: one told by an adult, and one told by the child. Questions from the story might be asked and all attendees are encourage to answer the questions.
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How do I become a volunteer ?
All members who subscribed over three months can apply to be a volunteer family. Application need to be proposed 3 months prior to the start date and the applicant is requested to attend as much sessions as possible. This is because that our rota is about 3 months (12 families) on average and the storytellers need to interactive with all children. It is good practice to go through a complete rota cycle and understand all children’s level of speaking and listening. So the newly joined storyteller can interact with every children accordingly.
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Do you provide books?
Unfortunately, it’s the volunteer’s responsibility to share the stories they enjoy. Sharing of materials to others are not encouraged.
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If I missed out a session, can you provide a play-black?
NO. Recording in any format are strictly prohibited. It breaks the copyright law as well as in breach our safeguarding child policy. We request all attendees to keep their camara on so the storyteller can interact with all children.