Building upon the genre-based research in literacy and English as a Second language (ESL) education developed in Australia in the past three decades, this paper reframes a genre-based approach to teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) in a primary classroom. Grounded in Bernsteinian sociology while also working in transdisciplinary dialogue with systemic functional linguistic perspectives, this approach to genre is illustrated with respect to CFL curriculum genres built in steps through power and control relations as well as phasal shifts in ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings. The paper identifies four CFL curriculum genres in a particular classroom and instantiates a curriculum genre of Chinese language learning through song that inducted disadvantaged students into the knowledge about language and subject contents. I argue that the reframed genre-based pedagogy, as a pathway to educational and social justice, can help teachers chart their lessons and has important implications for theory and practice.