Weekly Newsletter #4

Friday, March 23^rd, 2007

Dear Parents,

Thank you for attending the Parent Teacher meeting on Wednesday. It was nice to meet with some of you, and discuss both your children and the curriculum. If you ever have concerns, feel free to email or contact me by telephone.

I would also like to apologize for some problems with the class website. Unfortunately, this is due to the Chinese government putting restrictions on blog websites. While I am able to update the site, the site is unavailable for viewing within China. Because of this problem, I plan to move the site. For now, however, you can view the website through a “proxy” server.

First of all, go to: www.bypassproxy.net or www.proxify.com

These sites allow us to bypass the Chinese government’s restrictions. When you see the URL window, simply type in: www.3-1kisq.blogspot.com and you will be able to see the website. It might be very slow, but it will work.

Now I will review what we did this week, and what we hope to do next week:

Reading/Comprehension

We read the stories “Henry and Mudge” and “Get Up and Go” in the Harcourt reading book. This week, the workbooks that accompany these books also arrived, and I will be using them most often for homework. Students should have completed the first 6 pages.

Oral/Vocabulary

I hope to keep past vocabulary and Daily English sentences in constant use so that they stay fresh in the student’s minds. I have made some crossword puzzles as handouts that will hopefully help the students remember everything they have learned. It appears that test scores for both Daily English and the Weekly Spelling continue to be very high, so I don’t think the material is too difficult for the majority of students.

For oral proficiency, I plan to teach the students to sing a new pop song every week. This week we learned to sing “My Love” by Westlife. This activity is good for listening, vocabulary, and pronunciation. And of course singing~^^ I will also put links to the songs on the class website.

Writing/Grammar

Some students are very enthusiastic about the English diary, while other students are not as interested. Please encourage and help your children with it, but try to let them write as much as possible without help from parents. If you feel your child needs more homework, have them rewrite and correct the mistakes in previous days. The students should be aware of the mistakes they make and learn how to correct them. This is the main purpose of keeping an English journal.

On Monday, I gave the students a sample of how to write a good journal. You can use this as a reference, and I will post this on the website in case students have lost the handout (students should have a Clear File folder to keep handouts in).

We have finished Unit 1 in the Megaflash 3 textbook. There will be a test on Tuesday covering proper/common nouns, plurals, is/are and some spelling of days and months. Please help students study.

We are also now studying penmanship/written script. This is meant to be done with a ballpoint pen instead of a pencil, so please make sure your child has a pen.

Science

We continue to study plants, and students now know the parts of a plant. Now that the classroom is now equipped with TV to computer with internet, I will be able to better illustrate how plants grow. We still plan to have each student grow a plant.

Birthday Parties

Mrs. Choi and I have decided that the last period in the afternoon on the last Friday of every month will be the class-wide “Birthday Party Day.” This month, Hannah (3/3) and Bryan (3/27) have birthdays. We will celebrate with snacks and cake donated by parents. Please also provide a small gift with a value no higher than 10 RMB. Erasers, stickers, small toys, and stationary are good gifts. We will have the party for Hannah and Bryan on March 30^th at 2:30 pm.

Field-Trip

On March 29^th, from 9:00 am to 12:30 pm, the students in grade three will go on a field-trip to the Qingdao T.V. Tower and park. Students do not need to prepare anything, as lunch will be eaten at school as usual. A camera and suitable clothing for hiking are the only things to consider.

Here is next week’s Spelling List. These words are taken from the pop song, the science book, Harcourt’s workbook, Megaflash etc.

1. supercalafragilisticexpialodocious

2. predict

3. contraction

4. sparkling

5. seedling

6. sniffing

7. meadow

8. reason

9. mistake

10. snuggle

11. apostrophe

12. worried

13. hurried

14. alone

15. island

16. prayer

17. wonder

18. cafeteria

19. sideways

20. pollen

Here is this week’s Daily English. Some are from our weekly pop song, and others are from science. Some are riddles, and one is a tongue-twister. 7,8,9,10 are “free response.” Please help students think about what they want to say.

1. Plants need water, sunlight, and soil rich with minerals to grow.

2. I predict that the turtle will grow 19 centimeters wide, and 27 centimeters long.

3. So I say a little prayer, and hope my dreams will take me there, where the skies are blue, to see you once again, my love.

4. Nobody knows whose nose blows. But everybody knew whose blue nose blew.

5. What kind of room has no windows and no doors? A mushroom!

6. Why was the baby ant confused? All his uncles were ants!

7. I always wake up at ___ o’clock during weekdays. On the weekends, I usually wake up at ___ o’clock.

8. My favorite thing at school is ____________________, because ________________________.

9. When I grow up, I want to be a ___________________, because ________________________.

10. My favorite ______________ is _________________, because _________________________.