Weekly Newsletter #8

Friday, April 20th, 2007

Dear Parents,

This has been a busy week, but next week will be even busier leading up to the May holiday. As you know, from March 30th to April 4th is the holiday time, so there will be no school. I hope you enjoy your vacation with your family wherever it takes you. I’m sure the students will need a rest from all the studying they are doing.

Next week, on Tuesday, April 24th, the students will have their monthly field-trip. Our class will having a picnic at Zhongshan Park for most of the day from 9:00 to 2:50 pm. We will also have a chance to visit the Qingdao Zoo. Lunch will be supplied. Students should dress well for the weather, and wear good shoes for playing games.

The following day, on April 25th, we will have our first mid-term exam. It will be Spelling/Vocabulary. Combined with grammar and writing, this will include many items from our Daily English and Spelling Lists. I recently gave students a study sheet, which is also available for viewing on the website. The following day, on Thursday, April 26th, we will have two more tests. The first will be Grammar/Writing (mostly from Megaflash units 1, 2, and 3), and the second will be the Reading/Comprehension (mostly from two storied from Harcourt: “Days with Frog and Toad” and “Wilson Sat Alone”). Students can take the reading book home with them in order to study these stories.

I have recently found out that the Chinese government is no longer blocking websites on www.blogspot.com, so there is no longer any problem viewing the class website. You can go directly to www.3-1kisq.blogspot.com without any problems. Today I recorded some questions from Daily English time, and you will be able to see some very cute videos of the students when I upload them.

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

Reading/Comprehension

We reviewed the stories “Wilson Sat Alone” and “Days with Frog and Toad.” The students should have completed up to page 26 in the workbook. In the future, we will be using books that Mr. Lyle Smith has kindly provided for the IED department.

Oral/Vocabulary

Due to scores not being as high on Mondays as Fridays, I have made the Spelling and Daily English tests on Friday again. I’m very proud of the effort the students put into these difficult tests, and I want them to know they should be proud of their achievements.
I look forward to good results on the challenging mid-term. Next week there will be no Daily English or Spelling due to the mid-terms. This week’s pop song was “Apples and Bananas” by Raffi. This song teaches us about AEIOU vowels and how they can changes words.

Writing/Grammar

I’m very happy with the English journals lately. I’m glad parents are encouraging good effort. Please make another notebook for students to rewrite previous pages in. It can be called the “Rewrite Journal.” Students will get one more sticker when they rewrite pages from earlier in the week. I will no longer mark pages with purple stars, and instead let the students take the initiative to do this on their own. Some students have really improved their writing and no longer make verb mistakes as often. Other students still write in the present-tense when they write about yesterday. Please try to stop!: )

Science

I want to make science projects as I showed in the picture from last week’s newsletter. However, I am having problems finding boxes to cut in half. I would like each student to have a box that is the same size. If any parents know where to get boxes that are in good condition and 2’-3’ feet high and wide, please let me know. I considered having students bring in boxes, but this will not work well if every student has a box that is different.

The purpose of this project is to learn research and presentation skills. Kids will chose any three animals from and of the six animal groups (insect, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, bird) and learn about them independently.

I would also like to congratulate Cindy for receiving the IED Science Award. She was the best behaved and most enthusiastic student on that day, and she had some good observations about why the experiment failed. I would also like to thank Lucy and her family for trying the experiment at home and giving me a video of it. I will put it on the website. Unfortunately, they didn’t have good luck with the experiment either. If anyone wants to try again, I will still award 5 stickers, but only if it works!: )

Have a good weekend, and study hard for next week’s tests~!



Knowledge is power!