Community Hot Spots

Hot Spots

Through iEarn website, an International Education and Resource Network, we got the chance to meet Ms. Edna Pythan, the Global Connections Liaison  Highland Park ISD in Dallas, TX, USA, who has an interesting project about "Community Hot Spots". The partnership includes 12 classess from Dallas, TX, USA, four from Madrid, Spain, and our school.
Students took pictures of their favorite spots in their community and created a "Hot Spots" project on Voicethread. Then, they uploaded these pictures on Voicethread and talked about why these places are their "hot spots" and why they are an important part of their community. Then teachers will create a Wiki to host a discussion about their community and share that wiki with partner schools so they too can post Voicethreads, as well as view and comment on student videos.

Outcomes:

- Students will identify their favorite places in their own community and investigate why it is an important part of their community.

- Students create a Voicethread that clearly communicates their favorite places in their community and why it is an important part of their community.

- Students will analyze voice threads of other students to find similarities and differences in that particular community and their own.

Happy New Year 2011




with our best wishes

 

We used "Wallwisher", an online notice board maker, to express our happiness and wish our friends from around the world a very Happy New Year. We have added our photos, greetings video, and the "happy" song to the Wallwisher board. If you'd like to post a sticky, you can just double click on the wall. It's so easy and fun, try it and leave us a message :)

Wish you all a wonderful holiday season!

Love to All of You!

Children's Day in Bangkok, Thailand

new friends from Thailand

We have new friends from Udomsuksa School, Bangkok, Thailand. Udomsuksa School is a Thai Private School with an English Prgram following the curriculum specified by the Ministry of Education. This school is existing for more than 35 years already. It's a big school with 4,000 students enrolled from Nursery to Grade 12. Ms. Sally Medina shared with us "Children's Day Around the World" project on the eLanguages website and our friends told us how this special day is celebrated in their country.

"Children's Day in Thailand falls every 2nd Saturday in January no matter what date it falls. Government offices and different organizations conduct different activities for the children on this day. The Prime Minister's office is opened and allow children to experience sitting on the Prime Minister's chair and act like a real minister.Children will be interviewed how they feel sitting on the prime minister's chair. Military bases are opened also to let children try to be on a plane and let them survey the inside of it. Most parents bring their children to different places like zoo, parks and shopping malls. School conduct simple activities for their pupils and students a day before the real Children's Day."

 

Children's Day Around The World

Thank you Ms Medina for joining our project on eLanguages and looking forward for more collaboration.



The Way We Read Around Us

We read company signs,

store signs,

and bank signs............

We are ePals, the community-wide collaboration, has focused on how we say "HELLO" in different languages. Now, they'd like to have a sample to include on the ePals page, as a demonstration for others to see:

- 1 minute video showing how we read in our environment. For this reason, we, first graders, took a short trip around our school building to find labels and signs to read and made a video showing the way we read around us in Arabic, our native language, and then translate it to English.

Big Thank You to Mrs. Elizabeth Fish and the ePals association for giving us the chance to join these projects. Your support is exemplary! That made us very happy!

and here is the link to our video on the ePals website:

http://www.epals.com/media/p/260536.aspx

Oscar's Twin Brother: Lucky

Lucky's Diary

a photo album



 a toothbrush and toothpaste




Lucky and his Favorite Things



We hold sooo dear!

It's a very big surprise! We're so excited to meet Oscar's twin brother, Lucky.

Lucky intends to stay the whole school year with us because Oscar has told him that he really enjoyed listening to our stories and having fun with all of us. He will help us improve our reading and writing skills.

Lucky, this adorable bear, comes with his bag packed with his favorite toys, clothes, a bar of soap, a blanket, a toothbrush, toothpaste, his best bedtime story, a photo album and a diary. Every day, we're going to pull one of our names from an envelope and the lucky student gets to take our Teddy Bear home with him. Lucky will go home with his bag and with the help of our parents, we'll write down in his diary all of our adventures and take pictures with him.

We eagerly wait our turn for a day with Lucky...we promise to make you very happy and take good care of you.

Reading is Fun!

A Day of Reading



Scavenger Hunt




Musical Books Game



Reading to Younger Students



 

Name That Book

 

Reading is fun and a time to look forward to!

Sunday With Flat: Colorado

Flat Stanley went home with friends in Craig, Colorado. Each child made a timeline of his or her day and wrote a recount of the day. Here are a few pictures from the visits. You can read about each child's day in the ebook.

 by Mrs. Cheryl Arnett on Flat Friends blog

Sunday With Flat: Lebanon



a city I like to visit, Tripoli



at Rawche...we went for a walk together

stayed at home playing computer games with my Flat

Sunflower is Flat's favorite flower!

Flat likes chocolate!

at the toy store

Everyone was excited! We took Flat Stanley home with us to spend Sunday together. When we got home, there was so much to do and share. Flat was so happy to meet our families and tell them about his adventures in Colorado, USA.

Special thank you to our parents who gave our Flat a warm welcome, took pictures, and sent them to our teacher via email. We appreciate your contribution!

Stanley And Me

Stanley is a good student and a good friend...

Letters to our friends in Colorado...Don't worry! Your Stanleys are in good hands!
We can't wait to hear all about our Flat Stanelys' adventures in Craig. Have fun with FLAT!!!



Here is a puzzle for you. Try to solve it in less than two minutes and read Stanley's message to you.

Recycling At Riyadh Najed Schools: Saudi Arabia

Our new friends at Riyadh Najed Schools in Saudi Arabia

Recycling crafts is a great way to teach kids about recycling and the environment.

Recycling Bulletin Board...What? Why? How?

"Recognizing the importance of recycling, the elementary students at Riyadh Najed Schools (Boys Section) hand in hand with the American Diploma students prepared a project about the materials that can be recycled and the benefits of recycling. The project showed that recycling is our best means to counter the damage we have been doing to the earth for centuries. Students were very interested in the benefits of recycling and the role it plays to improve our environmental condition.

Students have fun making their own watering can to use in the garden by recycling a plastic jug. This is clear in the following picture that shows on of Riyadh Najed students watering a tree using a recycled plastic jug."
Mr. Nawar Rahmoun, Assistant Director of English Language Center at Riyadh Najed Schools

Thank you Mr. Rahmoun for sharing with us your recycling project... and we're so glad that you liked our recycling activities that we did last school year.
Happy New Hijri Year to you and to all our new friends...

New is the year...and new are the hopes!

Flat Stanley Arrived In Craig

Our Stanleys are in good hands.

Our Flat Stanleys have arrived in Craig, Colorado, USA to visit our friends at Sunset Elementary School. Each of them has a Stanley and will be taking them home to experience life with them!
Second graders will share Stanleys' adventures and post their activities on a special blog "FLAT FRIENDS"...here is the link to our new blog:
FLAT FRIENDS

Power Teaching Technique

When I say "Class", you say "Yes"...

However I say "Class", you say "Yes"...

Power Teaching Technique works every time and engages students in active learning. It's a perfect tool to keep the class together and have them teach each other. We used this method to learn about classroom rules...

"Power Teaching Technique" is one of the fastest growing education reform in the United States. It takes about twenty minutes to train a class in "Class- Yes", "Teach- Okay", and the scoreboard. Then the other techniques can be taught more quickly.
The six power teaching techniques are:
1. Class- Yes
2. Teach- Okay
3. The Scoreboard
4. Micro- lecture
5. Hands and Eyes
6. Comprehension Check

Learning to Write Comments Using Paper Blogs

rules for writing comments using paper blogs

"writing comments" web

paper blog post

and we started...We used a pack of post-it note and pencils.

Learning an offline way to write comments on blog posts using paper blogs is so much fun! After reading the rules of a good comment, we were divided into five stations. The leaders of each station were responsible to read the blog post to their groups and were the first to compose a comment. Then we took turns commenting on the blog posts and sometimes on our friends' comments....and the excitement grows!

Dear families, you are also an important part of the comment section and we'd love to hear from you. Thank you for all your support!

I'd also like to thank the special guest on the live interactive webinar, Ms. Karen McMillan. The paper blog was an interesting way to introduce second graders to commenting on blogs!