Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear parents,

For this week, we read the story, "The paper dragon". It is rather an oriental story about a dragon who asks an artist what is the most powerful thing in the world, and the answer is, "Love is the strongest thing in the world". We wrote down some of the new vocabularies that we learnt and found out the meanings, and wrote sentences. Then, we also worked on the workbooks. For science, we learnt about "Interactions Among Living Things", which talks about what "food chain", "food web", "herbivore", "carnivore", "omnivore", and some other words are. We learnt that humans are the most important of most food webs, and any changes that occur at the bottom part of the food webs would definitely affect humans in their consumptions of certain foods. For example, if there were no cows, then there would not have beef or cow's milk, and we would have to find another food source. We have worked on the science workbook as well, and made posters of the land food web, and the marine food web. We also worked on grammar and learnt what is a "conjunction" and "compund sentence" by using "and", "or", "but" to combine two or more sentences.

This week,

Edward- He converses well, and has been talkative in class.

Andy - He likes to tell jokes to his classmates and make them laugh.

Raymond - He has a strong character and believes in what he is doing.

Perry - He cooperates well with his classmates, and he always has a friendly smile.

Iris - She does her work nicely and concentrates well.

Ellen - She is outspoken, and she finishes her work fast and at the same time, she understands them. She likes to participate and has been active in class.

Kevin - He does his work nicely, and friendly to his classmates. He concentrates well, and he reads aloud, well, and clear.

Jessica - Although she reads slower, she tries hard in class.

Have a great weekend!
Teacher Jennifer

Dear parents,

We started this week with reading the story "Marble Champ", about a girl who cannot play sports well, but she tried hard and created a sport of her own, she played with marbles, competed in a game, and she won the championship. We picked out some new vocabularies that students didn't know, such as, "trophy", "accurate", "referee",
"recital", "opponent", "previous", etc. And we made sentences with these words. We also worked on the workbooks. Then for Science, we went over "Interactions in an Ecosystem", and the meanings of some related scientific terms, such as,"ecosystem",
"abiotic factor", "biotic factor", "population", "community", "ecology", "habitat",
"niche", we also continued to work on the workbooks and made posters regarding "Ecosystem".

For Funday, we went to see a movie, "My sister's keeper". It is a touching movie, hope everyone enjoyed it.

This week,

Ellen, Edward, Andy, and Iris worked together on the Ecosystem poster, they cooperated very well.

Jessica, Kevin, Raymond, and Perry worked in a group to make the poster. Although they had little arguements, they were able to do the task well.

Have a great weekend!

Teacher Jennifer

Friday, November 13, 2009

Hello everyone, I am teacher Jennifer, I substituted teacher Scott's Saints class for the past two days, and glad to find out that each student is polite and pleasant.

On Thursday, we continued to work on writing a Commercial. When finshed writing, they read aloud and practised on acted them out. The motive of this project is that each child can be expressive and creative, also learn to be a good reader and confident speaker.

The students were put into groups and each group picked a product that they would write a Commercial for it.

Ellen and Andy were partners and their product was about a camera that has many cool features.

Kevin and Edward worked on an uncommon drink that provides lots of energy.

Raymond and Perry worked on a food product.

Jessica, Iris, and Kelly worked on a commercial about a special watch.

They all came up with creative ideas and wrote scripts about their products. They were very cooperative and worked closely with their partners. Then when they finished practising their scripts, they had a great time acting them out.

On friday, we did Arts and Crafts, each student did a painting. It was a free topic of the student's choice, so first they used pencils to draw on the canvases, then they painted the canvases with acrylic paints. They all turned out to be nice paintings.

It has been a pleasure to work with teacher Scott's Saints class.

Have a great weekend!
Teacher Jennifer

Hi everyone,
I'd like to apologize for missing last week's blog post. It was a very busy time with Halloween...anyway... last week we read the story " Dear Mr. Henshaw " in reading class, and studied about animal traits in science class. The students also took a vocabulary test for weeks 5-8 and all the kids did very well!

This week we read the story " Digging Up the Past" about Jamestown, Va. the first English colony in the New World. We also read a story about the events that led up to the Revolutionary War in the United States. The kids had a very difficult time understanding the meaning behind the history. Many of them couldn't understand how they could live without cars, trains, tv's, etc...

In science class we studied animal adaptations ( mimicry and camouflage ) and how each trait protects animals living in the wild.

Just a reminder that next week will be parent-teacher conferences. Also, starting next Thursday ( Nov. 12th ) I will be going back to the United States for a short vacation to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. I will be back to Taiwan and Tree House on Tuesday, December 1st. While I'm away Teacher Jennifer will be teaching the class.