Fun Jog-a-Thon Friday!

 On Friday we had both the Jog-a-Thon and a cupcake party. This picture and the video will show you how much fun we all had!!!!!

Help Wanted=Volunteer Hours

Once a week the teachers have to serve breakfast to the students 7:00-7:30am. If any parents are able to arrive at 7am once a week for a teacher to serve breakfast to allow us to have time to set up and prepare for the day, that would be extremely helpful! I personally serve breakfast on Thursday mornings, if anyone would like to help out in this way, let me know! :)

Also, we teachers have to do after school program two days a week. From about 3:45-4:45pm is when we would need the most help monitoring and helping students with their homework. This would allow us to plan and grade, which would help us to leave work as soon as all the after school students are gone at 5:30pm. To volunteer to help out in the after school program, you would need to be finger printed. The days I have after school program is on Mondays and Fridays. Please contact me if you would be willing to help out once a month, or once a week. Anything would be of GREAT help! Thank you parents for being so willing to help and serve both your teachers and your students! :)

High Frequency Words

Every morning at the beginning of class, I provide a short morning message for the students. I use this time to explain things like, starting sentences with capital letters, ending sentences with a period, and going over high frequency words (HFW). I always try to incorporate some HFW, especially the ones we are focusing on that week. We read the sentence a few times together and then I give a few students a chance to read the sentence aloud. Then I have students come up and circle any HFW they see in my sentence. Anyways, I tell you this background because a few days ago a student was using a white board during centers and he was using HFW in his sentence. He aked for my help to spell a word then says, "ok Ms. Boyd, so do you see any HFW in my sentence?" "Yes, I do." I answered. "ok, please circle all the HFW you see in my sentence," he proceeds to tell me. This is the type of moment that makes me smile and reminds me why I love students and being a teacher.

Mandarin Class

About 50 students in Kinder through 2nd grade attend my Mandarin class in the afternoons. I will post a few videos that will be helpful to practice their language and yours, if you want to learn also!!!

The first video is a song I have taught the students. They have it down pretty well, but I don't think they understand all of it meaning... However, it is a very simple song.

yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi

1,2,3,4,5,6,7

Wo de peng you zai na li?

My friend is where?

Zai zhe li, zai zhe li

Is here, is here

Wo de peng you zai zhe li

My friend is here

Kids say the darnest things....

So, today in class a student asked me if I was pregnant. Well, not actually. What he asked was  if I had a kid in there? And I asked, "In where?" Then he pointed to my stomach. I asked him, "does it look like I have a baby in my stomach?" Which he then said, "Yes!" and another student added it, "Yea, you do look like you have a baby in your tummy." After I cried a tear of sadness for myself, I made them move their clips... Just kidding. But man, I guess I need to start exercising more and eating a little better so my students don't start to spread rumors about me being pregnant. Just so you all know, no, I am not pregnant! And of course, these two students were both boys...

Fun and Educational Youtube videos

Here are some useful and fun videos for you to show at home. Students who are still struggling with letter recognition and letter-sound correlation will really benefit from these videos!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3S3OX6HQm4

This is a similar video with different pictures/words. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW7N64zsrs0

http://www.youtube.com/user/hooplakidz?v=wACviCgfqts

ABC's in American Sign Language
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMQHd1UBkeI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPMp5A_U2ek


I will post more later! Have fun learning!

First Day... Success!

Our first day of class was in my opinion, a success! The day went a lot more smoothly than I expected. Of course, we had a few bumps throughout the day; two feel asleep in class, one's belt broke, one student's cheek sadly met the carpet, a few clips were changed, and a some tears were shed. However, I had the opportunity to meet and speak with every student. We learned some important rules from a kitten named Coco. We even had some time to practice saying hello, goodbye, and 1, 2, 3 in Mandarin Chinese. And at the end of the day, each student was successfully picked up by their parents. It was great to meet the students I will be spending a lot of time with over this next school year and I look forward to seeing their growth over throughout the year. One day down, a lot more to come! :)