Dear parents,
This newsletter contains information of the next two weeks since the week of conference is a short week.
We are going to talk about implementing Mandarin Only Timeline on Monday, October 22. I will do a craft with the students to help them understand that in order to help their Mandarin grow, they need to speak Mandarin, read in Mandarin and write in Mandarin. Therefore, they should try their best to talk in Mandarin only in the classroom begins with Monday, October 22. I will use a reward system to encourage Mandarin output. I will also teach them some strategies like act out, draw pictures or describe the things by the words they know to communicate!
Information and Reminders:
Field Trip: Wednesday, October 17 DeGraaf Nature Center at 9:30am. Each student needs to bring their own snack and lunch that day just in case we won’t have enough time to get hot lunch when we are back to school. We will spend most of the time outside. Please dress your child for the weather and have your child wear outdoor shoes. We will leave school at 9:00. Thank you to Becky Haveman, Melissa Wire, Kristi Van Dyk and Lam Huynh for driving the field trip. We are all set for drivers. Drivers, please bring all the boosters you have.
Thank you so much for coming in to help me with supervising lunch and/or classroom work, I am looking for more lunch helpers to fill the spots till December,
The sign up is here https://docs.google.com/document/d/11N2ysK2h3OIJDNf15RIGihGLSXfauwVq4a3vCbyUyEY/edit
No homework for the week of October 22-23
October 24: No school
October 25-26: teacher CEA convention, no school
Up in Lights:
Please finish and send your child’s package the week before your child’s special week. During your child’s special week, it is a wonderful opportunity to have lunch with your child, bring in pets, and or share special talents your family members may have been blessed with. Just inform me ahead of time what is your plan.
Grandparents Day: Friday, Nov. 2
From the immersion program director
I spent some time this week reflecting on some stats of Zeeland Christian that I thought might interest some of you. Did you know that ZCS employs teachers from 8 different countries? Of our immersion teachers, 12 teachers are non-native speakers and 15 are native speakers of the language in which they teach. In looking at our student population, we are evenly balanced with half of our students in immersion and half in English classrooms. When considering Young 5’s through 8th grade, 41% of our students are in Spanish immersion, 8% are in Mandarin immersion, and 49% are in English classes. Praise God that our students are able to experience such a variety of cultures and languages everyday at school.
Curriculum
Language Arts
Daily 5
We will introduce another component of Daily 5 called Word Work. Students have mandatory word practice to finish. After that, they have seven choices to choose from to practice their word work. They are rainbow words, magnetic doodles, shaving cream, play dough, whiteboard, laminated squares for characters and window screen.
Writers’ Workshop:
We will continue our first unit called “Oral language: Building a Talking Community”. This coming week, we will tell stories by using drawing. The goal of this unit is to invite children to tell stories about themselves and things they know and can do.
Math
Relate objects and numbers 6-10
Science
We will wrap up the five senses unit with a field trip to Degraaf Nature Center this coming Wednesday.
Bible
Joseph the dreamer; Joseph, Slave and Prisoner; Joseph and two dreams; Joseph becomes a ruler; Joseph is reunited with his family.
We will learn about the fruits of the sprit throughout the year. For the month of October, we will learn about the fruit of joy.
Social Studies
We will continue the Project Based Learning (PBL) unit of making a map for grandparents’ day. This week, we will learn about position words and walk around the school by using a map to highlight the places we often go to for specials and lunch.
