Baltimore International Academy

Chinese Your First Grade

Dear parents, It was a very challenging week in terms of classroom management. Classroom management: We spent some time reinforcing procedures such as entering the classroom in the morning, getting the small white board, lining up, etc. Students who didnt do a good job walking from playground to classroom spent some time practicing it while their peers played. A well-managed classroom is a prerequisite for learning. I will keep my expectations high and try different ways to achieve them. IB and CLA: We talked about some animals favorite food with the introduction of new words and sentence structure. We expanded animal vocabulary to tiger, elephant,
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lion, etc. to get prepared for the concept of food chain. We touched the idea of carnivore, herbivore and omnivore, but it was not successful. We will revisit it next week and introduce plants life cycle. We also learnt to write animals such as cow, sheep, bird, horse, worm, cat, dog and sh. These

Baltimore International Academy

Chinese Your First Grade

characters were chosen because of their common usage and easiness of writing. Based on our previous learning, we started to write sentences about simple facts of animals. For example, I am a pink pig. I have four legs, two big ears and one big nose. I like to sleep. My favorite food is corn. To assist with this process, each student was provided with a binder dictionary (sample pages in page 1). The words are arranged by topics and functions (nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.). This dictionary will serve as a tool for students who want to express themselves using characters both within and beyond our learning scope. Math: We started Unit 3-4: introduction to place value through addition & subtraction within 20 this week. Please check your email for an overview of unit 3-4 and a parent sheet for each blocks content in topic A. The sheet outlines the big idea, the exit problem and answer for each block. It will replace math terminology as something you can use to help your child at home. We talked about blocks 1-4 this week. Apart from demonstrating the thinking process through drawings and writing number sentences, we practiced uency of adding 9 and another number to make teen numbers. Q1 Report Cards: I sent general comments by email because they didnt show up in the report cards. Please sign the last page of the report card, put it in the yellow envelop and return the envelop to me. These envelops will be reused till the end of the school year. Website update: Two word sets, food and zoo animals, were added to Quizlet. The audio and translation of What is Their Favorite Food was on
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our class website too. Please spend some time with your child reviewing them at home. Classdojo.com: I hardly had time to write comments on classdojo this week. Sorry for not keeping you updated. I will be back on track next week. Thank you for helping parents: Seans mom brought dry erase markers, white copy paper and cleaning paper for us. Anias mom brought additional glue sticks. Nicoles mom continued her support by printing dictionary pages for us. Thank you all for being so helpful! I really appreciate it. Lack of Chinese books: I am very concerned with the lack of Chinese books both engaging and appropriate for our students level. It is impeding the childrens ability to learn to read and the development of their interests in reading. Chen Laoshi and I worked hard to nd materials, but the resources we found were very limited. Sadly, the upcoming book fair doesnt have any books in Chinese. If you have any unused English books with pictures and simple words, or if you know any access to online English books for free or at low cost, please let me know. I will keep working on this. No school next Friday: Next Friday is PD day for teachers. So no school for students and therefore no homework on next Thursday. Keep warm next week: Next week looks chilly. Please keep your child warm. Have a great weekend!