Monday 13 December
We have arrived at the last week of the first term. The children are looking forward to performing for their parents in the "Celebrations Around The World " concert on Wednesday 16.
We will be having a small Christmas party for the EAL students on Thursday 17 periods 1 and 2.
After break the children will be returning to their mainstream classrooms to leave Ms Erica and myself free to work out the timetable for Term two. Your child will be spending more of the day with his or her mainstream class but will continue to be supported by the EAL department on a regular basis. Before Christmas you will be receiving the first term's report for your child.
We have arrived at the last week of the first term. The children are looking forward to performing for their parents in the "Celebrations Around The World " concert on Wednesday 16.
We will be having a small Christmas party for the EAL students on Thursday 17 periods 1 and 2.
After break the children will be returning to their mainstream classrooms to leave Ms Erica and myself free to work out the timetable for Term two. Your child will be spending more of the day with his or her mainstream class but will continue to be supported by the EAL department on a regular basis. Before Christmas you will be receiving the first term's report for your child.
It has been a real privilege to work with your children during this first term.
Their enthusiasm and resourcefulness as they battle their way through each day of trying to work out just what is going on is admirable! Sometimes there have been sighs of frustration, but there has been a lot of laughter in the EAL room too! Next term, as is expained more fully in the reports, your children will begin to spend more time in their mainstream classes. We will continue to support them in their language development either by withdrawing them from the class or with in-class support. We will always try to be available to help them with any area of language they may be struggling with.
Important Dates
Wednesday 16 December at 2pm. Celebrations Around The World Concert. Please be there if you can, to see your child take part in a dramatisation of the poem "Christmas Is Coming."
You may take your child home immediately after the performance.
Thursday 17 December
EAL Christmas party I will be talking with the children on Monday about what they might like to bring to the party.
Friday 18 December
School finishes for the Christmas break at 12pm. School buses leave shortly afterwards.
We return to start Term 2 on Thursday January 7 2010!
This week in the EAL classroom
No test at the end of the week this week.
We will be talking about our trip to the "Viver Nos Limits" Ciença Viva exhibition at the Pavilhão do Conhecemento. (Thank you Erica for putting a great slide show on the blog.) During the time we were there we managed to visit two other exhibition areas: Explora and Casa Inacabada. The children were unusually quiet on the bus during the journey home. I think they were rather weary! We had certainly done a lot and seen a lot during the morning. It will be a good opportunity to use more of our past tenses as we talk about what we did and saw and learnt etc.
We will also be looking forward to the Christmas break and talking about what we are planning to do with our families. (use of the "going to"planned future tense.)
We will do some spiralling this week, revisiting our favourite tiny words the "prepositions" eg in , on, at in front of, between etc.
Hopefully we will have time to do some Christmas craft work and make a special pop up Father Christmas card or Christmas wreath to take home for our families.
Maths
There were so many field trips last week that we got rather behind with our maths. Year 6 will be finishing the work on area of composite shapes and looking at how to work out the area of a circle. Years 3,4 and 5 are looking at how to tell the time. A lot of mathematical language on "Time words to learn before we can say that we're ready to say the time.
Well it looks like this is the last blog of Term 1. I hope reading the blog each week has helped parents to be part of their children's school world. Thank you for opening them up and reading them.
