Grade 1 ESL : 6-10 January 2014

Dear Parents,

Welcome back to school! I hope you had a great Winter vacation and you enjoyed this special time with your dear ones.

We have started our week with a recount of our holidays. I was very pleased to hear our students talk about their vacation with joy and many smiles and also to see them write with stamina about it. Their writing skills have greatly improved since the beginning of the year. They are now able to write a structured recount with less teacher support and they can organise their thoughts in a meaningful way in English, with guidance.

In reading we continued to look at books such as “The Big Kick“, ”Jake’s Big Goal“, “Little Teddies’ Picnic” and “Hello, Snow“. These books have a slightly higher degree of difficulty, an increased number of words and more challenging spelling patterns. It is a pleasure to watch our students’ engagement while reading and their delight while listening to books read-aloud.

This week we also spent some time working on sequencing events, as it helps us better plan and organise our recounts and our retelling. The students organised pictures in a logical sequence in order to create a meaningful story and then shared their stories with their classmates. We also practiced writing using white boards and we played Head Bandz, which is a great way to engage students in conversation and to help them ask and answer questions in a fun way. We also continued to practice English through songs, because we all love them!

Please find below a couple of pictures taken during our classes this week.