Mr. Romard’s 4th grade Blog

For the month of February, the SAS community will have an opportunity to evaluate the child’s teachers for the 2009-2010 school year. This is a private survey which the administration and teachers will use to guide our instructional program.

The survey can be accessed through the SAS Community Portal at http://powerschool.saschina.org.

Translations for the survey can be found at the following links:

For Chinese click here
For Korean click here

Once you log in using your parent ID and password, click the link at the top that is labeled “Teacher Performance Survey”.

As has been done in the past two years, the teachers at SAS are seeking feedback from the parents of their children about their performance in areas in which they would have direct involvement. The results and comments from the survey go directly to the teachers who then include the survey information as part of their professional portfolio, and the survey content is discussed with their supervisor.

I would urge you to provide specific and professional feedback to the teachers at SAS. Consider carefully not only addressing suggestions, but also providing teachers feedback on what you feel is going well in the classroom programs at SAS.

The feedback you provide is important and it will be part of the professional reflection process as all of our teachers have a vested interest in ways to improve the programs at Shanghai American School.

Below you will find a list of a few frequently asked questions.
Keep reading →

Haiti is a poor country in Central America. It’s situation became worse with a recent earthquake on January 12. For most, this is not news, but many students living overseas are protected from some of the images found on American TV shows. I have selected some articles from age appropriate news agencies to help elementary students understand the urgency to help the people of Haiti and why the latest event is so tragic.

Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. About 80% of the country’s 9 million people live in poverty.

~from: Time for Kids – click here for the full article

The earthquake’s epicenter was about 10 miles from Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city. The International Red Cross estimates that a third of Haiti’s citizens will need emergency aid.

~from: Time for Kids – second main article can be read here

The American Red Cross estimates that the Haiti earthquake may have affected about three million people in total.

~from National Geographic News – full article read here

However, the worst part is that over 2 million children have been either orphaned or have no contact with their family members and are now wandering around the streets all alone! Even worse is the fact that a lot of these kids get only one meal a day – at school, and with most schools destroyed, they may have nowhere to turn for food!

~from Dogo Kids News – its full article can be read here

Even before the Earthquake – times were not good. As you can read from this article at National Geographic, the soil was becoming worse and worse; so food had to be brought into the country making it even more poor.

America went through a difficult rebuilding process in New Orleans a few years back; where many people were angry that food and medicine took so long to arrive. It takes a great deal of organization to coordinate all the help coming in.

Our elementary school is having a Pajama Day fund raiser on January 29th, to raise money for the poor people of Haiti. Each student will bring 10 RMB and with other donations collected, our school will send a check to the organizers of the Haiti Relief Fund so they can buy things they need (blankets, medicine, food, equipment to rebuild their homes)

China also endured an earthquake in Chengdu. Experts suggested that the Chinese people re-build in new areas away from the earthquake ‘fault lines’ but families are quite likely to want to stay together and remain in the dangerous areas.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Twitter users force US to land blocked plane full of medicine (friendseat.com)
• Haiti Earthquake Overwhelms Medical Workers (abcnews.go.com)

This is our second non-fiction (everybody) essay. Once again, it’s from highlightkids.com and it focuses on shooting stars and how to view them. This will be Thursday night’s homework – answering the questions, not viewing any shooting stars (as there are none this week) – a great chart on the bottom of the page of the article tells us when to look for them. At first, I didn’t know if this article was for just one year, so I checked Quadrantids and found another non-fiction article on it here.

Thursday night’s questions are the following:

1. Why are ‘shooting stars‘ not really stars?
2. What date this summer would be best to view a meteor shower?
3. Why is it harder to view shooting stars from cities?

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Earth And Beyond (slideshare.net)
• Green meteor lights up night sky (telegraph.co.uk)

Today, we begin our non-fiction reading unit. Often non-fiction has unfamiliar words and without dialogue and regular short words, students read it much slower. It’s a fine skill to read non-fiction carefully with a critical eye. We will have an opportunity to read a few essays together and then many days to select stories of interest. The first website we will use is one fellow 4th grade teacher, Krista Blovad, alerted me to – www.highlightkids.com. It’s a wonderful place to spend a rainy day – we will only focus on it’s nonfiction entries.

Please begin by reading this story The Mystery of the Big Bugs

Students  – please answer these three questions in the comments section or via email to me. Remember to only use your first name.

1. Could an insect be larger than the school? Why?
2. Define diffusion.
3. What environmental conditions allowed giant insects.

   

   Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

LAST CHANCE for Carpet Auction Tickets!
Benefitting The Charles Foundation and the Pudong PTSA

Pudong PTSA Carpet Auction:  Every Carpet Tells a Story
In Partnership with Eastern Carpets and The Parkyard Hotel
Music Provided by the Pudong Middle School Jazz Band

Date: January 23, 2010
Time: 6:30 Preview 7:30 Auction
Tickets 150 RMB in advance, 200 RMB at the door

Tickets can be ordered by calling 6221-1445 X3521
or via email to jill.du@saschina.org.

Once again this year Eastern Carpets from Singapore will be bringing out some of their best carpets to share and auction for the benefit of the Pudong PTSA and The Charles Foundation.  In the tradition of the Oriental Carpet Seller, Edmund and his colleagues at Eastern Carpets will be weaving in stories about each carpet as well as pertinent tips and trips on carpet care.

The evening will be a fun event for the entire community whether you are buying or just enjoying the beautiful art found in these wonderful rugs.  We hope to see you all there!

Ticket Sales will end on Thursday, January 21, 2010

Like a Dan Brown novel, a mystery of the ancient past was solved last week. Determining the exact value of Pi, whose value is used in circles, has been troubling mathematicians since Sir Isaac Newton. Yet, Fabrice Bellard of France figured it out using a home computer (with some extra hard drives) and a great math algorithm that only a math expert like himself could work out. Why is this exciting? Computer algorithms are used for video games, computer simulations (new aircraft, cool new cars) and robots. Will his discovery help in those – maybe not, but how he approached the math challenge might. I loved reading some reviews about Mr Belland. He came across as very humble and witty. What is exciting is that the best super-computers in the school from companies and countries could not come close to what Mr. Bellard achieved. Even more amazing, it took many days to check his ‘math work’ — my students had a giggle at that when I shared it in class.

As we move into our study of Ancient China in our social studies unit, I have told the students we have some deep thinking questions to consider. I believer it’s more important that our children learn from history, not about history. I don’t have students memorize useless historical facts about people or dates that will neither empower nor fully challenge them. Instead, I want your son or daughter to be able to look back at the decisions of the past and learn from them, so we make less mistakes in our future. China was the world super-power for most of the last 4000 years. I hope over the next two months, your child (especially if they are Asian) can appreciate all the amazing things the Chinese have brought into the world.

Essential Questions for Ancient China

1. Was Mulan a real person? Why is her memory cherished?
2. Explain the positive and negative aspects of Chin Xi Huang Di’s reign as Emperor.
3. For what is Ghenghis Khan remembered? How would a Mongol or Chinese citizen answer that question differently? Does your answer lean more in one direction?
4. How as the Great Wall of China used as a source of protection, communication and population control?
5. Discuss the good and bad ideas from Ancient Chinese leaders that changed the lives of Chinese people. How could we use this information to be a good leader today?
6. Describe the collapse of the Chinese dynasties.
7. Withstanding the last 300 years, China was the top country of the world – being the top in military, science and economic development. Provide evidence from Ancient Chinese history to support this statement.
8. How did the unfortunate remark of a late Tang Emperor regarding the size of a dancer’s foot affect the lives of young girls for the next 300 years?
9. How did the Silk Road influence the economy and culture in China?
10. What is culture? How do the Chinese people show they value their culture?
11. How have the jobs of Chinese people changed from Ancient China to Modern China?
12. Why was the Tang dynasty called the Golden Age in China’s history?

Bonus (from a student in class) — How do I know if I’m one of the 95% Han Chinese in China? How do I determine my ethnicity?

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it ~ George Santayana

After the students received their report cards, I asked them to select two goals – two areas to improve themselves. I mentioned that we’d post them in class to increase the focus of these goals. Plus, I encouraged the students to include details to help them be successful. The result was every child came up with great goals. Here is one from each student:

• I will improve on listening by stopping my daydreaming
• I will get on task fast by getting my books ready right away.
• I would like to improve on my PE running time – get less than 7 minutes
• I will improve my writing by having juicier words
• I want to improve in Chinese because I don’t think I’m going to pass the end of year test.
• Listen to the Chinese teacher and pay more attention to her.
• Work on my vocab and look to replace easy words to hard words
• Choose and read more challenging books.
• Practice on my math facts. I will go on the class blog 3 times a week.
• Creative people like to make things different. I will strive to make my writing more unique.
• I will listen more like the chart says up on the board (ie eye contact, hands still, lips closed)
• I will describe more details in the reading notebook by thinking more about the books I read
• I will focus on my work not others. I won’t goof around.
• For music, I’d like to practice my recorder just to enjoy it more.
• I would like to improve on my vocabulary by writing more challenging words.
• For writing, I need to use more interesting words and make the sentence more funky.
• To hear more natural Chinese by watching shows in Chinese
• In writing to show not tell what is happening.
• I will include more details in writing stories.

Since, they will be laminated and on display in the classroom. The students will be able to support each other and possibly follow these trailblazers, so we’ll have an even more nurturing and growing group in the room. I can’t wait.

It’s great learning about PowerPoint presentations with a teacher like Mr. Power. We will be moving forward in our study of China but identifying key landforms within China.

Click here to access our starting point PowerPoint slideshow.

Ironically, the fourth grade team has been discussing summative versus formative assessments. The research indicates that the best learning occurs in a class where the students feel they can take risks and are more concerned about their learning than their marks. But, for some the number of top marks on a report card is their intrinsic desire to push hard.

So here are some examples of reading response letters from our current class (I have removed the names to avoid any unforeseen trouble)

Needs Improvement (2)

The student neither explains what interested them about the book, nor why they would recommend it to others. He needs to specify details from the novel which support what he is sharing in his weekly letter. I wish to see examples of how the students are making connections to the book (ie memories it brings up, parts of the book which were easy to picture in their minds, parts that were surprising and why)

The above (level 2) letter does not explain why the student enjoyed the book. In fourth grade, I’m expecting to see a series of 1-3 pieces of clear evidence to support a view of the book. However, I do like how the student mentioned they would lie to get their dream job position. Unfortunately, the lesson of the where the character ends up does not seem to be made clear to the student.

The student does not share any of their thinking that incurred while they were reading. In my response to her, I asked if she found it unusual that a dog was a detective. At the very least, I enjoy reading about why they are selecting the books, if they learned anything while reading them, what the author’s message was or anything they disagreed with – anything to show they were thinking while reading.

I need to see details or evidence from the story to back up why it’s amazing or interesting. Actually, it’s even better to mention a particular part of the story that was outstanding and to include details so the readers of the letter can understand why the student is excited.

The student has shared some parts of the novel, but certainly not enough to make me want to read the book. In fourth grade, I want to see thinking by the student while reading the text. For me, I would have been asking myself why is the dog his only friend. The title alone provides a few questions to me that will take a few chapters to answer I’m sure. In the end, lack of details leave this a level 2 entry.

On par (3)

The above letter showed how the student could clearly indicate why they are reading their current novel, but needs to share more thoughts while they are reading (ie do they think someone could learn how to read at age 2)

Lots of details – but I would have loved to see if the student could explain why Mark changed his mind about school.

Top Marks (4)

Student comments on the author’s message, his learning while reading and share their personal reflection following reading the piece – how they wish to travel

The above selection was the same student who did the first poor (level 2) entry – notice his improvement. First, his entry is much longer, and he includes background summary of story in contrast. He identified the anxiety of his main character and shared details to support his reading theories.

The above (level 4 letter) shows how the student used her own rabbit when painting an image in her mind of the rabbit from the story. She was alert to the difference between the cover depicting two rabbits and the story having one predominantly. While she was reading, she shared how she wondered when that second rabbit would show up.

It’s always a pleasure to see one of my new ESOL students show she is getting the newly introduced reading strategies. Here, she correctly identifies the problem of the story and the consequences that result from Junie B Jones copying other students. In fact, she goes further to explain how she would behave differently if she were in that situation. This shows she was actively picturing the events and reflecting as she was reading! Excellent.

One of my favorite entries this year came from a student who had visited Japan and was likely the reason she selected this text. I liked how she provided many details how the Japan of her experience differed from the one she read about. It shows she was thinking and constantly comparing while she was reading. This is higher order thinking and it’s the sort of stuff I want to see in the student’s weekly letters.

That is all I will share for now. Perhaps in another few months, we’ll have the students select the top five entries from the class. We will be actively supporting letters that include many details, show evidence of various forms of thinking (predictions, reading theories, analyzing the writer’s technique, character analysis and connections to real life experiences) — I hope over the next few weeks, the student’s weekly letters continue to improve.