German News from the Intermediate Group

Students have been reading independently, for example in the Lesebaum, Graf Ortho and Quiesel series, and are close to a total of 100 book quizzes completed on the website of the Antolin reading program.

Students have edited written work themselves and provided feedback to peers on adding more detail to work and improving spelling.  Students have been using dictionaries to find correct spellings as well as developing other strategies to improve.

We are at the halfway point in our current chapter in the Deutschmobil 1 textbook about our daily routines and school subjects.  The next chapter will be about celebrations.

Thanks for reading.  Please allow me to wish you and your families relaxing, enjoyable holidays.

A Word from Mr. Lorenzini

December 17, 2010

Dear Parents,

Thank you for all your support this year. Here are some final messages before we break up for Winter. This letter can also be found on the classroom blogs.

Frauenhaus: Thank you for your generous support. On Thursday, a representative from this organization received all our gifts. She again expressed her appreciation to the school community for caring. This year we will build on this initiative with the help of one of our parents, Antje Laqua. At regular intervals, we will send all our lost property to Frauenhaus and collect women's clothing too. More information about this will be provided in due course.

Bike Stands: When we return from the Winter Break, we will have a new place to park our bicycles. All the bike stands will be moved so that they stand under the cover of the front of the school building. Apart from the fact that this will keep everything dry, it is a necessary change in preparation for all the upcoming work on the Elementary School Extension. This project will commence on the March 7^th, during Ski Week.

Report Card Changes: Thank you to everyone who was able to join Mrs. Coffey earlier this month. She provided a snapshot of the professional development the teachers recently received as well as an overview and explanation of the newly formatted report card. The feedback we received was extremely positive.

Conference Reminder: Finally, please remember that our next day of scheduled conferences is on February, Thursday 3^rd. These are different to the Student Led Conferences that were held in November. These are adult to adult conferences to discuss student progress, and they are scheduled a week after you receive the report cards.

Thank you again for all your support during this semester. May I also take a moment to thank everyone for all the personal words of kindness I have received in the past few weeks since my family's upcoming move was announced. I wish you all an enjoyable and peaceful Winter Break.

Warm regards,

Alan Lorenzini

Elementary Principal

Literature Circle Presentations

We have finished our first Literature Circles and have been working in our groups to share the book with the rest of the class.  Our presentations were supposed to tell about the book's characters, setting, and plot.  All of the groups decided to do this through a dramatic play! 

The last group's presentation will be posted in the near future!

German News - Intermediate 2/Advanced - Frau Winkelmann

Dear Parents, liebe Eltern,

We finished our unit where we learned about friendship. These are the things we did.

We:

                        -       discussed the role of friends,

-       reviewed the perfect tense with "sein" und "haben" (Ich bin nach Paris gereist. Ich habe ein Souvenir gekauft.),

-       sequenced stories and events,

-       wrote letters to a pen pal,

-       played cooperative games ( games with no winner).

In November we made lanterns for St. Martin. We talked about the story behind this German tradition and voted on what kind of lantern we should make. Two students of our class presented a short news show in our St. Martin's assembly. Good job, Sebastian and Bart!

Last week we started our third unit in the Deutschmobil 2. It is about comparisons, records and animals.

Currently, we are working on an animal project. A lot of fun, information and hard work!

Have a wonderful and relaxing holiday season!

Andrea Winkelmann                                              

4th Grade Will Be Visiting The 3rd Grade Christmas Markets!

Tomorrow, Wednesday,  April 15th, 4th grade students will be visiting the 3rd Grade Christmas Markets after recess.  3rd Grade has been working hard to create Christmas Markets in their classrooms and they have invited us to come and buy!  Remember to bring money if you would like to purchase some goodies from their markets.  Bringing coins instead of notes will make it easier for the 3rd graders to make change from your purchases.

4.2 Created Voicethreads!

Take a look and listen to the voicethreads that we created in groups after we figured out how to use our Easi-Speak Microphones!  We were able to put a picture to our recordings!

http://voicethread.com/share/1596352/

http://voicethread.com/share/1580918/

http://voicethread.com/share/1596351/

http://voicethread.com/share/1580932/

Elementary News

Please click on the link below to view our 1st Edition of the 'Elementary News'

http://voicethread.com/share/1590175/

Data Handling

We have been looking at data handling in our math lessons recently.  We learned that working with data is a process.  So far we have asked a question, collected the data, organized and represented the data. 

Today we looked at how people represented their data and created some criteria together for how we can best represent data so that it can be easily interpreted by others. 

Next we will describe and summarize the data.  Finally we will interpret the data to make conclusions so that we can start the process again and ask new question. 

Students in 4.2 have Pen-Pals!

This week, students in 4.2 received their first letters from their pen-pals at an international school in London.  We were all very excited to receive the letters and very keen to write back!  We've been looking at how to structure a friendly letter so that we can correspond back to our new friends!

New Report Card Presentation

Just a reminder to all parents that there will be a brief presentation with Mrs. Coffey on Thursday, December 9th at 14:30 to explain the newly formatted report cards that will be used this school year.  I strongly recommend that you attend. 

German News Update for the Beginners

                     Grade 4 Beginners - December 2010

The focus in October and November has been "Meine Familie". Here are just some of the things we did in class:

· Drew sketches of our family and labeled them
· Shared what our family members like to do
· Showed pictures of our family and presented them in front of the class
· Read dialogues from other families (Peter und Petra)
· Learned additional verbs in the 3rd person plural: Meine Eltern lesen gern.
· We listened to several listening comprehension activities on the CD
· Completed an assessment on Lektion 4
· Reflected on our learning and progress in German thus far
· Watched the Muzzy DVD for overall understanding

Early in November our focus was on the celebration of St. Martin. We made beautiful lanterns, learned 4 new songs and performed in an assembly.

At the present we are reading longer text and writing about other children in German speaking countries. We read about children "aus Österreich, aus der Schweiz und aus Deutschland." During the next 2 weeks we will explore some geographical characteristics of Germany including major rivers, ports, mountain ranges,etc. We will also look at several major cities in this part of Europe. New words such as: eine Kirche, ein Hafen, eine Brücke, ein Fluss, ein Platz und ein Schloss will be covered. I hope that you will be able to explore many of these places with your family during your stay in Germany.

Your child will bring their German materials home to share with you on Friday. Please have them return everything on Monday again. Please feel free to contact me at any time.

Sincerely,

Frau Scherpel

Restock of School Supplies

4.2 students need to restock their school supplies!  We are finding that more and more students don't have a proper supply of pencils and glue sticks.  Please check with your child and make sure that he or she has enough of these supplies.  If not, please purchase more so that they can be prepared for the school day!

Math Journals and Division

Today 4.2 students will be bringing home their Math Journals to share their learning with you.  We have been learning a lot about division recently in our math lessons.  Please talk to your child about the division strategies they use and what they do when they have remainders.  Please remember to bring the Math Journals back to school on Monday as we use them everyday!

Today we looked again at the conceptual understanding: Number operations can be modeled in a variety of ways. 

We looked at this when we were focusing on the number operation multiplication, but today we applied it to our conceptual understanding of the number operation division.

Look how many different ways 4.2 students can show their understanding of division!

German News Grade 4 Native, Frau Thielmann

November 2010

Informationen für unsere Eltern

Deutsch Native 4      Frau Thielmann

Ich möchte Ihnen einen Überblick über unsere Arbeit im Deutschunterricht der Native-Klasse geben.

Rechtschreibung und Grammatik:

Wir haben die Steigerung von Adjektiven geübt. An verschiedenen Stationen lernten die Schüler Adjektive in Grundform, Komparativ/erste Steigerungsform und Superlativ/zweite Steigerungsform einzuteilen (lang –länger – am längsten).

Zusätzlich erarbeiteten wir gemeinsam Rechtschreibregeln. Hier unterstützte uns das Lehrwerk „Der Rechtschreib-Silben-Lotse" vom Mildenberger Verlag. Die Schüler haben gelernt, die Silben von verschiedenen Worten durch klatschen herauszufinden, Silbenbögen zu setzen und Worte in Silben aufzuteilen. Alle Schüler haben sehr gerne mit diesem Lehrwerk gearbeitet.

Richtig schreiben und Texte verfassen:

Nach den Herbstferien verfasste jeder Schüler einen Text über ein Erlebnis aus den Ferien. Diese Aufsätze wurden der Klasse präsentiert. Es wurde keine genaue Vorgabe über Länge und Inhalt gegeben, um den Kindern die Möglichkeit zum eigenständigen und kreativen Schreiben zu geben. Es liegen immer Wörterbücher in der Klasse aus, so dass die Schüler langsam lernen sollten, mit den Wörterbüchern zu arbeiten und eigene Texte selbständig zu korrigieren.

St.Martin:

Wir haben dieses Jahr Buntlichter als Laternen gebastelt. Die Kinder hatten die Möglichkeit ein vorgegebenes Muster kreativ auszumalen. Alle Schüler haben mit großer Mühe und Engagement die Laternen fertiggestellt. Während des Bastelns haben wir über den geschichtlichen Hintergrund dieses Festes gesprochen und St. Martins Lieder geübt.

Lesen:

Wir haben mit unserer Lektüre „Das Vamperl" von Renate Welsh begonnen. Das Buch wird gemeinsam in der Klasse gelesen und mit Hilfe von Arbeitsblättern und mündlichen und schriftlichen Aufgaben erarbeitet. Ferner haben die Schüler in Gruppen kleine Szenen aus der Lektüre nachgespielt und der Klasse präsentiert.

Wir beginnen unsere Stunde mit einer kurzen stillen Lesezeit in selbst gewählten Büchern und arbeiten weiterhin regelmäßig mit dem Antolin-Leseprogramm (http://www.antolin.de/). Freitags ist meist Lese- und Antolinstunde.

Bei Fragen stehe ich Ihnen immer gerne zu Verfügung (thielmann@isdedu.de).

Birke Thielmann

Inquiring Into Technology

This week we had a look at a new type of ICT that we have in our classroom: Easi-Speak Microphones.  While inquiring into this technology with our groups, we figured out how to work the microphones, how to make a recording, and how to upload it onto the computer!  It was all very fun and interesting and kept our inquiring minds engaged!

Did you feel like technology helped you to engage in this lesson?