Middle School day

I had a great time at the Middle School last week talking to the Social Studies classes about the Great Wall, Terracotta warriors and Chinese school life.  It was great seeing students I was lucky enough to teach last year!  I really hope I get more opportunities to reconnect with them and hopefully continue their Chinese journey.

Mrs. Hussey in Beijing

Hello to my Chinese language students and families, and my fellow Mid-Prairie staff members.

It was wonderful to talk to you from China using Skype.  It was a late night for me, but it was great to see you all and to describe what was going on in Beijing!

Here is a photo of me in Beijing, China's capital city, with two dancers from one of China's minority groups.   You may not know this, but not everyone in China is the same kind of Chinese.  People who want to share their heritage may wear special clothing to show their specific group.

Here is one of emperor's palaces.  The lake was created by hand a few hundred years ago, and the dirt from the lake was used to build a small mountain for the emperor's palace!

I hope that someday some of you might get to visit China, Taiwan or other places where Chinese is used.  Get ready for your visit by practicing your Chinese!  Xie xie!

Mrs. Hussey

To the other side of the world and back!!

There is no doubt that it can be scary to actually use your foreign language in the real world.  We practice and learn in a safe controlled environment, after years of practice we hope that we can go forth and actually use what we learn.  However, there is always that small fear that we will just choke when it actually comes to using our language ability.  You know, the truth is that when it comes right to it you will make mistakes, but that helps you learn even more.  I just got back from a week long training trip with Mrs. Hussey.  The entire trip was in Chinese, classes were from 8:30 a.m. to 7or 8 at night.  I would be lying if I said I did perfectly.  

Perfect is not the point.  The real point is talking with people and making friends in a foreign land.  We may not all talk the same but I met and talked with great teachers from all over the world.  I learned a lot about teaching to bring back to the students.  No risk no reward. 

I'd be lying if I said I didn't take time to have some fun though : )
Greetings from China.

Two more great visitors!!

Last week second graders got a great opportunity to meet two visitors from China.  Two study abroad teaching students from the University of Iowa visited Kalona Elementary and gave a great presentation to second graders about school life in China.  The University of Iowa's International Classroom Journey program has been invaluable in providing great speakers to help our students broaden their world view.

Here one of the Presenters Fei Fei teaches the students how to do some traditional paper folding.

Visitor from China

We were lucky to have a very special guest last Friday.  A visiting exchange student from China came and talked to our 4th and 5th graders for about an hour.  She talked about what it is like to live in China, specifically, elementary school life and how it was fairly different from our elementary school life here.  The students had great questions and got to learn some fun crafts while showing off their own Chinese!!

The 5th graders were great listeners for our speaker.

Here 4th graders got to learn about ribbon dancing and tried a little themselves.

Our own Principal Cayton joined in on the dancing!!

We will have another visitor from China this Friday in the morning to talk to the 1st graders.  We are all very excited!!

Foreign Language Night Fun!

Thanks to all who came to our First Foreign Language Night of the Year.  We had over 60 adults and students attend.  Other than a few technical difficulties it was a great night!!

The evening started with a movie about the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival and snacks.

Next, everyone got a chance to show off their artistic side making their own fan for...

 The awesome Fan Dance taught by Jean Laoshi and our wonderful Spanish Teachers Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Lundberg.

Everyone did a great job dancing the night away with their own unique fans!

We ended the night with a counting game and some fun Chinese songs.  It was a great start to our year and we are all looking forward to the next foreign language night in December!!  Thanks again to all who attended!  We hope to have even more people next time!!!

Foreign Language Night!!

Homecoming week fun

Homecoming is a great time to show school spirit! To show ours and teach a little on the side we did a group or twin day at Kalona Elementary where all the male staff wore Chinese masks.  Afterwards, I plan to show the students where these masks were from, what they represent, and how these images turn up in Chinese culture.

What would your zoo look like?

This week Kalona Elementary students designed and filled their own zoos using the animals we learned about in Chinese class.  Students will give the rest of their class a tour of their zoos next week.  It was great to see how different each zoo was from the other.

Technology is what you make of it

We are very fortunate in to have Smart Board technology in our classrooms here in the Mid Prairie School district.  It gives us access to a lot of learning tools that let students interact with subjects in ways that were unimagined of when I was a student.  Here we have two students using the Smart Board to practice remembering animals we learned in Chinese.  It got a little rowdy at times as students tossed soft objects at the board to pick animals but everyone was engaged and learned.

That being said, sometimes the best technology for the situation is just a store bought puppet and some imagination.  Teachers have a wide variety of tools in our bags and sometimes it is daunting to pick the right one for the right job.  However, it doesn't matter if it's a 1000 dollar computer gizmo or a 10 cent pencil.  We'll use whatever works best to help the students learn and have fun.

A dog goes wang wang!

Did you ever wonder what a horse sounds like in China?  If you said it sounds like a horse you are correct.  However, the sound we hear and the sound a person in China hears may be described differently because of things like language and culture.  This is what students are learning about at Kalona Elementary as we study animals.  The students learned that they describe animal sounds for some animals just like kids do in China, but other animals are described sounding very different.  Just ask them about some of the animal sounds for a good chuckle.

New Year New Challenges

This is a picture of me in a bookstore located in San Francisco's Chinatown.  Everything was in Chinese from the books I wanted to buy to the aisle labels to the words coming out of the vendor's mouth.  It was daunting to say the least, however, with a little patience and work I got what I wanted (materials for class) and she got what she wanted (my money).   The reason I bring this up is because I know that Chinese can seem like a tough subject but with a little patience and work everyone can get what they want.  Parents, you can help your kids out tremendously by taking time to ask them about their Chinese classes and giving them a chance to show (and practice) what they know.  There are also many TV programs, websites, and resources that can help you and your kids practice and learn Chinese.  I guarantee that a little work will pay off and fun will be had by all.  Whether it is watching Ni Hao Kailan on TV, taking a trip to the Iowa City Public Library to check out children's books, or a quick google search, there are tons of ways to have fun with Chinese.   Students will be learning about animals in Chinese at Kalona Elementary for the next few weeks.  A fun activity you can do at home is label your pet's food dishes, houses, and beds with the Chinese words (Hint: they learn those this week) this will help you both learn and remember the Chinese.  Or you can label the animal itself if you are really serious...hehe.  Until next time.  Zai Jian (goodbye)

Welcome Back !!!

Da Jia Hao!!!

Welcome back everyone.  Hopefully you had a great summer and are ready for another great year of Chinese.  We will be starting the school year with some review to get everyone back into the swing of things and dust off the cobwebs.  We will be continue our foreign language learning in Mid-Prairie with Chinese at all three elementary schools again this year.  Students will be taking a small pretest for our grant, then they can expect to go back over last years Chinese before starting our new topics.  This year we will be learning everything from saying our names in Chinese to talking about our hobbies and describing our families.  I hope you are all looking forward to this year as much as I am.

For all of you who don't have the luck to be in our classrooms this year there are lots of opportunities to learn Chinese.  The University of Iowa Confucius Institute offers an evening class for beginners and intermediate speakers.  Kirkwood Community College also offers courses in Chinese at their Cedar Rapids school.  These classes are a great chance to learn about the culture that the students are studying.  Also, you'll be able to understand them when you hear them speaking Chinese at home.  For more information feel free to email us or check out these links below.

University of Iowa Confucius Institute 


Kirkwood Community College Langauge Courses

Kalona Elementary Playground

Hey Folks,
Sorry for the sluggish posting, My laptop took a tumble off the cart and I was without a computer for a time.  Here is a quit bit of news to do with the Kalona Elementary playground for those interested.

Kalona Elementary Playground Improvement Committee
This summer we are going to install the Upper Level playground surface replacing the moldy/dirty mulch with safety rubberized tiles. It’s been a long process of rebuilding our playground to make a clean and safe environment for our children to play and get the much needed exercise.  We started September 2006 and will see the final phase being completed this summer! We are asking if you would like to be called or emailed, to volunteer some of your time to help us remove mulch out from underneath the playground equipment.  If we rake out the mulch, it would help the contractors move along faster by removing and hauling it away.  It would save time and money by doing this. We are planning to start as soon as school is out (1st part of June). We don’t have an exact start date but we can call or email to see if you are available.  If you’d like to call or email us to give us your contact information, that would be great.  Jan Knebel at 319-325-8462 janet-knebel@uiowa.edu or Kerri Bell at 319-653-6740 kbell@mid-prairie.k12.ia.us.  If you’d like to return the bottom portion instead, please send it ASAP to the school before the last day of school.  Thank you for all your help and support over the years!

Thank you,
Jan Knebel
Kalona Elementary Playground Improvement Chairperson
 
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Kalona Elementary Playground Improvement Committee
(Volunteering to help remove mulch)
 
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Wellman Elementary Chinese Newsletter

Great time at this year's final Chinese Club

Thanks to all the students, parents and teachers who have supported out Chinese clubs this year.  Everyone involved has had a great time and hopefully a lot of students went away learning more about Chinese culture.  Last week's final club was a great time with Chinese hackysack, chopstick relays and Chinese counting games.  Thanks for a great time and lets look forward to starting again next year.

Don't forget next Thursday is Chinese Club!!

Wellman Elementary Chinese Blog

Here is the this month's news from Jean Laoshi at Wellman Elementary

First Post!!!

Hello everyone!  Welcome to the first post of our Mid-Prairie Chinese blog.  There has been a lot of Chinese learning going on.  Students have learned how to introduce themselves at Kalona and hopefully been having fun in the process.  The students at Washington Township have been teaching me a great deal about all the Chinese learning they have been doing over the past few years and Jean tells me things are sailing along at Wellman.  All in all a great, if chilly spring start.

Speaking of chilly, Thanks to all the parents and students who came out to Wellamn for our Chinese club.  We learned how to make paper dragons, leaned about Chinese fireworks and wrote the Chinese character for Rabbit (since this is the year of the rabbit after all).

Here are some pictures:

Don't forget the next Chinese Club is March 31st at Washington Township.  The theme will be Chinese Games.  It is our last Chinese club of the year so don't miss it!!
再见