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!!