Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Japanese Tea Ceremony

We have been learning all kind of facts about Ancient Japan, Ninjas and Japanese Tea Ceremonies this week. Last week, when we came back inside from recess the students had to prepare to enter our "tea room" (classroom) We learned all of the rules for the Japanese Tea Ceremony; Rule #1: All guests must wash their hands before entering the tea room. Rule #2: All guests must take off their shoes before entering the tea room, since everyone sits on the floor it is important to have a clean space. Rule #3: All guests must bow to the host to show respect. Rule #4: Only the host makes the tea. No one touches anything until the host gives them their tea cup!














We had some mixed reviews about the green tea (decaffeinated of course!) We learned that the guests ALWAYS had to say that the tea was delicious, even if they didn't like it because it was the polite thing to do!






Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Scaffolded Writing Codes

A lot of parents are wondering what the little letters at the top right hand corner of their childs writing means. That is a way for the teacher to assess and scaffold each childs writing.






I will circle the level that your child is able to do all on their own with no help and I will "x" the next level where I helped challenge them to try and practice getting more sounds to get to the next level, which they aren't  quite consistently doing independently yet. The "P" means if your child can draw a picture about the given topic, "M is if your child can verbally tell the teacher their message (not yet ready to write themselves), "L" is if they can draw one line for every word in their message. "IS" is if they can write down the initial sounds in the words in their message. "ES" is if they can write down the ending sounds for the words in their message. "MS" is if they can write down the middle sounds for the words in their message. "AP" is if they have the alphabetic principle- they are writing more than the beginning, middle and ending sounds in the words in their messages and "WP" means is they can write words patterns in their words in their message (like -ing, -oat, -er, -ow, -ee, etc.)

Childrens writing will go in this sequential order, by the end of the year we would like them to be closer to the right hand side at "AP" and "WP"