5 Senses, Representing Base Tens, and Starting Our Vietnamese Flashcards!

We had a great 4 day week at school. The days are becoming more consistent and the kids are getting the rules and routines down.

This week, I introduced “bilingual buddies.” Bilingual buddies means they are partners with their shoulder partner. I give each partner a different colored pencil and they are to work together to complete the assignment.  If partner A has colored pencil blue and partner B has colored pencil red…and I see a lot of blue writing on the paper, that means either partner A was being “bossy” and not letting partner B do the work or partner B was being “lazy.” The kids really loved doing this and got it down really fast. I will be switching their bilingual buddies each month so they get to work with different peers. Bilingual buddies are something that other dual-language/bilingual classes in Austin ISD implement. With English language learners in the classroom, we want them to socialize with their friends to build vocabulary. If you walk through Suzanne’s room or my room during the day, you will notice that it’s never a quiet environment. We don’t believe in the kids sitting in their seats all day long working on worksheets and being quiet. 

Every morning, our calendar person leads our number of the day. Doing this each day, it builds their fluency.  

Calendar person also leads Days of the Week.  

We worked on our 5 senses this week! We played a game on Thursday that the kids reallllly enjoyed! I had 4 bags. Each bag had something in there and the point of the game was to use our hands and guess what was in the bag without looking. After each round, the students were to predict and draw a picture. At the end, I revealed what was in each bag. The kids did a pretty good job getting the objects correct.  

We have been working on identifying colors in class since first week of school. This week, we moved forward and learned how to say “mom, older sister, and older brother.” We used our dry erase boards and did our flashcards for the first time. We also worked on the different accents in the Vietnamese language.  

TOTAL PROUD TEACHER MOMENT!!! Look at how organized and neat the kiddos have become 3 weeks into school. I really emphasize how papers in the basket needs to be turned in neat and straight and not just thrown in. Trust me, this took a lot of practice. 6 year olds can be very unorganized and messy so I try to break them out of that habit early ;)   

In Mrs. Skalaban’s class, they have been talking about being a good friend. This is Mrs. Skalaban’s class friendship flowers. So cute!