This week we had our final Parent teacher Meetings of the semester. I got some good feedback from parents, and learned where they stood on some issues. I learned how they felt about the program, and their child’s place in the program. Some I expected, some I did not. Either way I now have a better understanding of the children, as I can see how their home-life is affecting their class-life, and learned some of their hopes and dreams.

One of the things I have reassured some of the parents that would start is extra vocabulary practice at home. What this means is the children look at their picture dictionary and listen to me say the words over WeChat. They are not expected to read them back to me by WeChat or any other means. The purpose is to expose them to more words, and build up their vocabulary. The children have already built up some excellent listening skills in class. Speaking skills and Writing skills take more effort to learn that reading and listening skills in an immersion class. We are getting there, and despite some worries, most of the children are right where I expected them to be.

We showed the children how to handle a test, how they are written, and discussed what the purpose of tests was this week. We reviewed our vocabulary and grammar from the American tests. I took this time to also compile the children’s classwork grades. Be aware that if there is any problems with a child’s grades I will contact you directly, and privately with some solutions of how to improve the grades. In America and Canada when we talk about grades, we mean activities that either show or give practice to their skills. This grade is not just some arbitrary letter.

On Tuesday the children made Halloween masks to decorate the Halloween party with. Some of them are absolutely beautiful.

This week on Wednesday we took the children to the Military Museum to see the new display commemorating the Long March. This was a very important part of Chinese history, and this week celebrated the 80^th anniversary of its completion. The children got to see a lot of artifacts of Chinese history. They saw old Radios, guns, and paintings of the trip. The children might be too young to understand exactly how harsh the trip was on the soldiers, but they did have their eyes open to some of the difficulties. In the end of the trip we came upon a painting of a celebration showing the end of their march. It was really good to see.

On the same trip we stopped by a local park to enjoy the scenery. We were lucky enough to see some traditional dancing done by some senior citizens at the park. The kids then looked around the park for animals and types of leaves. We wanted them to explore a bit and see what they could find.

On Thursday the children stood up in front of the school and recited poetry. The kids practiced going up and showed no sign of being scared. They were very brave and performed wonderfully. I was told this was a grade one poetry competition, but I am not sure if there was a winner declared by the school. In my mind the APS students were the winner.

On Friday, Zhong De had its Annual Charity Bazaar. We had a lot of volunteers helping with the Bazaar and it looked awesome. Our class’s theme was internationalization. We sold out of almost everything we had to sell. I took a few students around to look at the Bazaar. Keeping 4 different students that have different interests together is not easy, and some of them traded off to stay with other parents of our class. It was unfortunate that our Partner Program the AMS (American Middle School) was out of town during the event, but their booth was manned by volunteers from the teaching staff and the Bilingual Middle school. I am glad that their earlier preparation was useful. The reason they were unfortunately absent was due to the difficulty of predicting air quality and temperatures long term.

This week we start off with a bang as the kids Celebrate Halloween, and I am excited to see their costumes tomorrow.