International Education Week 2009

Its International week again and the school is buzzing with lots of exciting events and visitors. Our class is looking at China because of Angus' recent trip.

We had a fantastic Wednesday afternoon with Mrs Lawson. We watched a film of a little chinese boy's day and compared it with our lives. We learned about the one child policy and brainstormed the advantages and disadvantages using the carousel tool. We have decided our brothers and sisters are not so bad after all!

The Carousel Tool is a way of brainstorming ideas so that everyone gets to contribute and we can bring ALL of the ideas together. In the next picture we are using The Carousel Tool to think about the life of a chinese boy.

We also learned how to say and write the numbers 1-10 in Mandarin. It was great fun and we are going to keep practising. Mrs Lawson has promised to visit us again.

Mrs Bell came in Tuesday and showed up lots of photographs and artefacts which she collected on a holiday there. She also had a beautiful kite which she bought in Tiananmin Square. It is a facinating country.

Mrs Lawson, who lived in China came in on Monday to tell us about schools and her experiences of China. She is coming back on Wednesday to teach us how to talk Mandarin and give us a better understanding of the symbols used in the language.

In the class we have been learning about some things that have been invented by the chinese. We have researched the Giant Panda and now have a better understanding of why it is important to conserve its habitat and stop it from being extinct.

We have made beautiful chinese lanterns which are used in various festivals and we have also made Chinese Dragon puppets.

We also learned to do Tai Chi and all the kids enjoyed that, as you can see below.

We found a great site where we can play chinese checkers but no one has managed to complete the game yet, our record is 4 checkers left.