Hello Everyone,

Today we are preparing for an Open House at school on Sunday, 8/11/12 from 9:00 am to noon.  At that time, we will be meeting with attending parents to introduce ourselves and tell them what we have been doing with the children.  I am typing fast because we need to find a place to print out the myriad of pictures Fran has been taking in the classrooms.  I am sure the students and parents will enjoy the posters we plan to make with their children pictured on them.  Say a prayer we can find a place that sells posterboards and glue sticks.  I have tried several places to no avail.  Although I did get a hot tip regarding where I can print pictures. 

Thank goodness Fran is here not only for his computer expertise and classroom support but because he has been the navigator around town.  If you are not already aware of this, I have a terrible sense of direction and I would never have been able to get to the places I need to be at in South Africa without him.

I am working very closely with a wonderful teacher, Miss Joy Nqolobe, as I teach within the various grade level classrooms.  As I stated previously, I am very busy every night and weekends documenting lessons and typing up materials the school can use going forward in their literacy instruction.  I am using our CR model of "training the trainer" so that Joy can train the staff in these methodologies after we leave.  Since the classroom teachers only get to see me in action when I am in their own classroom.

Cute story --- I was working with second grade students on Wednesday and I was teaching them consonant actions in order to develop their phonemic awareness.  The children were having so much fun and afterwards I saw a good transfer of knowledge in their ability to identify initial sounds.  You should have seen them as they pretended to catch a ball as they made the "c" sound and laughing out loud as they made the "l" sound.  Even though it was time for recess, the children did not want to leave the classroom because they were so engaged in this literacy activity.

Elaine Wunder, wonderful kindergarten teacher, if you are reading this, please send me a copy of the consonant action document.  I am going from memory with some of the actions but it would be nice to have a copy of the document I furnished to the K teachers.

Fran is going to attempt to upload a picture or two now.  Keep your fingers crossed because we have attempted to do this previously with no success.

Goodbye for now.

Fondly,
Laura and Fran