Little Dragon Summer Camp Week 3 Newsletter ，Let’s Go Fly a Kite

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Make kite for fun! Go to fly kite for joy! It is time to celebrate! In the third week of Little Dragon Summer Camp, our students are engaged in meaningful and interactive kite activities that fostered acquisition of Chinese language and culture. As learning and making kites this week, we are focused, reserved, intelligent, and confident; as doing the group work and getting help from teachers and volunteers, we hold each other…….lift, grow, keep flying higher, just like a kite. 歌曲Song Students enter the classroom and sing a song, Kite. Vocabulary in the song is hard, but students can use pinyin as a support tool to improve oral fluency and reading comprehension. 晨会M Meeting Morning meeting develop a caring environment for every student. Teachers and students coming from different cultural background make efforts to cross social borders and develop friendship. Greeting, Smiling, laughing are essential parts to set the tone for every day’s lesson. 中文课Chinese LA In Chinese language art class, we integrate listening, speaking, reading, and writing over the five-day period. Based on students’ cognitive levels and Chinese language proficiency levels, students could be in a whole group; could be put into two groups; could be in student centers. Day 1:• Students guess a riddle of kite, and then watch a video clip about the kite history.• We tell the story about Kite, and then analyze the story using the story element map.• Individual student does today’s work related to teacher’s instruction.  Day 2:• Students are invited to read the picture book, We Like to Fly Kite.• We open minds when we watch so many creative kites in the video, National Geographic - China International Kites Festival. We describe different kites in the video, or they saw before.• Students are put in student centers and do the Chinese work. They make sentences with有的 (yǒude) normally translated as "some" in English. It is often used multiple times in one sentence to refer to different groups. With teachers and volunteers help, they make it! Days 3:• Students are invited to read the picture book; Spring. This book led to today’s topic that one of the favorite activities is flying a kite in spring.• As learning a traditional seven words poem in Chinese language, students are put in two groups. The students in beginning group focus on reading comprehension. They draw a picture to show their understanding. The students in advanced group focus on reading comprehension and word understanding. Besides sketches made, older students write the English translation for the poem. • Students read aloud the poem with expression, as a group and as a pair. They exchange their work and discuss how to improve it. Days 4:• The teachers show the video clips and have discussions with students about the uses of kite in two parts, ancient time and modern time.• Students take notes while watching the video clips. Students in advanced group need to write sentences, while students in beginning group can draw picture to show their understanding. Days 5:Advanced Group• We read the text, Kite, adapted from Pingao Jia’s Kite. • Students take annotations according to the guided questions.• Following the guided questions, students write a summary of this week. 篮球 Basketball 🏀 Coach Ma always gives help. We practice our skills in fun and meaningful games! Catch! Pass ball practice One, Two, Three！Pass ball practice Who Wins? Dribble Practice Knock Out! Dribble Practice Which team gets more? Shoot ball practice Girls’ team vs. Boys’ team 中午休息 Recess 英文课English LA Group A This week, the kindergartners and first graders practice their sightreading using flashcards, write brief introductions of themselves, and answered questions about short stories they read together. They also play games like Hangman and participated in a short play. Group B Students learn about conjunctions with FANBOYS which stands for For And Nor But Or Yet and So. FANBOYS is most of the conjunctions. Students also learn about the speech parts, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. To make English learning more interesting, we extend to the topics, like solar flares, WW2, traffic, etc….I have them rocks :) Group C The students read texts of various genres this week: short stories, science fiction, and a biography. Each student takes turns reading out loud until the end, and a class discussion and questions about the text would follow. If we have remaining class time, we will play a couple rounds of Hangman or have spelling quizzes. Overall, the students are able to practice their English language arts skills and also have fun! Group D This week, our sixth and seventh graders read “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell (1924), and learned about the components and how to write a five-paragraph persuasive essay. In this story, we learned about the post-WWI historical setting our characters live in, the feelings and ideas that influence the protagonist’s actions, and the overarching theme the author intends to convey. This short story’s reading level was meant to be a challenge for our middle schoolers, but even so they did an excellent job at reading and comprehending the text. Snack & Movie 电影 Take a break and eat some snack while watching Disney movie. Students enjoy to watch one movie per week together. 活动Activity Center Activity Center creates a physical setting that support academic and social development. With friends’ influence, students try different centers. Moving to different center gives students chance to explore self-interest and understand others. STEM We synthesize math and science knowledge to create kites. It is not easy. Especially, we assemble one kite and make one kite.  Day 1:• To understand how a kite flies, we discuss the force to hold the kite in the air and three main components of kite.• Students use their imagination to design their kites. Day 2:• We introduce the kite geometry.• Kite is heavier than the air. We discuss the material to make the kite. • Students make the kite. Days 3:• Students assemble a kite.• We compare and contrast the assembled kite and self-made kite. Think about how to improve our self-made kite. Days 4:• We go to fly the assembled kite.• When we come back, we improve the assembled kite. Days 5:Beginning Group• Improve or redo the self-made kite. 化学 Chemistry Combining instruction and experiment, Zhou Laoshi provide a wonderful and fun learning experience for us. SolubilitySolubility of different materials Units and MathExplore the relationship between Math and chemistry PHSecret letter( Anthocyanin in blueberry, the ph indicator) ChratographyChromatography( Food colorin M&M and skittles) 特色 Feature Activity Let’s Go Feed the Ducks! What is an enjoy thing that we walk to the park which is three minutes away from our classroom. We sit and eat snacks on the bank of the pond. A piece of cookie or a loaf of bread is the driving force to bring many ducks to visit us. Swimming Pools Maze-Indoor playground 义工 Volunteers It is amazing to see our students learn so much in such a short time span. We hope all the children had a wonderful time during camp and we look forward to seeing them again.