The new Academic Year

I am so sorry for taking so long to write a page in my blog.  I really should say I have no excuse but I do have.

It has been a very, very, very busy start to the school year indeed.  With new principal and two new staff members, it has been getting to know them as teachers all over again.  And not only the getting to know the new staff, I am the only existing Foreign staff left.  I am now teaching year 1 and I am loving it.  A lot of work to be done, but very rewarding.

 All the teachers had to make posters about themselves and where they came from.

 Our staff for 2015/2016

Teaching Year 1

At the beginning of every year we have a parents information evening, which I think most schools do.  Here we just spoke about what we required from the children in the classroom and what the children will be learning about.

 Parents at the information evening and myself giving the presentation.

I decorated my classroom in a jungle theme, since I am from South Africa. The first shared reading we did as a class was 'Chika Chika Boom Boom' and we decorated the book corner with it.  The children loved it.

 The Coconut Tree with the alphabet climbing up the tree.

 The children's reading containers.

 Our reading corner.

 Our math corner.

 Our topic corner.

 The teachers and the children's desks.

Wall displays.

  The entrance to our classroom.

 The children's work display wall.

After the first week of exhausting meetings and setting up of our classrooms, I treated the staff to a Chinese lunch.  It was lovely having all the staff together again having fun.

Every year we have Founders Day at school.  This is where every campus under the Yew Chung/ Yew Wah Foundation celebrates the Foundations Birthday.  And we celebrate with a fun sports day.  We usually go on live via Skype and are able to greet the different campuses around Mainland China and Hong Kong.  We definitely had some fun.

 Ning Ning and Sunny

 Myself at sports day.  I don't know how many Chinese staff told me they liked my 'white' legs. Ha ha.

The staff in an egg and spoon race.

We also had a field trip to a farm to see how they grow grapes.  This was a different farm from last year.  It was very very big and we had to walk for long distances.  We had a tasting of the different grapes grown on the farm.  I think they may have been modified because some grapes tasted like lichee and some like rose water.  We also had a chance to see how dragon fruit is grown.  It was very polluted that day.  So by the end of the field trip we were all exhausted.

The entrance to the farm

This is how dragon fruit  grows.  Once the yellow part dries up and falls off it becomes a pink fruit.

Some of the decor inside where we went to have lunch.

Ning Ning my Co Teacher

Myself cutting grapes

The New Zealand teacher Christine (Chris)

Tasting different types of grapes.

We have had some fun at school.  We were not allowed to celebrate halloween at school, so we decided to do something a bit different.  We had 'Book Week' and focused on a Theme, which was the OCEAN.  Then we read many different books to the children within that theme.  At the end of the week the children were allowed to dress up as a character from their favourite book and had to bring that book in with them.  What super characters there were.  We also have a huge fish in the Library.  Every time a child finishes a book, the teacher takes a photo of them with that book and pastes it onto a scale and it is stuck on the fish.  Our children are reading lots of books.  The teachers decided to dress up as pirates as part of the ocean theme.

Well that's it for now.  I will be posting again soon.  I promise.