BCC IEP Staff Newsletter

Semester 1, Week 16
Events for Week 16 Aug. 28th Aug. 30th Aug. 31st Jaturamit Cheering Practice Begins Thai Culture Day Best-of-the-Best English Competition

Aug 27-31, 2012

26th Jaturamit Cheering Rehearsal Schedule Semester 1 / 2012

Ajarn Montiras Messages Hi Staff, I hope everyone had a happy time over the weekend. This week and next week, there will be 3-day rehearsals for Jaturamit Cheering on August 28th, September 4th and September 6th, 2012. They will be held according to the following schedule on the left: August 30th, 2012 is BCC Thai Culture Day. Both students and teachers have to wear Thai fabric clothing so you should wear Thai clothing on that day. August 31st, 2012 is the Best-of-the-Best English Competition during the Boy Scout period. It is on 11th floor, Eakin Building. They will be held according to the following schedule: Grade 3 4 5 6 Period 3 5 6 7

If you have time, you may want to go and cheer your students. Many of the contestants are from IEP. Thanks, Montira

Jokes of the Week My friend John came into French class one Monday with a pillow that he placed on his seat. Over the weekend he had been skiing and mildly fractured his tailbone. Our teacher promptly asked him to explain, in French, why he was sitting on a pillow. To our amusement, John answered, "Sorbonne." A friend was assigned a new post teaching English to inmates in prison. Feeling a little nervous on his first day, he began by asking the class a basic question: "Now, who can tell me what a sentence is?" After registering for his high school classes, my son burst into the house, filled with excitement. "Dad," he announced in one breath, "I got all the classes I wanted. But I have to have my school supplies by tomorrow. I need a protractor and a compass for geometry, a dictionary for English, a dissecting kit for biologyand a car for driver's ed." Toward the end of the school year, the sixth-grade teachers decide which of their students should be accelerated in certain subjects in the seventh grade. When a child is chosen, his parents are notified. When one boy was accelerated in science and math, his mother wrote to the teacher: "I think this is quite an honor for someone who just tried to make two quarts of lemonade in a one-quart pitcher!" A student in my math course at Ohlone State College in Fremont, Calif., developed a severe case of tendinitis. Since she couldn't write, she brought a video camera to tape my lectures. After three or four classes, I asked her if she found the method satisfactory. She said it was working quite well, even better than note-taking. "Actually," she confessed, "I have another reason for doing this. When I told my mother you were a widower, she wanted to see what you look like."

Teaching Tip The Importance of Reading One of the responsibilities we have as teachers is to help develop a solid reading foundation with our students. Studies show that a failure to do so can greatly hurt the childs chances for future success and can lead to difficulties in the classroom. Encouraging an interest for reading needs to begin from young learners and continue on throughout their school career. This can be a hard thing to accomplish, especially in the Gaming Era. Some of your students or classes may be showing good reading skill development, while others you may notice are falling behind? What can you do to help this? Give them more opportunities to read. This can be difficult to achieve as class time is limited but how about assigning some reading as an extra homework. Have them read it at home then ask comprehension questions in class the next day. Make it interesting and relevant. Choose texts that wont bore your kids and are relevant to their lives and or topic of study. For younger learners especially, use texts that contain some visual images. This will help to make the task not so daunting. Make it fun. When checking comprehension use fun activities to motivate. Dont punish a student by giving them reading. This will make them see reading as a bad thing. Assign reading that is funny and entertaining.

So what do our students need in order to read well? We need to provide 4 things for our students preferably at an early age, to build a proper reading foundation: Phonics information and the ability to manipulate the sounds that make up spoken language. Phonics skills and the understanding that there are relationships between letters and sounds. The ability to read fluently with accuracy, speed, and expression. To apply reading comprehension strategies to enhance understanding and enjoyment of what they read.

If you are looking for some reading content, check out the Media Files folder in coursework.