Couple Sites to Keep in Mind

Found these sites to refer to if ever needed.

http://www.semanda.com
I'm not 100% sure if I want to use this (so not going to put it under the sidebar with "Resources") because of English, but there might be some ideas I personally can take and use for my class.

http://chinese4kids.net
Books in Chinese! I still need to check more into this, but this site is in English. Maybe can use this for one of the guided reading stations!

http://mandarin-immersion.blogspot.com
This is the site where I found the previous 2 links. Will refer to this again!

Going to Taiwan!

Grandma hasn't been feeling the best recently and it's time to go for a visit. I miss her.

While being there, it's a great way to refresh my Mandarin. I haven't been speaking in my absolute best so being there will help with my fluency.. Which might also hurt my English, but we will see.

Because I am going to Taiwan, I need to start making lists. My first list is a list of lists I will make!
A list of...

• what I will eat: 奶茶、湯包、拉阿(a kind of clams in Taiwanese)、香腸、蔥麵包
• what I will buy: some children's books in simplified Chinese, 二胡清涼音樂、笛子清涼音樂、古箏音樂、焦老師的好多顏色筆、印章名「沒做完」「好棒喔」
• where I will go: 台南、盧廣仲演唱會、Visit NCCU, visit some old friends, visit my elementary school、九份

03/20/14 edit
04/19/14 edit

Assessments

Have been thinking about assessments lately. For next year, my 3rd graders need to be leveled based on their four domains (listening, speaking, reading, and writing).

There are several assessments I have in mind:

• STAMP
• HSK
• ACTFL
• SOPA (?)
• TOCFL

Games for Chinese Learning

Games to keep in mind to teach my kids! This can improve their speaking and listening:

• Taboo
• Pictionary
• Telephone
• MadGab

This can improve their writing:

• Boggle

Extra :: This girl is going to Taiwan this summer :)! Will be seeing if there are any games over there I can get for the kiddos~

Teacher Outfits!

I'm not a huge fan of BlackFriday shopping, but due to a lot of family budgets and financial reasons, I could only save up until BlackFriday to do what I can (not want).

Recently, I found out I don't have much of  formal clothes to go to work in. I love skinny jeans, but I have leopard printed, red, blue, green, and even neon yellow. Although those are awesome to wear (I bought them for $10 each!), I can't seem to find skinny jeans of duller color for work.

Even though they're not as cheap as I wanted, for this BlackFriday, I got several different colors of skinny pants (brown [$20], khaki [$20], gray [$20], corduroy blue [$10.70], and black sparkly [$9] [just because the plain black one was over $20!])

Mom recently bought me shoes too (all flats):

• Michael Kors -- black beige and gold 
• Lauren Ralph Lauren -- black and gold
• Lauren Ralph Lauren -- black and silver
• Guess -- gray skater shoes

I believe I can mismatch a lot of this. Can't wait to start wearing them this Monday!

Mandarin Guided Reading

Oh. My. Gosh.

http://www.fcrr.org/for-educators/sca.asp

Check it out! It was recommended by Dr. Cheryl Wolfel from Palatine School District who is a director for their bilingual program. I can totally use this for guided reading in Mandarin! I can check if I can start implementing some of the Chinese structure words into how they have it for English words.

We'll see.

It's on the to do list.

Cute is Not the Point

http://mattbgomez.com/i-dont-like-tpt/

So I've thought about it way before I even found the post. Why do teachers think making their classroom look "cute" will bring them the best practices in pedagogy? Why do teachers think making their worksheets look "cute" with characters drawn on them will make the worksheets more fun and authentic? I'm not sure why, but in the end, it doesn't help with anything. Sure, you can decorate, but if that's the only thing you do, are you really keeping "best practices" in mind?

Teachers are not hired to make things "cute". Teachers are hired to have the best practices and teach kids to love learning (and more... oh gosh way more).