Language & Literacy Week Recap

This year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.

First, let me apologize for my absence this week.  It’s been a very busy week at ISM, with Language and Literacy Week and the beginning of MAP testing, so I’ve not had a lot of time to sit down and write.  Then, I compounded the week by catching the virus my husband and son have been passing around my house!

Anyways, this week’s ISM spotlight is an overall school spotlight.  At least once a trimester, we have activities that bring out entire school together with a school-wide focus.  In October, we came together for Heritage Week, to learn about the countries that we come from.  This week, we came together to focus on the words we read and speak and the languages we read and speak them in, with Language and Literacy Week.

Here are some of the things that were included in this wonderful week:

Each morning, the whole school came together for a story or two.  We had stories read in the three languages the students learn at ISM – English, French and Arabic.

 

On Monday, the students and teachers came to school dressed as their favorite book character.

 

We also created a graph of the letters in our first names.

 

On Tuesday, the students lined up to make the letters ISM for International School of Morocco.

 

We created a list of the languages spoken by the students at ISM, and we added them to our Map of ISM – created during heritage week.  We already had our pictures with lines to the countries we came from, now we also have the languages we speak.

 

Throughout the week, parents came in to share stories from their home languages.  Students heard stories in French, Dutch, Korean and other languages.

 

Everyone spent the week reading their favorite books.  Students, teachers, and others were “caught reading” and added to our I Got Caught Reading board at the entry to our school.

Come back next Friday to find out what the ISM teachers are up to.