First Grade Fun and International Primary Curriculum

I'm enjoying the International Primary Curriculum that I am teaching at ISG-Jubail School. My first graders entered into the first integrated studies theme of Celebrations! by planning a pirate party, start to finish. They planned food, decorations and activities, including a treasure hunt for chocolate coins and imaginative play on a pirate ship.

The Pirate Ship in the Classroom

It's fun to be in a K-10 school - the older students came out and cheered on the costumed "pirates" as they paraded around the school.

The pirate celebration

Next the students studied different elements of celebrations and one of those was the wearing of masks. The children designed a mask on the computer in their ICT class and then made an actual face mask in Art.

Masks and IPC

We finished out the investigations with a history study of Then and Now, researching items from the past and seeing how they have changed today. The children made timelines showing how they have changed over time, too.The international culmination of the unit will be a Celebration Museum where children and parents will work together to make a display showing a favorite home country celebration and kids will answer questions about their celebration at a school-wide fair (think science fair format).

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String Quartet Broken String

We attended a marvelous concert last night, at the Porto Museum of Casa do Infante , a beautifully-renovated 1325 building near the river. At one point it served as a customs house. The government sponsors Portuguese musicians to return from other European orchestras to perform in their homeland. We heard and saw this group play a traditional piece – Haydn string quartet Opus 20 #2. Then the modern Benjamin Britten's Three Divertimenti – the stunning last movement of which they performed as an encore. They performed (and I recorded) the Shostakovich Quartet #9, during which the first-violinist broke a string (it features several strongly-plucked chords!) and had to retreat&repeat!

EUA: tanto estrago em tão pouco tempo

As part of my effort to learn about Portugal, both the country and the language, I'm subscribing to the centrist newspaper, O Publico . There are plenty of newspapers: conservative tabloids, and socialist and communist-sponsored daily papers; I find O Publico to be most sober, with consistently interesting columnists and opinion pieces, in addition to some local (Porto) news, with just enough sporting news to keep me chatting with the taxi driver. Today's opinion piece sums up, I think, European pundits' view of the U.S. government. As the title puts it: so much damage in so little time. I shudder at the rank incompetence and corrupt behavior, demonstrating a cynical attitude toward public service, showing indeed that the cruelty is the point. What scandal, what damage will be the tipping point to collapse this government? And what will it take to recover from the damage? Who will be able to trust the US government again, ever? Only ni...

Música Tunas e Boémia

We attended an unusual concert last night: Música Tunas e Boémia (bands and parties) University student folk-music groups — big groups of 40 and more each! put on a great show of singing, playing, flag-twirling, tambourine-swinging, all at the major (private) concert hall. The most unusual thing about it was that nobody used any electronic device (except for microphone amplification)—no electric guitar or keyboard, no big drum set…every instrument and prop was hand-held. The singing was quite good, given the effort to synchronize 40 voices.

Thomas journals

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