Bienvenue, 2012: Bringing in the New Year with Drama!
LEU begins the year with drama!
Dramatic skits, re-enactment and visualization of stories are extremely effective ways for children in the elementary plane of development to internalize knowledge. By harnessing their imaginations and channeling them towards a meaningful purpose – whether it be for summarizing a novel, celebrating a cultural event, or communicating a virtue – children simultaneously engage their creative minds, practice and apply communication skills, and ultimately make a personal connection to what they are learning.
Students presenting their original holiday skit.
We thus begin 2012 just as we had ended 2011: With creative learning through drama! The Christmas holiday brought a special Christmas skit staged by several students, who spent time writing an original skit and song, and sharing it with their classmates during the last day of school in December. February 2012 brings yet another opportunity for the children to flex their performance muscles, with the third-year students hosting their very first school assembly. With the guidance of their teachers, the eldest students of both Lower Elementary classes voted on possible topics for the assembly (honesty was the prevailing topic), volunteered for various tasks, and are in the process of fine-tuning scripts and rehearsing. We are all looking forward to sharing the children’s hard work during the assembly in February.
Visualization and inferential thinking have also been topics of focus in our development of comprehension and reading skills. Students in different groups have been enjoying listening to stories – without being able to see any accompanying pictures – and actively using their minds to visualize and then re-tell various aspects of the story. In addition to utilizing their imaginations to picture what is happening in the stories, students have also been participating in circle discussions that ask inferential questions – which have several possible answers, depending on what each individual draws from the story to support his or her opinion or view. Inferencing is a key part of the development of the imagination, and answering questions that engage and exercise our ability to fill in gaps in our information is critical and essential. By Focusing on these key skills of visualization and inferential thinking, students are given the foundational tools to better draw information from any text that they are reading.
Making the most of this imaginative, dramatic and expressive period in the children’s development not only makes learning enjoyable and vibrant, but also makes it deeply effective and personally resonant.
OTHER NEWS:
Bienvenue, Abi!
BIENVENUE, ABI!LEU warmly welcomes Abi, a third-year student from France who will be joining us for several weeks. We are thrilled to have Abi, who has been avidly welcomed by her fellow classmates and who has easily assimilated into the LEU class. In addition to the joy of having a new friend in class, Abi is a precious, direct source of information for the children as they research for their various Europe projects. Students writing projects on France have already interviewed her about different aspects of French life! Merci, Abi!
JANUARY LESSON THEMES – Please CLICK HERE to view lesson theme guides for the month of January.