Thursday, November 20, 2008 ;
10:41 AM
24 Oct
Fri
8.20am-9.20am
Assembly for Nursery to Grade 2 students
ds1's class was put in charge of this particular session, which means they put up performances and presentations for the whole assembly. They can choose to invite guest performers too, if they wish.
At the start, I saw ds2's class file in, and went in front to snap a pic of him with his friends. He was soooo surprised to see me, haha. He has that look of amazement on him in the photo below.
When he saw this pic at home, he pointed out all his friends to me and told me their names. He seems to be very happy in his class.

The Head of the Elementary school giving a short talk and some announcements of the week. Can see ds1 seated on stage already, he's on the right (from the audience's perspective), near the mic, cos he's the narrator and part MC.

The part of the assembly where his class present their reports on their chosen animal for the term. Also part of their UOI (unit of instruction) this term. They're taking turns, holding their projects and talking about them.

Then they acted out the skit of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, with ds1 as storyteller. He practised and read the script at home for just 3 nights leading up to the performance, cos the story and everything was decided only on Mon of the week, I think. The script came home only on Tues. However, the sentences were pretty simple, so ds1 did not need help from me.
For the rest of the skit, I used the videocam, so no pics of the lovely Goldilocks with her long golden wig. They got a big tall boy to be Baby Bear also, so it was very very funny, since Father Bear is a much smaller boy actor.

After that, they also sang a few songs, with some acting. The music teacher coordinated this segment. She taught the assembly audience through one song, about "loud" and "soft" too, using the song sung to the 2 different dynamics.

Curtain call by the actors and ds1 the narrator.
Can you see the tallest boy? Yeah, that's Baby Bear, haha.

That's the class pic they took at the end of assembly. 11 of them. There are 2 Kindy classes in all. The other class has about the same number of kids too.

After that, the rest of assembly are for award presentation. Each month, there'll be awards presented to kids who have excelled in one of the goal areas of an IB kid. Here are all the goals (as copied out from the IB Handbook): "Inquirer, Communicator, Principled, Open Minded, Knowledgeable, Thinker, Risk taker, Balanced, Caring, Reflective".
This is the first month they started the awards and ds1 got one!
Each class teacher gets to pick 2 students each month. Then each specialty subject teacher gets to pick 2 also. Specialty subjects include PE, Art, Music and World Languages.
For ds1's class, he and S got the awards this time. The teacher will call them up on the stage, say a few sentences on what they did to receive the award (which is a laminated cert) and then hand it to them.
They started from Nursery and went all the way up to Grade 2. Sometimes, teachers will pick only 1 or none, if they feel no one deserved it.

This is right after both were handed their awards.

This is the script booklet, the award/cert that ds1 received and the Tasmanian Devil toy that his teacher let him pick out as a prize for getting the award. S also got to pick one.
On his cert, it says he got it for "being a Great Thinker and Inquirer during our animal classification unit".

Naturally, this boosts the self-esteem of the kids a lot. I hope it serves to encourage ds1 to continue displaying all these qualities.
He just received another one on the next assembly, for being a "risk-taker". His PE teacher chose him! What a surprise. That'll be in another post.
rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
____________________________________________________________