This morning we walked our students down to a neighboring
park to see a performance of Peking Opera. This is a park typical of Chinese
parks, where at any time of day, you can see different activities take place.
Every morning at 7.30 when I walk from the subway through the park towards
school, there is an elderly group who practice Tai Chi. The Tai Chi Master must
be in his 70s but he doesn’t miss a day with his group! Some mornings and
afternoons there is impromptu dance (with swords and intricate moves). This
Peking Opera group are made up of retirees, some were professional opera
singers, and they perform to the public for free, with full costumes and a live
band. Peking Opera is not for me (it’s so noisy!!!, but despite that, it was
very impressive!
We are currently winding up our school year here, getting
ready for summer break. It feels quite strange writing reports, packing up the
classroom, etc, and not doing Christmas activities, even though it’s in the low
to mid 30s every day now. It feels like it should be Christmas time!
International Schools who teach the IB PYP program teach to
6 six-week (approx.) units of inquiry. Our current and final UOI (unit of
inquiry) is focused on the Arts with the central idea being that people express
themselves through the arts in unique and creative ways. I dreaded this unit
(because I’m not very creative) but we have had a wonderful time exploring
different art forms including their significance to people’s cultures. We had a
number of parents come in and do activities such as Korean Hanji paper crafts,
Japanese sumo, origami and manga comic art. One of our parents is a German
music composer so he did a music lesson with us, and another is a professional
documentary film-maker so we made a documentary with her. What fun! Most
impressive was the children’s study of Claude Monet. They were so interested in
his life and his art, and in art class they painted their own “Water Lilies”
painting – my class is extremely artistic! They are now learning about Claude
Debussy (famous composer) and probably will be until next Wednesday, the second
last day of school!
The previous UOI was my favourite, exploration and how it
has shaped communities. We started by learning about the many reasons why
people explored, then went on to research some well-known explorers. Students
chose figures such as Magellan, Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama, etc, and
as a class, we learnt about Marco Polo and the Silk Route. We finished with a
half-day simulation of travelling along the Silk Route as Marco Polo, stopping
at different places along the way including Hormuz, Kashgar, Hami, etc, until
we finally reached Kublai Khan’s palace and were welcomed with a feast of pizza,
breads and dips! Upon our return to Venice, we wrote detailed journal entries
from the perspective of Marco Polo, demonstrating our understanding of how our
journey shaped communities through things like the trading of goods, the spread
of disease, exchange of knowledge and religion, etc. I was very impressed with
what they learnt.
The new school year begins in August, and so far I have a
class of 7, most of them high ESL needs. Hopefully there will be a few more
enrolments over the summer because 7 is too small! (This year I ended up with
13!) My first UOI will be focused on children’s rights, and looking at the
unequal access to basic human rights around the world. I have one parent who
works for the UN so that should be very interesting!
Anyway, it’s only a little over a week before we jump on a
plane to Chengdu. The pandas are our first port of call, then we’ll just back
pack around Sichuan, Yunnan and Guangxi provinces. We want to get off the
beaten track, and quite close to the Tibetan border, and the other minority
areas bordering Burma, Laos and Vietnam. I’m hoping that all our efforts to learn
Chinese over the last 3 months will come in handy and make travel a little
easier!
So stay tuned for lots of holiday snaps over the coming
months…
