Our 2nd Semester Theme for 4A Homeroom at TAS, Shanghai, China: "Inspiring a Fresh Start, Engage to Mastery"
Throughout our academic year, there is a point where a fresh start is needed. In China, we have two breaks each academic year at bi-lingual schools. The first comes as Winter Break which celebrates the Chinese Lunar New Year. This year it is from January to February 2020. At our Primary School, we had our last day on January 17th and will return on February 17th. With this in mind, in addition to celebrating the Chinese New Year with my Chinese family as I am married to a Chinese National, it has been a time to reflect on my teaching practices, consider new possibilities, and set out some key benchmarks for our 4th Grade students to reach by the end of June 2020 as we march towards Grade 5.
With this being said, I am excited to announce that our class will be bringing more technology-based tools into our educational instruction and expand upon our inquiry-based projects that approach the content in new and engaging ways. Throughout this past holiday, I have been working on implementing a series of online resources and tools for our class to be more connected to technology and engage more with the families of our class.
Recognizing the need for ongoing family -to-school and school-to-family communication, I have created two websites that will help our families keep up to date with class news and provide more pictures and videos for them to view. We also will have a LinkedIn Page and also have an Official WeChat Account along with a podcast series that targets the learning attitudes, academic skills, and routines necessary to achieve Excellence at School. We look at Excellence as a holistic person addressing core character traits, building up key academic skills, and improving classroom routines and Habits of Mind for successful students to walk in.
We encourage everyone to follow us along with our 2nd Semester Academic Journey as we build out some new ways to engage, encourage, and praise our students as they take each step forward by making good choices that build their core Character Traits for Excellence @ School. Our website hosted on google webs is 4A Homeroom @ TAS. This is a website that showcases our student work and provides insight into how our students are learning and developing each and every day. Our website hosted on wix.com is: Tell Me A Story Mr. Charles where we provide more updates to parents and provide key information to keep up with what we have been doing throughout our week while in school. These are the stories that we share with the families we serve.
Our LinkedIn Page called 2nd Semester 4A is dedicated to also providing key updates, monthly reviews of what we have been doing, and setting out some highlights for praising student work. In the 2nd Semester, we will be launching an encouragement and public praise to students who provide their best work as Examples of Excellence and Examples of Great Improvements Noted.
We are also launching a podcast called Tell Me A Story, by Ken Charles Fortunah that is a series of audio episodes that target the learning attitudes, behaviors, and good habits of mind that lead to Excellence @ School. It is in this series that we will start out by introducing the idea of Excellence and defining what this looks like at a Bi-Lingual Primary School. We will then look to discuss and provide some recommendations to make some adjustments to achieve this state of being through constant purposeful mindfulness and deliberate behaviors that move a student towards the desired outcome that is beyond just getting 100's and straight A's on exams. We will also consider the "skill gaps" and practical steps to close common gaps in vocabulary building, reading comprehension, grammar, writing skill development, and working in collaborative teams.
About Kenneth Charles Fortunah:
Kenneth Charles Fortunah graduated from Bloomfield College with a B.S. in Business Administration and switched to the Educational Field back in 2009 when he saw that his gifts and talents could be used to serve more people in the community through a Helping Profession instead of just conducting business as usual. His Educational Philosophy is centered on building up the holistic person of a student starting from seeking great character, adding strong academic skills and solid habits of mind which lead to Excellence @ School.
Over the past 10 years, Mr. Charles has dedicated his educational practice to addressing the needs of the student for those with special needs and those who are gifted and talented in the public and private school systems. While in China for the past 6 years, Mr. Charles has started his preliminary field research for how the achievement of excellence in the classroom would look like for Chinese Students and those who are gifted & talented in English as Second Language. He is currently pursuing his M.Ed. in Multi-Cultural Studies and Teaching License from Washington, D.C. with an anticipated graduation date of December 2020.