Teachers who have a school blog or some other kind of electronic information page for parents might want to consider some of the articles here that I have posted on my own American Embassy School site here in New Delhi. If you use any of them, please feel free to copy or alter in any way that suits your own needs.
Here is the first one, in which I explain to parents how I will be posting the stories we create in class on my school blog site:
Posting of Stories
It might be fun for your child to show off how good they are at reading French to you each evening! In that interest, I will be posting readings of the stories and other things that we create in class each day. Look for one or two stories per week. All you have to do is ask a favorite question of parents, “What did you do in school today?” and if you are not happy with the answer (usually “Nothing…”, right?) then you can say, “Well, how about reading me your French story?” Then, as the year goes by, later on you can ask your child to tell you the story they did that week.
Of course, it takes a lot of listening to the language to be able to speak it, and a lot of reading to be able to write it, so we will focus mainly this year on the language input skills of listening and reading before venturing into working on the output skills of speaking and writing. In that way, your child will never feel as if “they can’t do it” (speak and write) until they have heard and read French a lot first. My belief is that if we enjoy the class, and don’t feel pressured by large amounts of homework and big tests, things will go better.
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
