Georgetown Elementary School

The staff and students at Raey Guang Elementary learn about American customs and traditions while they are studying English.  This week, they learned about Halloween—even holding an all school assembly about the holiday.  Enjoy these videos created for us!

We have a very special sister school in Pingtung, Taiwan.  The teachers have posted introductions of themselves on our BLOG PALS website.  Feel free to visit this and learn about the teachers at Raey Guang Elementary.

We have received two emails from Raey Guang Elementary following the typhoon disaster of early August.

The principal, Chung Wen Yu, shared the following:

Thanks for your kind care about the typhoon in Taiwan. Places near sea and in mountains were severely destroyed after this typhoon. Our school is located in downtown area, and luckily nothing was really damaged. But, we all really concern the people who are suffering from this disaster. We’ve been trying to provide what we have to people there to help them. We also really appreciate your international rescue team; they worked really hard cleaning the mess and helping people rebuild their house and lives. Thank you again!

And, from Sarah:

Thank for your caring. It’s all fine in Pingtung urban center. The most terrible disaster is in the mountains. So far. there were much mud in some villages, and many soldiers, volunteers help clean the mud. However, there is anthoer potential crisis-infection disease, like H1N1. Anyway, hope everything and everybody are safe and well.

Please continue to keep the thousands of people who are homeless and dealing with the loss of loved ones in your thoughts and prayers.

I would like to highlight a very special blog this week:  Families that Blog Together, Learn Together.  This site matches Georgetown families with Raey Guang families — the intent of fostering an appreciation and understanding of one anothers family lives.  Our sister school, Raey Guang Elementary, is in Pingtung, Taiwan.

Michele DeWinter, a parent and paraprofessional in our school, is responsible for creating, hosting and managing this blog.  She has matched families and creatively works to overcome the communication barriers (English vs Mandarin).

A Raey Guang teacher, Chia Pin Chen, recently added a class post to our Blogpal site.  The post helps us to learn about their interests–foods, activities, and pets!  Please take time to read the post and leave comments sharing your interests.  In addition, Chia Pin Chen, created a class blog with photos of the children in his class.  This blog is in early stages of development, but very much worth a visit.

We look forward to sharing all that we learn about our friends in Pingtung, Taiwain through our blogs.

I would like to invite you to visit our school blog that brings together two schools, thousands of miles apart: BLOGPALS. You will find an entry from our sister school, Raey Guang.  A Year Six teacher, Chia Pin Chen, created a blog post on our site.  In addition, Mr. Chia Pin Chen has also created his own class blog that has photos of some of his students.

This has taken perserverence from both schools–one that speaks English only and another that speaks Mandarin with some English.  Please visit the blog and ready entries from our sister school students.  Mrs. Reagan

Michele DeWinter,  a parent and paraprofessional in our building, has taken on the leadership task of matching coordinating our blog/penpal project.  Michele will match Georgetown families with Raey Guang (Pingtung, Taiwain) families and encourage communication between the two.

The communication will take place via email and traditional mail, with Michele also sharing updates on our Family Blogpal site.  I am very excited to have Michele take this project on for our school and Raey Guang.  I wil make sure that I link her updates with this blog (our main school blog site) as well as with the Blogpals site (our site for communication between teachers/students).

Many thanks to Hung Yen Chen, a Raey Guang staff member, for persistantly trying to upload photos to our Blogpals site from Taiwan!  To view photos of the school activities, please visit the Blogpals site and look at the most recent post.  This is also a page, and can be found at the top with a tab title of Raey Guang Photos.

Joan Jang, a student from Taiwan who attends Purdue University, shared through email that we had made the news in Taiwan!  Mrs. Yu Wen, the principal of our sister school, Raey Guang Elementary, was interviewed about our partnership.  The photo in both articles shows her holding our student artwork (a gift from Georgetown to Raey Guang) that was presented during her visit to our school in October 2008.

Both articles cite our blogs–the one you are viewing right now and our blogs set up for FAMILY BLOGGERS (matching families from each school to communicate with one another) and SCHOOLS THAT BLOG TOGETHER (blog communication between the students/teachers of both schools).  The articles (below), are in Chinese and English.  I wanted you to be able to see both versions–and appreciate the beauty of the written Mandarin language.  Please be aware that the English translation is close…but not exactly true to the elegance of the Chinese language.  The message of collaboration and appreciation of both countries and cultures is strong and clear in both languages.  Enjoy!  Mrs. Reagan

Taiwan Yahoo! News:Chinese

Taiwan Yahoo! News:  English 

Liberty Times:Chinese

Liberty Times: English

To view Mr. Bowen’s 2nd Grade video about the solar system, check out our vimeo link below: