Ding Ding took the idea of graffiti posters (see Tash's Blog What Does Reflection Look Like? 02/22/2011) and made it her own in the form of a graphic organizer.  Students write the feedback in Mandarin and in English.  During her lesson she wanted to gather individual feedback on content and participation.  The results, as usual, were enlightening.  For example, one student responded, "I'm so scared, there are so many characters to learn."  This gives Ding Ding the opportunity to acknowledge this student's feelings and encourage them further to keep trying coupled with specific strategies on how to remember characters. 

The Year 2 Unit of Inquiry Maps can help people find their place in this world provided many opportunities for authentic integration with music. This is one of the activities we did during this unit.

 Students worked in pairs and wrote simple musical patterns or “melody maps” using non-traditional notation.  They shared their melody maps with the other Year 2 classes to see if their peers could follow them by playing the melodies on the boomwhackers.  Students gave constructive criticism if they had trouble reading the map.

 We then discussed how musicians follow music maps everyday to discover the music they are going to play. Students learned how to follow the symbols and signs of traditional notation and transferred their original melody maps to the staff.