Hola Kayla, Hemos visitado la libreria de juegos en la universidad de Brujas. This library contains over 10.000 board games with an educational purpose. It's ranking is 3 in Europe, after Switzerland and Germany. Truly worth a visit! You can order a seminar made to measure your wishes. Very interesting for our teacher carreer. The boardgame-librarians find games for your targetgroup. And explain the rules, the learning goals attached to the Flemish curriculum. But the fun factor ofcourse is playing the game! And that's what we did! We played Merlin, a search-the-five-differences-in-the-pictures game, we playes Ghostcastle (Geister Trappe), a memory game where you can loose track of your own pawn. A handyman game is with wooden blocks and instruction cards, where you have to build the instruction (Circus Blockx & Castle Logix by Smart Games).
My favourite game is Blokus 2D (3D makes me frenzy and nervous), a mathematical board game that remains challenging. It resembles Katamino, but Blokus 2D is played by four, with different colours. And the interaction prevents the possibilities of knowing the solution by heart (as in Katamino)
As final game, we played a class game, Word Whiz, which is played with a sheet of paper, and cards with letters. You can play it in any language you like, and is challenging for all levels. We had a fun day.
Hi Kayla, I've worked for presentations that we'll do later next week. So I'll write about that when we get there. This evening was the pre-party of the England trip I'm going to be part of in two weeks. It'll mean I won't be in International Class at that time, and miss out that week. But it'll be filled with other experiences, and maybe I can pass it on the ones of IC that are interested in visiting England. We'll see.
The preparations had taken a lot of time, but it was worthwile. Almost everyone showed up, we had some tea and toast with gingermarmelade, the files were ready, the list with who's sleeping with whom in which guest family was given to the students, a couple of power points as appetizer and above all, students talking to each other and happy to see each other again. A good start for a busy week.
After the pre-party I rushed to secondary school to parental contact with teachers. I managed to speak to 5 of the 6 teachers I had made an appointment with. We talked about the positive evolution of my boys in their school year. We talked about the risks of getting into a less favourable group of friends who use their hands instead of words during a discussion at the play ground (1st of secondary, always a huge change in a child's life). And we talked about the boredom of regular schooling for highly gifted pupils (5th grade, = all new teachers because of difference in training). I think I've made good progress, and look forward to the results of my conversation with the math's teacher. He is going to talk to my boy, and adapt some of his lessons to his needs. This teacher also teaches 6th grade, and has his preparations at hand, so it won't be too hard I hope, to make mathematics challenging again.
I'm starting to feel very tired. We had a lousy month of February, with definitely lack of sunshine, and my solar charged batteries of life are getting exhausted...
Hi Kayla, Our international group has been invited at the offices of Klasse in Brussels. They're housed in a building of the Flemish Government, a fancy big modern complex with a lot of glass and the 1st floor is covered with letters and numbers. They're an indication of the sympbolism of the floor: we use letters and numbers to inform the public.
At Klasse, editors and secretaries work hard to publish 4 magazines, to inform the Flemish public about all that could be interesting for pupils, parents and teachers. This means there is a magazine Klasse for parents, Klasse for teachers, Yeti (for pupils aged 10-12) and Maks! (for 14-18). The Yeti is a bit of an ADHD magazine when you look it through, but that is alright: the lay-out and topics are given by 10-12 year olds, and via this magazine, we can look into their minds... scary business!
Maks! can provoke controversy, depending on its topics. Ordinary topics are normal, but once in a while, a topic stands out, like suicide amongst young people, or sex, all you wanted to know about it. In a lot of our traditional catholic schools, principals are shocked by the item, and don't want that month's edition spread in their school. No problem for the pupils, because Klasse can also be found online.
The work space and office of Klasse is one big room, with desks opposite each other, where people can see and talk to each other. The editors work together with a lot of different information sources, and the dead lines are very short. The different sections in the office are linked together by music symbols. Everybody plays a role in the concert of creating these magazines with governmental information, given to the public in a modern coating. The articles are not individually signed by their authors, everybody works towards the goal, the concert, the magazine. Eye catchers are the old piano, and a funky Chinese doorway.
