Hong Kong International School

I continue to play catch up with the blog.

After Sara and I presented at the literacy conference on Saturday and Sunday – we stayed over a couple days to work with the middle-schoolers who we had met back in September.

We test drove a couple of our lessons from our new resource coming out with Corwin this Fall and are happy to report they went down like  fresh Dim Sum. The teachers ate it up. plus we found some places where things could be tightened up and even a typo in one of the slides. (Nothing like a 7th grader as copy editor.)

The groups we worked with were fairly large – three classes at a time so we were not as nimble as we could have been. I explained it to the students as we being a cruise ship instead of a speed boat and that taking the twists and turns during the lesson we need to really concentrate or else we will lose precious time just moving about in the lesson.

Well the kids performed heroically and we got a whole bunch of work done – writing and practicing our public speaking skills. Sure every now and then we’d have a participant rowing in the wrong direction – but this was rare and easily corrected.

Kudos to the teachers and students at HKIS and special thanks to Clare – the 7th and 8th grade LA teacher who first suggested we visit to the powers that be.

Hope to see you guys and gals soon.

There's a street for that...

 One of the amazing things about big Asian cities is the way certain services and shops are piled into sections of town. When Sara needed a special computer cable in order for us to see if there was anything salvageable from a fried hard drive on her mac we were sent to the Chung Sha Wan subway stop where we found several THOUSAND computer shops stacked atop each other. Whole multiple block and story sized buildings packed with shop after shop after shop of electronic equipment. Each place seemingly selling the same stuff – it boggles the mind as to how one decides which store to enter. Our decision was made by which one was open first as we were then headed to the airport.

Similarly – on a trip to Vietnam I asked our librarian hostess where I might find some sewing notions – zippers, buttons clasps – my mother makes purses and other seamstressy type things. The reply I received was “Zipper Street” of course. And that is where we went – zipper street blocks and blocks of honeycombed shops full of every type of sewing need.

So – when I saw Goldfish Market – on the map of Hong Kong in our hotel room I figured it would be worth a stop. Here are a few pics from this excursion. Even though we passed several dozen pet emporiums I have the suspicion we didn’t really find the market. It seemed a tad too calm. I think a little more research may be needed. Even so – enjoy some photos…