The year of rooster: Chinese New Year celebration in Medfield Public Schools

This year, the Chinese New Year celebration started on Jan 28th, but it will last 15 days. The Chinese New Year is considered the most important holiday in China and in a lot of other countries. There are many ways to celebrate it. In Medfield, this is how each school celebrated it.

In the high school, students decorated the lobby near the main office. They combined traditional Chinese New Year decorations with some Medfield spirit decorations. The New Year posters throughout the school also showed people information about the Chinese New Year. In the classroom, students learned a traditional, yet still very popular Chinese board game: Mahjong. Many Chinese still play it during the New Year time.


At Blake Middle School, 6th, 7th and 8th graders made dumplings, sweet rice balls and spring rolls. Dumplings and spring rolls represent wealth, sweet rice balls represent family togetherness. All three are must-eat foods during the Chinese New Year.


The students at Dale school learned what the twelve zodiacs are, what this year's zodiac is and which song is popular during the Chinese New Year. They made some crafts of roosters and twelve zodiacs lanterns. They also sang a New Year song, called " Gongxi Gongxi" .

At Wheelock, the Mandarin students celebrated the New Year with the Chinese club. They made a great wall in the hallway, which was full of students' work. They made the terracotta warriors, Chinese painting, calligraphy and stamps.

#WLMedfield @MedfieldHS: We Love Languages!

Valentine's Day is coming and speaking of love -the World Language teachers at MHS love our languages! A recent walk during today's blocks revealed a great variety of activities, planned by our teachers for our students. Block days in the WL hallway are mostly fun, but learning is still omnipresent.

Spanish 2 students in Sra. Tasi's class were inventing their own phrases using small white boards and images shared through their ipads. Mme. Goodrow-Trach's students used props from her bag of treasures; they passed them them around the room declaring in (perfect) French -this is mine, this is yours!

                                                                              Using Quizlet Live!, students in Latin class began to review vocabulary and concepts for an upcoming quiz. Quizlet Live! is an interactive quiz game where the students compete against each other in a friendly(!) way to earn points based on their knowledge of the topic. Sra. Rodenhi's Intro to Spanish class also played three rounds of Quizlet Live! to start off the block. Later in the block, her students retold a story, using TPRS methodology. This round of visits produced some great videos -check out our twitter feed at #WLMedfield (to the right of this page) -very impressive speaking in French, Spanish, and Mandarin. In Mandarin class, students practiced a role play in pairs with Lao Shi Zhang. In Spanish 5 Honors, students are learning about Spanish-speaking cultures through films. They also practiced their own communication skills as they learned. Students were watching Motorcycle Diaries and had the chance to discuss in pairs different aspects of Che Guevara's journey. Sra. Hamilton's Spanish 2 class played a spirited round of Rock, Paper Scissors (Piedra, Papel, Tijeras). Everyone loves a good competition! Make sure to ask your children what they learned in their #WLMedfield language classes today, and follow our blog by subscribing at the top right of the page.