Masquerading Around

Celebrating Literacy!

It's been another busy week at ISU. For the past five days all the students spent time focused on reading books, developing characters, writing poetry, talking to authors, etc. They started a 4-week Read-a-Thon as a fundraiser for two local libraries here in Ulaanbaatar and today everyone dressed up as a character from their favorite book. Brian decided that he'd like to dress as a wizard, since he enjoys books involving magic (especially the popular Magic School Bus series, wherein the bus is magic and the rest of the content focuses on science). He could have also passed for Merlin, the Wizard in Sword in the Stone or Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series. Ashley absolutely loves Star Wars books so opted to dress as Padme, aka Queen Amidala. Ian preferred someone from the sophisticated Shakespearean play Julius Caesar so he dressed in a toga and golden crown. Also this week, a visiting author gave a presentation and students were treated to a D.E.A.R. Drop Everything And Read session during normal class time in which they were all able to enjoy reading a book of their choice for more than an hour!

This evening Ian and Ashley are off at the MYP (that's IB speak for Middle Years Program grades 6-10) Masquerade Ball. Ashley just completed a unit in Art on designing masks AND a unit in music about the Phantom of the Opera so she gathered some mardi gras beads, glitter glue pens, purple yarn and one of Brian's tinker toys and made her own masquerade mask. Ian donned a glittery mask sold by the student council (sponsors of the dance) and dressed in his Sunday attire. I thought they both looked very spiffy. Yes, I'm biased like that.