Learning a new language

In Room 7, as well as learning to speak in Te Reo Maori, we have also been learning to count to 20 in a number of different languages.

We are lucky enough to have students in our class who can speak other languages, and they have been teaching the rest of us how to count to 20 in the other language they know. Margarita has taught us how to count to 20 in Spanish, Matthew, in French, Harry, in Italian, Emma, in Japanese, and Maya, in German.

Above is a photo of Emma teaching us all how to count in Japanese.

Making a Garden #2

Last week we planted some lettuce, cabbage and carrots in the garden outside Room 7.

Here are some photos...





We are also going to try planting some plants under the big gum tree outside Room 7. But it's quite shaded so we will need to keep a close eye on the plants to see if they grow successfully.




We also were lucky enough to be given some strawberry plants from a parent, and planted these as well.

Call in and have a look at our vege garden!

Planting a vege garden

Room 7 has started to plant out some vegetables in our planter boxes. Over the net week we will be planting all sorts of different vegetables. We need to decide as a class what sort of vegetables might be suitable for this time of year. If you have a few ideas, suggest these to your child, who can then share during our discussion. Or, leave us a comment and we will read it. Thanks!

Arts Festival performances

This morning the children spent some time blogging personal responses to last Friday's trip into Wellington, to attend Arts Festival performances. Click the 'Writing Blog' link to the right, to read these posts.

World Maths Day

World Maths Day was today. Room 7 participated by logging in to www.worldmathsday.com and competing in a basic facts competition against other children from around the world.
Below are some photos of us taking part.

Blogging our writing

Today we published a piece of writing on the Room 7 publishing blog (see the sidebar to the right).

Click on the ' student publishing' link, then click your child's name in the label column, to see what they have written.

Please leave a comment on the writing- the children LOVE to read these.

Enjoy!

Week Three has been very busy as we establish the learning routine for the rest of the term. We have finished publishing our first piece of writing, which is a short description of someone we know really well. While drafting our description we were learning how similes could be used to make our writing descriptive. Our publishing is on display in Room 7 for you to come and read. Next week, we will publish the descriptions on the Room 7 writing blog (see the side bar for a link to this blog).

In Maths we have been revising our fractions knowledge, as well as plenty of place value/number knowledge practice. Each day we start Maths with some revision activities before group work begins with the teacher.

We are reading a shared novel called “Island of the Blue Dolphins”. The story is set in the distant past (some time during the 1800’s) on an island of the coast of California. A young teenage girl called Karana is left behind while he rest of her village evacuates the island after a tragic incident, and has to survive the dangers of the island by herself. Each child has made a map of the island, showing where different landmarks are, to help visualise the island a little better. Below is a photo of some of these maps.




Our inquiry into ‘friendship’ has focused on the skills needed to be a ‘good friend’,
The photo below shows Howie surrounded by ideas generated by the statement
“I like a friend who…”



During this inquiry we will also explore what skills are needed to keep friendships healthy and positive, and look at what to do when friendships go wrong.

Our daily fitness has been a mix of Swimming, Jump Jam and running activities and is keeping us on the go all week. The weather has been great for most of the week so it has been really easy to get out of the classroom for physical activity. Swimming groups are busy practicing swimming skills, ready for the Year 3-4 swimming sports on Tuesday 10th March at Eastbourne Pool.

Certainly Room 7 has started the year strongly!

"Belonging"

These pieces of art represent our 'belonging' to our classroom, Room 7. The inspiration came from famous New Zealand artist, Colin MacCahon. He painted pictures using ideas from the New Zealand landscape. We used his style to create a picture using our initials, and inspiration from the hills that surround Eastbourne.

Day One

What a great day! Lots of enthusiastic children and lots of smiles! We spent some time today getting to know what the '4 C's" co-operation, consideration, courtesy and common sense- are all about. The 4 C's form Muritai School's 'code of behaviour' (you and I would have called them school rules when we were at school), and they also form the basis of our classroom treaty.

We spent time working co-operatively and independently thinking about what these concepts really mean, and as class we arrived at a common understanding for each. We were then able to sign off on our class treaty, which outlines they way we will behave in class this year.

Meet the class of 2009!

Orphans of Nepal Fundraiser #3

What an amazing success!



Last Friday afternoon the Year 3 and 4 students completed the 'action' phase of their inquiry by holding their fundraiser for Bistachap orphanage.

The afternoon raised $798.20 for the orphanage. This money will be heading to Nepal in a few days.

The fundraising event was the culmination of weeks of organisation, planning and thinking ahead- not as easy to do when you are still 8 and 9 years old. What impressed me the most was how well planned the children were for the event. As a teacher, my input (from an organisation point of view) was minimal because parents, grandparents, family friends and neighbours had all contributed in some way to assist the children get prepared for the fundraising event.

I have had some very positive feedback from parents saying how valuable they saw this type of inquiry was for their child. The concept of 'making a difference', the planning process, 'relating to others'; all these key components of the inquiry challenged children to think interdependently and take individual responsibility for the success of a group outcome.

Enjoy the photos!

Organising a fundraiser #2

Tonight, the Room 7 children will be bringing home their 'action plan' to share with you. The fundraising takes place at school, next Friday morning at 9.45am.

All group are well on track with their organisation, and should be able to explain to you what they need to organise before next Friday (Let me know if this is not the case!).

Organising a fundraiser

As part of our Term 4 inquiry, we have been discussing ways we 'can make a difference' in the lives of the orphans at Brighter Future children's home in Bistachap, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Underpinning all learning at school are the "Key Competencies" - the capabilities for living and lifelong learning.

Imbedded within the learning experiences of this Term 4 inquiry ""Orphans in Nepal", are the key compencies of "Relating to Others" and "Thinking".

Learning is the active process of connecting ideas, practising skills, and applying competencies in new situation. In the following description of what we have been doing over the last couple of weeks, you will see how the students in Room 7 have been connecting ideas, practicing skill and applying the competrencies of thinking and relating to others, while organising a fundraiser.




One afternoon we role-played some scenarios to find out whether it would be better to send the orphans ‘things’, or whether it would be better to send them ‘money’. After our role-playing, we realised that we didn’t really know what the orphanage needed to make life better, but if we sent money, then the orphanage could decide what was needed.

Having decided money was the best thing to send, we decided to fund-raise. Firstly, we talked about the different types of fundraising we could undertake:
• Passive fundraising (i.e. donations, coin trails, etc…)
• Commercial fundraising (i.e. selling biscuits, bracelets, etc…)
• Sponsorship (i.e. rubbish collecting, no TV week, read-a-thon, etc…)


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We formed ‘fundraising groups’ of 3-4 people per group, and brainstormed all the types of fundraising activities we could think of. We then, through a process of ranking, chose our ‘top three’ choices. Each 'top three' idea then went through a Yellow Hat/Black Hat process of unpacking the positives and drawbacks of each idea. Once this had been completed, each group went through a process of establishing concensus and decided on it's preferred fundraising idea.

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The next stage was to begin planning the 'how to...' aspect of running a fundraiser.
Questions such as "What do we need to make this happen?" "What jobs will there be to do?" "Who could help us?" "What questions do we have?" gave each group a starting point for discussion and co-operative exploration of the task in front of them.

Over the next week your child should be able to explain to you what their group's fundraising idea is, and how you can assist your child with their responsibility within the group. It's important that each child take responsibility for completing any jobs they have been assigned, as this develops their sense of 'collective responsibilty' for the group result. However, we can all assist them in small ways by listening to their questions, and offering assistance when and where needed.

I plan to update this post next week, when the class is a little closer to running the fundraisers.

Class Publishing blog

Our classes publishing blog continues to grow! Check out the latest additions by clicking on the link to the left.

Some blog entries may have some spelling or punctuation errors. This could be for a couple of reasons:
- the writing being published is 'first draft' writing- and has yet to go through an editing and proofreading process;
- typing skills are still developing accuracy.
- sometimes 'we just make mistakes'- and this is ok, so long as we learn from them!

It may be a very worthwhile homework exercise to get your child to log in, and 'edit' the post to reflect a more error-free piece of writing.

Clay Masks

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Over the last few weeks we have been learning how to show texture on clay. The different techniques we have been learning include "toothbrushing", which is how we can fix different bits of clay together.

We are now making "pocket people" out of clay.

Orphans in Nepal

This term our inquiry focuses on 'The power to make a difference', specifically how we can make a difference to the lives of the orphans in Brighter Future Children's Home. This is one of the orphanages in Nepal which the Eastbourne community supports through the "Orphans of Nepal Trust".

There is a website called "Free Rice" that we have been using. Each time we correctly answer a general knowledge question, the website donates 20 grains of rice to UN World Food Programme. What a great way of using our general knowledge to help people less fortunate than ourselves!

Production costumes

We spent some time this morning making part of the costume for our production item. Without giving away too many surprises, Miss Oaten and I think theeffect will look fantastic!

Create a myth

Lately, we have been writing our own retelling of the "Labours of Herecles” myth. We have been using an online story-board creator to help us organise our ideas and visualise our story as it unfolds in our draft books. During writing and reading time each morning, some of us use laptops to work on our storyboard, while others write in our draft books.

The fact that the story-board creator is on-line means that those of us who have broadband access at home can create a new myth at home, or continue an existing one!

The online story-board creator can be found here…

Blogging

As the new term unfolds, the students in Room 7 have been using the classroom blog more and more. In particular, they are publishing more writing on the 'publishing blog', which has a link from our class blog.

This week our students have been blogging their term goals for term three. There are a number of reasons why we are blogging our goals rather than publishing them using pencil and paper this term. Firstly, a blog is more assessable than a traditional portfolio, provided one has an internet connection. Second, a blog provides the opportunity to give feedback to the goal-setter. For example, if a child's goal was to master the 5-10 timestables, as soon as this is achieved, comments can be made to the blog. Thirdly, it gives students a chance to reflect on their goal whenever, where ever they are (again, provided they have internet access) that they did not have when goals were filed in the portfolio. They can also comment on other student goals, offer encouragement or suggestions.

Students are also publishing a favourite paragraph from their retelling of the legend "How Maui discovered the secret of fire". These retellings are just amazing. Many of the retellings demonstrate wonderful use of descriptive language, and attention to detail.

Click on each child's name to read their writing- and enjoy!


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