Technology Challenge: Aircraft

With our cricket team away and various other activities happening on Friday afternoon, a small group of us undertook a technology challenge.

The focus for this was around teamwork. Before we started, we discussed questions like, "What happens if you have different ideas to your peers?", "How do I get people to listen to my ideas?" and "What is the difference between showing leadership and being bossy?"

Although we would have liked more time to work on our designs (as the time limit was a bit short), we thought we worked well in our teams, as you can see in some footage of the task. Excuse the sound of workmen and their chainsaws cutting back some trees in the background...

Traits Of A Great Learner - What Do We Think?

We often speak about the characteristics of great learners. Especially as we evaluate and reflect on each week, recording our weekly highlights and challenges, as well as determining how well we managed our learning on a self-management scale. But what are we working towards? Do we really know the skills and attitudes we require to be great learners? This activity gave us a clearer perspective on the traits we collectively value.

First, we had a think-pair-share about the positive traits we believe great learners have. After sharing our ideas, we looked back on our blog to see what Room 14's class of 2013 said in a similar activity. Then we each wrote down 3 of the traits that we thought were most valuable to a learner and put our lists in a box.

Here is a word cloud showing the results. Traits appear larger the more times they were written in the box...

This graphic will be on display in our classroom and will help with our weekly goal setting and evaluations.

Winter Games Simulator

What first sounded like a weird idea, has actually turned out to be really fun!

Check out this simple virtual simulator we have built. Once you hop inside, you can watch some of the events in the Winter Olympics from the viewpoint of the athletes.

We have thought of upgrades - fans blowing in our faces, wearing ski clothes, etc. So we'll post any developments as they happen.

Sochi 2014: What's Grabbed Your Attention?

Created with Padlet

Where Do We Have Family Heritage?

We have created this display showing a few of the countries where we have family heritage. We will be getting visitors to our class to add to this. We are already beginning to show a very diverse community, even within our classroom! It will be interesting to see what happens to this display by the end of the term...

Steps To Success - Term One

Each term, we will be identifying one skill and one attitude that we will be looking to master in order to make some big steps to success as learners.

These are different to our weekly goals, which are more 'baby steps' you could say, as they have a short-term focus and can be evaluated every Friday. The goals we came up with today are more significant. We had time to think carefully and then discuss ideas with our peers, making sure that our goals are appropriate and challenging.

Here are some of the goals we have come up with this morning...

What Makes A Person Unique?

We've been discussing this question. First, we needed to come up with a definition of 'unique'.
Cassius said it meant - "better than fantastic". Ellee thought it meant - "what makes us different".

After some discussion, and Mr K giving some examples, we wrote on the whiteboard
- "Like no other".

We wondered about all of the things about a person that add up to make them unique.

Individually, we wrote a list of these things. Lots of ideas were shared, like 'language' (Matthew), 'food we eat' (Kyan), 'our interests' (Erin), 'abilities' (Logan), 'where our parents are from' (Blayde), and many more...

These ideas will help us begin to understand about the diverse culture and identities within our community (and the wider world). We have already been communicating aspects of our own culture when working on our mihi with Mrs Tudor. Next week we will be researching some countries competing in the Winter Olympics, linking with our statistics focus, and investigating the different cultures, languages and heritages that exist around the world.

Task: Ski Jump

Watch...



Your blog challenge for week 3 is to answer the questions below. Remember to be specific so that the audience really understands what you think or how you are feeling. Write at least one paragraph for each question.

1. What positive attitudes did the child show in the video? How do you know?
 Click here for a list of attitudes if you need some help deciding.

2. What connections can you make to the video? Share at least one experience.

3. What lessons could this video teach young people?

Exploring Learning Environments

This morning we have been exploring great learning environments, leading into the vision we are creating this week for our own classroom.

We have been sharing stories about positive and negative learning experiences we have had in the past. This year we have at least one child from each of the senior syndicate classes last year, so we can listen to lots of experiences.

We imagined a classroom where lots of great learning is taking place. What would we see? What would we hear? What would the teacher be doing?

With these questions in mind, we worked in groups to come up with ideas. Many ideas were later shared with the whole group, some of which were peacefully debated. The noise level was one of these. Should a classroom be a very quiet place, or does discussion help us in our learning?

A great session sharing opinions and experiences…