Information Reports - Group Assessment

On crazy hair day we spent time sharing the information reports we had written about a job that interests us with our literacy group. In writing our reports, we followed our self-edit, peer-edit and teacher conference system before publishing. Many of us chose different ways of sharing our writing, from using Book Creator, Keynote, iMovie, Explain Everything and Pages on the iPads, to handwritten books and posters.

After sharing with our literacy groups, we let them critique our writing and had their input into how we could assess ourselves using our group marking rubric, which we created before writing. Group members were able to vote on each criteria by using a simple 'poor, 'O.K' or 'excellent' scale.

We learned that an information report has to contain appropriate language and structure, while also being clear enough for others to read and understand.

Knowing Me, Knowing You - Reflections

This morning we've been reflecting on our main inquiry theme for term one.

We had a buddy interview us about the projects we have undertaken, where we shared what we learned and uploaded the video to our digital portfolios. Rather than filling out a paper evaluation, this gave us a chance to speak freely about our learning and have the video available for viewing online. This is the direction that some aspects of our traditional Room 14 portfolios are heading.

Room 14 Children Make The News

We are so happy that Connor and Jennifer, along with Asianna and Kate from Room 13, were able to take part in a junior cricket showcase for the visiting royals in Latimer Square today. This was part of a promotion for the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup.

It was great to see them enjoying themselves on One News tonight.

One News Video - Sir Richard Hadlee Praises Prince William's Cricket Skills

Careers

Not all of us have the same interests and not all us of want to have the same job when we're older. We definitely found this out this week, as we've been investigating various professions people have, leading into report writing about a job that interests us at the moment. 

Our question is...
How might our personal qualities and interests influence what we do when we are older?

All of our literacy groups have been reading about people who have different jobs and last week they used what they had learned to undertake some art-based projects (see our USpace galleries).

After discussing our skills, knowledge and interests, we've been browsing professions on the Careers New Zealand website (www.careers.govt.nz). We have each highlighted one or more jobs that interest us and will be choosing one to investigate further to write an information report about. As a class we have identified questions we will need to ask in our research, like 'What do they do?', 'What knowledge and skills do they need?', 'What are the working conditions like?' and 'How do you get into the job?'.

We will be making connections between the skills and attitudes that professionals need in their jobs, and those that we say we value in Room 14. 

Erin had a wander around our classroom yesterday and asked a few of us what careers we are thinking about in the early stages...

Getting Moving With Statistics

You may have seen a tweet of ours a few weeks ago about measuring our pulse. We were trying to find a way of calculating how many times our heart beats in a day. This led to some great discussions about what affects our heart rate and what an ideal heart rate is.

We found out that it's good to get your heart rate up and do some physical activity everyday. We learned that this can help us to think more clearly, focus and therefore achieve more in our learning. It was also interesting to find out that a lower heart rate when resting is often a sign of good health.

Our consensus was that we should try to integrate more fitness in our learning this term, which opened up some opportunities linking with our statistics focus.

Here are some of the activities we've been involved in over the last couple of weeks...