Sharing Our Cricket World Cup Learning

We spent this morning sharing the Cricket World Cup projects that we've been working on for two weeks. Each of our literacy groups have had a different focus, which gave us a chance to teach our peers in the wider class about what we've been learning.

The cricket itself has been a great vehicle for us to develop a range of skills that will be useful for future inquiries. Some of these included…

• General research and the sorting of information we locate
• Independently using venn diagrams and other graphic organisers to display findings
• Deciding on the best type of graphs for purpose and creating these to share survey information
• All aspects of the video production process (including writing, filming and editing)
• Having input into project success criteria ("What will good look like for me?")
• Orally presenting our learning and responding to audience feedback

It's also been interesting to see many Room 14 children out with bat and ball in the playground this week. Matthew, Kyan and Izyah were courageous facing Mr Kinley today at lunchtime, whose right-arm off-spin could best be described as 'old school'.

Check out some photos from this morning.

2015 Cricket World Cup

The buzz of the 2015 Cricket World Cup has reached our classroom. We have a large number of children who have been watching the games so far and are eagerly looking forward to their trip to the upcoming Scotland vs England game at Hagley Oval.

Beginning with our literacy programme, the CWC has been the theme of much of our learning this week. A new addition to Ultranet, the Virtual Classroom, has been a useful resource for hosting the projects that each of our literacy groups have been working on. These have been adapted from a CWC educational resource package put together by New Zealand Cricket, which integrates a wide range of curriculum areas into the overall theme. Our focus areas have included - hosting an event of this size, the global spread of cricket, roles in a team, and the past, present and future of the game.

All of us have been making wise decisions around organising ourselves, including our workspaces, our resources and our time - Each of which were seen as important during our recent learning environment investigations. 

We have also begun a PE unit on cricket, which we started on Monday. In a couple of weeks, we will be using the skills and understandings we have developed to play some adapted games of cricket, which the children will help to design.

We listened to the commentary of the NZ vs Scotland game while eating morning tea today. Jack B directed us to ESPN's Cricinfo website, which has loads of data on all of the international teams and players. Some children were trying to work out who the best players are and others were adamant that they already know who they are. With statistics also being a focus for us this term, a number of students will be conducting statistical investigations using this website, looking to find evidence for their 'best player' claims.


Come on Black Caps.

Learning Environments - What Is Important To Us?

Today we've continued to sculpt our essential agreement for 2015. It's been fantastic to hear what all of us see as important. In particular, our discussions about what we expect of our peers has been very insightful. Questions such as - "What are the positive and negative effects of working with others?" and "Do we always expect our peers to help us when we ask?" have definitely required us to draw on more past experiences, as well as generate some valuable inward reflection.

Room 14 children from 2014 have been grouped together and it has been interesting to hear their opinions, which they have been passing on to our new learners.

How Do Our Memories Affect Our Vision For Our Learning Environment?

Setting out a vision for our learning environment is an important part of a new year at school. All of us in Room 14 come with different experiences from other classrooms and schools, which we can use to inform us to make decisions now and in the future. 

This morning we've engaged in a lot of discussion about positive and negative experiences, looking for cause and effect relationships. All of our ideas were very helpful in assisting us to collaborate in groups when identifying what we believe a high performing classroom would look and sound like. 

Another interesting question we've been considering is 'What should the role of the teacher be?' - An important idea for children to understand that links to where the ownership of learning lives. 

We also spent a significant part of the morning reflecting and talking about how we carried out this task. Did we participate and contribute as a valuable member of our groups? What does a high performing group even do? 

Next week we will be using the thoughts generated today to inform us in the design of our essential agreement for 2015 - Something which will clearly be developed from a wide range of experiences and viewpoints, as we found out today. 

Beach Education

We had a successful trip out to North Beach Surf Lifesaving Club today for our beach education programme. It was great to see all Room 14 children refreshed after the holidays and ready to get stuck in.

The day began in the clubhouse, where four local lifeguards took us through 5 key points for children to remember at the beach, which we then acted out in role play activities.

The 5 points were:

1. Always swim between the flags
2. Always have an adult watch over you
3. Always listen to the advice of lifeguards
4. If in doubt, stay out
5. Never swim or surf alone

We went for a swim later in the morning, where some of us were working on our body-surfing techniques and others were being courageous by dolphin-diving under the big waves.

For the rest of the day the lifeguards taught us some lifesaving games, told us a little about their jobs, and we also had time to get creative and build sandcastles. 

We were lucky that the rain held off for us and that the weather didn't disrupt our programme. The key messages were a great reminder for the children about being safe in the water, considering our national accident statistics have been so bad this Summer. We will revisit water safety when we start swimming at school later this term.