IP's In Room 14

Over the past week we have begun planning some individual interest projects in Room 14 (IPs - not to be confused with Internet Providers!). 

The reason for these projects is to give us time each week to spend developing our independent inquiry skills working on projects that are of special interest to us. This is our take on some education initiatives that are becoming popular in many schools, like 20Time and Genius Hour. Click on the links if you are interested in reading more. 

All of us have completed a basic overview of our intended interest project, including 2 or 3 driving research questions, the resources we will require, and our current thoughts on how we may share our learning. 

Throughout our IP journey, we are required to:

1. Create a plan and communicate our intended learning direction (completed).

2. Keep others informed about our progress (Which we are all doing via an IP blog. Some of us are using our existing USpace blogs, but most of the class have decided to set up a new Blogger blog specifically for our IPs).

3. Share our learning with the class (This may come in many forms). 

Nearly all of our IPs have links to our Looking Back to Look Forward theme, so many of us will be making links to the learning we have already been engaged in this term.

Our next steps are to develop timetables for allocating time to our IPs during the week in class and to begin gathering our required resources. We will also add our IP blog links to this blog, so you may like to read about our individual learning journeys as they unfold. 

All of our IP plans are on display in the classroom. Friends and family feel
free to come and have a look. We will begin personalising each of our spaces
on the wall - adding information about how others can find out more about
our individual IPs.

Setting up our new IP blogs on Blogger was exciting for many of us.
We look forward to sharing them.

Pasifika Printmaking

This past week we were lucky to have Bianca from the Christchurch Art Gallery teach us about the meaning behind the symbols we see in Siapo (Samoan tapa cloth) and Ngatu (Tongan tapa cloth). She also took us through a process for making our own prints. 

Bianca explained to us how Pasifika art can have cultural
symbols and meanings. She shared some of Fatu Feu'u and
John Pule's artwork.

We created our own geometric designs.

We rolled our own relief prints.

Our individual prints were put together to create a class piece,

This programme fitted nicely with our Migration theme, as we continue to explore the movement of people over time. The spread of culture through the Pacific is of special interest to us and here we were able to further develop our deep understandings about cultural identity.

We will soon have our prints on display and look forward to sharing them with all of our visitors. 

3-Way Conferences

Thank you to all of the parents who came along to our 3-way conferences over the last two days.

It was a great chance for us to share with you our learning highlights and challenges from 2015 so far.

Many of us have created new learning goals with input from our parents. We look forward to celebrating our progress from this checkpoint when we meet again later in the year.

Well done to all Room 14 children for preparing your portfolios and planning your conferences. The meeting time always seems to go so fast, so parents please feel free to come in to the classroom between 8.30am and 8.55am (our Organisation Time) during the week for your child to share more of their learning with you. Much of our digital learning is also accessible online.

Human Migration Projects

It was a satisfying day for many of us today, as we had the opportunity to share some of the literacy projects we have been working on that link with our migration inquiry.

Underneath our big idea - "Human migration is a response to challenges, risks and opportunities", we have been following on from our initial investigations into the causes of human migration, to look into real examples, specifically in the Pacific. 

The push and pull factors that brought our ancestors to Aotearoa

Our groups have been working on quite different projects. The Daredevils read about Maori sailing by starlight, so they wrote poetry about Maori exploring. They also created artwork to go with their poetry in a similar style to our Anzac art. 

The Daredevils' Maori exploration art

The Iron Men used Google Slides to work on a collaborative presentation where the boys each answered different questions about Polynesian discovery and the spread of various Polynesian cultures.

Both the Flashes and the Wonderwomen were retelling real stories that involved early settlement of New Zealand and the surrounding islands. 

Our sharing session today was a great way to reflect on our learning. For those retelling real stories, several of us had factual inaccuracies pointed out to us that we had included in our presentations. We will be revisiting how these happened in our groups. One of our next steps in researching as a class is to work on our referencing and sharing our sources of information (an area we really need to develop). 

Here are some snippets of today. Not only did the presenters do a great job, the audience did so well to listen carefully and to provide thoughtful feedback. Most of us have uploaded our projects to our digital portfolios.

The majority of the class chose Jacob's Explain Everything video as their standout presentation of the day, so here it is (Note: He is aware he muddled up a couple of facts!):

We will soon be learning about the effects that migration has both on people, and on places. Keep an eye on our Twitter and blog. 

Today's Meet - An Introduction

This afternoon we used Today's Meet for the first time. This is a backchannel chat platform designed for classroom teachers and learners. A backchannel is often a conversation that goes on alongside an activity, presentation or discussion.

We used it to get all of our views on a couple of ideas we have been talking about recently in Room 14. These included things like allowing private messaging on USpace, our classroom responsibilities and the prospect of a Genius Hour type initiative.

A teacher can simply set up a chatroom through the Today's Meet website, set a timeframe for the chatroom to be live, and away you go. All the children need to do is follow the page link given to them by the teacher and enter their first name. From there, children are in a secure chatroom where they can write to each other about a given topic. This is similar to how many people use Twitter.

It was great to see how engaged we all were in this new way (for us) of sharing our ideas. We know that we have other means to perform similar tasks, as pointed out by Phoebe in the video below, but this website could really prove to be useful in many situations. It's exciting to add another tool to our Room 14 kit.



Another nice aspect of today was that half of us weren't even in the classroom! It was so hot that many of us with learner licences were sharing our ideas from outside.

The transcript of this first Meet will be printed and displayed on our foyer wall tomorrow if parents are interested in having a read.

Home Learning Debate - Part One

Home learning has been a burning topic in Room 14 this week.

Only half of us completed what was expected last week.

Home learning is an issue that we often revisit as a syndicate, as children and adults alike hear conflicting reasons for and against it in the media, from friends, etc. Nevertheless, Room 14 does have home learning to complete each week. It usually consists of a task relating to a current theme or topic we are investigating in class (often to engage our friends and families), some short maths revision work and our personal reading for Friday's Readers' Café.

It was clear after initial discussions this week that most of Room 14 had very different views about why we have home learning. For us as a group, this is important to openly discuss and to address because if we are divided about the why, then our shared vision about what we expect of ourselves and each other in our Room 14 learning community may not actually be 'shared'.

Here is a video about what we have done regarding this issue so far.



Our next steps are to respond to each other's published arguments on USpace and to begin to critique the reasons people have chosen for and against home learning. It will be interesting to see if there are any shifts in thinking about the why.


Feel free to add a comment with your thoughts.