Matariki: Colour-Symbol-Image

This week our literacy groups have been doing some shared readings around Matariki. After reading and responding verbally to these texts, we have used a non-verbal thinking routine called 'Colour, Symbol, Image' to share our ideas about what Matariki represents.

We shared the display we have created in a video during today's assembly, along with some of the great learning our juniors in P1 have been doing on the iPads. 

Assembly Video: Interest Projects

Thank you to everyone who came to our assembly this morning. We enjoyed sharing our learning with you.

Here is the video we shared about our I.P. journey so far. We are looking forward to seeing where these projects lead us.

Organisation And Working Together

In Room 14 we are constantly trying to improve our classroom routines and systems.

Like many other classes, we all have jobs that we are responsible for each day. These are changed every two weeks. We have the usual jobs, like recycling monitors and children who manage our iPads and computers, but we also have some other interesting ones. Jacob, for example, has been an outstanding meteorologist (who presents the daily weather report at our morning class meetings) when given the opportunity.

Whatever the job, all of them link together to help our classroom to run smoothly. We value contributing to a positive learning environment.

This term we have been thinking a lot about how we can be more organised. Some of us had made some big shifts in our personal organisation, which is evident in our weekly planners and learner licence discussions.

As we are nearing the halfway mark for 2015, it is great to see everyone taking responsibility for their roles and supporting each other to strengthen our routines and systems. We believe that a great class does these things well.

We think that this timelapse shows what organisation in Room 14 looks like. This is from the end of the day today - our daily routine where we complete our planners and take care of our individual jobs before our daily reflection and discussion box sharing.

How Far Do We Travel To School?

Our Geometry focus this term has involved us learning about Transformation and Position and Orientation.

Over the past two weeks we have been exploring why we have maps, the common features of maps, and how we can use maps effectively. 

Learning activities have had us:

• Describing paths on a map of New Zealand using the basic language of direction (including discussing the Maori translation of place names)
• Describing locations and travel routes using co-ordinates

Today we have been working out distances on a map using simple measurement scales. 

We used Google Maps on our TV and learned about what the scale means. Using string and other items with adjustable lengths, we went about working out the distance we travel to school on the map. This involved some repeated addition (and a few of us were able to use multiplication) to add up the total distance. 

We then checked the accuracy of our estimate by using the 'Get Directions' feature, which gives you the exact distance. Most of us were pretty close!

Kyan used a twist-tie that he adjusted so that it represented 200m on the map

Would the exit we used from Bromley School affect the distance?

We added our distances to a chart which included our mode of travel for interest

Google Maps is a great tool for learning. We are looking forward to engaging in some travel challenges using the app to see what we have learned. 

Our First Kids Cluster Meet

This afternoon we tried something new and exciting. We had an online chat with other Year 5/6 classes from Bromley School, Linwood Ave School and Bamford School. 

We worked in groups to answer four questions for the day, which included:

Q1: What are your favourite things about your school and why?

Q2: Do you think your classroom is like most other Year 5/6  classrooms in New Zealand? What makes it the same and what makes it different?

Q3: What positive skills and attitudes do your class care about most?

Q4: Make a sentence or poem using these 3 words: Teamwork - Attitude - Positive

We used Today's Meet, which we have used as a class and blogged about recently. This was a great way to connect with our neighbours and learn more about them. We loved sharing about our classroom and what is special to us about our school. 

Check out some photos from the other classes involved. We used the hashtag #linwoodkidschat on Twitter.

We wonder if there are things that we could learn from the children from these local schools in the future. Could we collaborate on projects of interest? What other possibilities are there?

Human Migration Board Games

Linking with our migration theme, we have been looking to become 'learning leaders' by teaching others about what we have learned so far this term.

We are currently creating our own board games that teach players a little about how human migration is a response to challenges, risks and opportunities. 

If you have been following our Twitter you will have noticed some tweets about this project over the last couple of weeks. 

It began by us asking - 'What makes a good board game?'

We came up with our own criteria for board games:

1. Good length
2. Quality - Artwork and pieces
3. Challenging - But not too hard
4. Fair
5. FUN (not a 'bored' game!)

We started to design our own games. We found inspiration in the stories of human migration that we have investigated recently. Push and pull factors are used as the positive and negative effects on the players in our games, which are mostly about players trying to get themselves from one place to another.

Linking with our explanation writing focus, we have also been looking at instruction manuals for well-known board games, identifying common sections, and writing our own game instructions using appropriate vocabulary. These have been created in Google Docs and shared with Mr K for printing and laminating. 

Testing our games has proven to be so important, as others have helped us to identify flaws in our games. Most of us have found areas for improvement before we begin our final creations. 

This week we have begun on our final products. Still works in progress, but we are looking forward to inviting the rest of our senior syndicate to play our games and give us feedback. 

It is exciting to see so many board game themes arising from the literacy projects we have been involved in, from the story of Canterbury's First Four Ships, to tales of Polynesian discovery in the Pacific. The links we have made to our Geometry focus is also important, as many of the games involve the use of compass directions for navigation. This is a project that has allowed for a number of learning areas to be integrated. We are currently thinking about whether we should create commercials for our games on our iPads to 'pull in' prospective players from outside of our classroom...

Home Learning - Update

A few weeks ago we posted about how home learning had been a big topic of discussion in Room 14. 

We continued to ask why we have home learning, and in particular - Which activities are more beneficial to our learning than others? Mr K agreed that he would not set any tasks purely for the sake of giving homework and is aware of the many activities that some students are involved in outside of school. 

We decided that the best use of our home learning time would be for such things as:

• Preparing us for upcoming learning activities in class
• Practising basic facts and other maths concepts
• Word study / Language activities linking to a current focus 
• Discussions with our friends or family about a current topic of interest to us
• Preparing for our Friday Readers' Café

Speaking of Readers' Café, we should blog about this soon and share how this is looking in 2015. As a result of our home learning discussions, we now need to have a parent initial as evidence that we have been reading a particular text at home and in turn have entry to our Readers' Café on Friday mornings. 

Our 3-Way Conferences were a great forum to discuss home learning. All parents supported home learning in some form. Their main reasons included developing study skills, practising concepts taught at school, and having family involved in their child's learning. For a number of us, having our teacher and parents together was a good time to create some agreements and shared expectations. 

Since our last post we have had over 90% of us completing our home learning each week. Can we keep this up?