Interest Projects - All Wrapped Up For Christmas

It has been so satisfying for many of us sharing our term four interest projects.

One way we ensure that we are taking ownership, accountability and responsibility for our learning in Room 14 is through the sharing routines we have. During our first I.P. this year, sharing in front of the class seemed a little daunting for some. However, the encouragement shown for each other and the ability to give constructive feedback has grown to such a level that sharing interest projects is a positive experience and a time for celebration. The conversation arising after the sharing of an interest project is genuinely exciting as students often realise that they are the most knowledgeable person in the room about their chosen topic, which can be so empowering when answering questions from their peers.

Those who initially found driving their own projects a challenge have made great progress. Being handed more responsibility and knowing that the teacher is only assisting as a guide was something to get their heads around at first. Of course, there are still things that all of us could have improved on this time, but our skills and attitudes for self-driven inquiry projects have grown a lot as a class.

We had a 'How Stuff Works' theme of sorts this time. It was wonderful seeing how deep some students could get into their questions and how they could communicate some very technical, jargon-filled scientific explanations in a way that we could all understand. Jacob's 'How do batteries work?', Kerryn's 'How does lightning work?' and Izyah's 'How do earphones work?' projects were nice examples of this.








Before putting together our presentations, we co-created a sharing rubric together that included what we thought would make a great presentation, as well as a couple of aspects of our last I.P. sharing days that we needed to work on. We assessed ourselves after receiving feedback from our peers and Mr K. See the completed rubrics in our digital portfolios.



Next year we will look at how the I.P. format could fit in with our learning programmes. For our Year 6s that are leaving us, we hope that these interest projects have given them a chance to further develop their 21st century learning skills and attitudes, which we hope they can utilise wherever they are heading.

We View A Great Learner As...

'Organisation Time' is the name we give to the 8.30am - 8.55am period before school starts. We are conscious in Room 14 of the importance of being organised, and having the time to get organised, and the positive effect this has on getting us in the right space for learning.

When we arrive in the classroom each morning, there may be a short task (often optional) for us to complete before school begins, along with the expectation that we use this time to organise our stationery, make sure our devices are charged, check in on our weekly goals, etc.

Last Friday during organisation time we had a task to complete. We were each asked to write down what we believe are the 3 most important traits of a great learner in Room 14. All of the words have been collated and are displayed in the word cloud below. Those that were mentioned more often appear larger.

It's interesting to think about what we see as important.

Is this is good set of traits? Are we missing anything really important? 

Keeping Our Vision In Focus And Responsive Goal Setting

Term 4 always seems to fly by so fast. Sometimes we forget to step back and think about how we are going and to reflect on our progress.

Last week we spent time discussing many of our successes this year as a class. Our units of inquiry were mentioned, and many of us thought that overall we have a very positive learning environment (which was part of the vision we created for 2015 back in Term 1, to "Contribute to a positive learning environment").

In fact, we spent several weeks at the beginning of the year outlining what kind of learning environment we wanted, along with what we expected of ourselves and others. The question we have been asking this week is - 'How can we keep our vision in focus?'

We really want to end the year on a high. Last week was about identifying those goals that keep popping up in our individual planners, which we have not yet mastered. This is responsive goal setting. Two aspects of our vision are that we "Strive for excellence" and we "Own our learning". Along with identifying key skills and attitudes as goals for this term, we have been taking ownership of them, asking what mastery will look like and knowing the point at which they will be achieved.

We can't wait to achieve these ones.

Consumerism - Sharing Our Thoughts and Ideas

We have had a busy last couple of weeks preparing to share our individual learning about our Consumerism theme. These are the projects that were outlined in this previous post.

One of the challenges we faced when having our own Interest Projects in Term 2 was managing our time. So, when we were given the presentation date for our Consumerism projects, Mr K also shared an individual timeline with each of us via Google Docs. We had to complete an outline of how we would be using our independent learning time at school in order to be ready to present on the sharing day. In a sense, we had to 'plan backwards', having an end product in mind, then deciding what steps were needed to get there and how much time would be required to complete each of these steps.

We developed project assessment rubrics for each of the project mediums we chose (animation/screen-casting, TED style speech, or posters). These rubrics were also shared with us via Google Drive, where Mr K wrote his feedback on our projects while we were sharing to the class, and we completed a self-reflection section on the same document after. Over the coming weeks, we will be adding footage of ourselves sharing and/or other images from our presentations. This could be a very effective way for teachers and students to co-construct learning documentation going forward.

It was great to see the differences in the projects that were shared. The animations all had a different 'feel' to them and a range of filming methods were used. The TED-style talks were very successful as many children surprised us at how confident they could be in front of an audience. It was also exciting to see these students giving each other constructive feedback and researching presenting tips as part of their journey. They really thought about what an effective talk would look and sound like. The group that were creating posters carrying environmental messages had less time available to them (as they were also in our gardening group), but still communicated some thoughtful ideas.

We hear the word 'self-manage' used a lot, but we know that everything that is involved in that (managing our time, resources, decisions, emotions, etc) takes ongoing development and practice. As evident in our most recent projects, it has been great to see the progress of individuals and the honest reflections everyone has made about successes, challenges, and the cause and effects of these.

Here are a few snippets from some presentations. See our individual portfolios and media galleries for more footage.

Our Ski Trip

Yesterday was a great day.
We're so lucky in New Zealand to have access to experiences like this!

Thank you again to all of the parents who came along.
We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Sharing Our Interest Projects

Today was a chance to celebrate the journeys we have each been on for our Interest Projects (I.Ps).

All I.Ps had a 'Past, Present, Future' focus, linking with our Looking Back to Look Forward term 2 theme.

Last week we spent much of our independent learning time preparing what we would share today. For some of us this was a slightly daunting task, as we have realised more and more that we are the ones who own our I.Ps. Although we did follow a simple generic structure, they were created by us, for us, and were to help develop our independent inquiry skills and knowledge of the research process.

Today while sharing we were required to share:

• Why we chose our I.P.
• Our big question and our smaller driving questions.
• What we did and what we learned.
• Our I.P. highlights and challenges.

We were also required to actively seek feedback from the audience about our learning and process. 

Some of the highlights from today were:

• We were able to see and hear about what others have been doing. This includes our higher performing students, whose projects could be seen by others as benchmarks for how the journey may look when carried out to a great standard, allowing many of us to identify what we could do better next time. 
• The majority of us were able to use what we have been learning about in our literacy groups in a new context. Some of these things included note taking, identifying key words relating to our IP topic that we could use in our research, understanding subject-specific vocabulary and creating a glossary of terms, and citing references from a range of sources in our research. 

We will soon be completing I.P. self-evaluations and ensuring that our learning is evident in our digital portfolios. Remember to check out the blogs we created for these projects, which are listed on a subpage at the top of this blog.

We may undertake new I.Ps in term 4, but we will see how our other inquiries unravel.

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.

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. 

Term Reflection And Goal Setting

This week for home learning we wrote a personal term reflection. We included learning highlights and challenges from our year so far.

Today some confident children chose to get up in front of the class and share their reflections with all of us. They had thought deeply about their term and identified personal next steps leading into term two.

We all then shared our reflections with a buddy and used the challenges we faced to help us create some important goals for next term. We displayed these on our Steps to Success wall under the headings - 'Skills' and 'Attitudes'.

It was rewarding to hear so many highlights from this term. We are all looking forward to an exciting term two!

Enjoy the Easter break everyone.

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.

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.