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.

If You Give A Little Love...

Thanks to Room 7 for sharing this video in assembly today.

The idea was adapted from a video we viewed earlier in the week. We looked to take inspiration from it and show what everyday caring might look like in our school. Well done to the actors for creating the storyboards for their own scenes. A team effort. 

Because Of Mr Terupt

We have just finished reading Because of Mr Terupt, which we have thoroughly enjoyed.

Blurb:

"It’s the start of fifth grade for seven kids at Snow Hill School. There’s . . .Jessica, the new girl, smart and perceptive, who’s having a hard time fitting in; Alexia, a bully, your friend one second, your enemy the next;Peter, class prankster and troublemaker; Luke, the brain; Danielle,who never stands up for herself; shy Anna, whose home situation makes her an outcast; and Jeffrey, who hates school.
 
Only Mr. Terupt, their new and energetic teacher, seems to know how to deal with them all. He makes the classroom a fun place, even if he doesn’t let them get away with much . . . until the snowy winter day when an accident changes everything—and everyone."



We won't give away the whole story, but this book has generated a lot of discussion in our classroom about different themes, including our own learning environment, relationships and growing up. It was fascinating to notice the characters change as the story went on.

One day we sent out this tweet and the American author himself retweeted it overnight!

This week we used Google Forms to gather our opinions about the story.
Here are a couple of the findings...

After we each voted, our overall rating for Because of Mr Terupt was 9.3/10.

A number of Room 14 children have already been looking to track down the second book in the series through the Christchurch City Libraries website.

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? 

Our Window Bottle Garden

We are excited to finally have our window bottle garden planted. This has been a side project to our Consumerism unit from last term, when we watched a TED Talk about people growing their own vegetables in high-rise apartments. We liked the idea so much we started searching for ideas on how we could make simple planting systems in our classroom.

Take a look at how our finished garden is looking...



We would like to say a special thanks to Yvonne and Emily for the plants and seeds, Wayne for his handy work with a drill, and Sheryl for her gardening tips and support mucking in.

Along with the team in Room 14, this was a real team effort.

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.

First Aid Training

Today we were lucky enough to have Stacey from the Red Cross spend the day in Room 14 teaching us about first aid.

We learned about what we should do when confronted with a range of emergency situations. These included things like shock, nosebleeds, broken bones, burns, poisons, and seizures to name a few.

When we are with someone who is in need of medical treatment, we now know about DRSABC, which stand for a recommended process we should follow.

D = Danger (check for dangers)
R = Response (check the person to see if they are conscious)
S = Send for help
A = Airway (check if the person's airways are clear)
B = Breathing (check if the person is breathing)
C = Circulation (check for bleeding)

We enjoyed taking part in role play activities this afternoon, where we acted out some emergency scenarios in groups. Stacey gave us constructive feedback on how we performed.

Thank you to Stacey for running the programme. All of us will no doubt encounter emergency situations in our lives, so it is great that we now have a foundation set of first aid skills to build on.

More Bikes, Less Cars: What Would The People Say?

Before school this morning, two of our early arrivers, Phoebe and Reuben, went with Mr K to take some photographs of the car wreckers yard behind our school.

When school began we started by discussing 'sustainability' as a class. We also added two new words to our vocabulary - 'renewable' and 'nonrenewable'. We identified examples of things that we use which fell into both of these categories.

Phoebe and Reuben shared their photos and we watched a video about the life cycle of a car. We found that a lot of the reusable parts of a car are recycled. However, we also found out that the leftovers went to landfill (the dump). Apparently, people own 9 cars on average in their lifetimes. We discussed what happens to these after we finish with them, as well as the fuel used to run each car while it is in use. Our conclusion was that petrol-powered cars are not really sustainable.

We made lists of modes of transport that we thought were more sustainable than cars. Many of us came up with decent-sized lists. Some things included skateboards, sail boats, bicycles, rollerblades, electric trains, handcars (thanks Jacob) and walking.

When asked which of these things could be used more by a large number of people, through a voting system we thought that bicycles were the smartest choice. But would the community be willing to use bicycles more? We found this video about how people are reusing bicycles in Havana.

Next, we were split into groups for a circle of viewpoints routine. Each group was asked to discuss how they felt about the possibility of new laws being introduced that meant more bicycles and less cars on the road. Our thoughts were displayed on the wall.

The groups were:

• Car salespeople who sell new vehicles
• Adults who drive cars and use them everyday
• People who work in car wreckers yards
• Us (children)

Now it was role-play time. Mr K announced that he was the mayor and would like to hold a town meeting. We went out to the netball courts, mixed ourselves up so we weren't beside all of the people who we had been working with and gathered together. 

The mayor said that he was thinking of creating some new laws and wanted the community's opinions. A microphone was passed around when someone had something to say. We mentioned some of the points we wrote down in our groups beforehand and also responded to what others were saying. This was a lot of fun because many of us had created make-believe identities and put on different voices!

After the meeting we got together (as ourselves) and discussed the arguments people put forward, while also putting the spotlight on those who we thought were great contributors to the activity. Quaylen's performance, as Professor Jones from Lincoln who didn't want to bike for two hours to work, was a highlight for many. 

The next stage was to do some shared writing with a buddy, on a Google Docs template, about whether we think more should be done to increase the number of bicycle users, while decreasing the number of cars on the road.

We will soon be sharing our writing with the class. The pieces that we believe are fantastic examples will be on display in our classroom. 

We have also started designing our own modern bicycles and making models of them with construction wire. Although, this is proving a lot harder than we imagined! Keep an eye on Twitter for updates. 

Chalk Talk, The Environment And Buying 'Stuff'

This week we have been looking at a number of provocations around our Term 3 theme, 'Consumerism'. Early discussions, thoughts and ideas have been meaningful and will seemingly set us up for some powerful lines of inquiry this term.

We began by defining what we mean by "the environment". For those of you who know a little about our Room 14 values and vision, the term 'learning environment' is a common part of our vocabulary. But this is not what we mean by 'the environment' in this new context, so we needed to clarify that this was considering the natural world and all that exists in it.

Mr K then shared with us this simple diagram:

We all understood this. This is how the consumer system basically works, isn't it? You work, get paid, then buy stuff. Work, get paid, buy stuff. And it goes on.

But how does this affect our natural environment?

We were introduced to a new thinking routine called 'Chalk Talk'. In this routine, students are in groups of 3-5, gathered around a sheet of paper. They are given an idea or a question to discuss. Only this is not a verbal discussion. Students need to convey their ideas by writing or drawing diagrams and images. Any responses to what others say, need to be in written form. The outcome here is that we have our thinking represented visually. It allows for students to have no interruptions, while giving those who are often reluctant to share their ideas with a large group the confidence to have their voice heard.

Our question was:
What effects does this system (diagram above) have on the environment?

Our responses generated a lot of interesting ideas for discussion. Most groups mentioned the cutting down of trees for wood and paper products and how deforestation is an environmental issue. Phoebe's thoughts about plastics, most notably that oil is needed to make it, really fuelled conversation. We talked about the distance in which many of the things we buy travel before they even get to us, and what happens when we are finished with them.

Mr K used the coffee he bought before school as an example. He walked into his local coffee shop in the morning for a cup, that was made of printed cardboard with a plastic lid, filled with coffee, sugar and milk. He handed over $5.00, consumed the coffee, then put the cup in the bin. Is that the end of the cycle? We suspected that it probably wasn't. Once our red bin is collected by the City Council, most children knew where the contents ends up.

We then used a personal example - A meal from McDonalds. This led to a very lively discussion about the whole chain of events that happens before we hand over the money for one of those.

So what? We wondered how this system can be improved. At this stage, we aren't quite sure. But we do know that with food, the best way to make the system environmentally friendly is to produce your own.

Room 14's new challenge is to work out how we can grow vegetables in our classroom. We will be using recycled materials to design and build containers or structures that can house our produce. We will also be investigating how plants even grow (!) and how we can maintain them, while making links to other learning areas, like measurement and statistics, where possible. A number of us have already been generating ideas about how this will link with our explanation and persuasive writing focus too.

Today we watched Jamie Oliver's TED Talk about how we should teach every child about food, which was really the icing on the cake (maybe not the best pun) as to why we should be learning about how to grow our own vegetables and how this may benefit us in the future.

Our next step is to decide how we will group ourselves, where we will find information and materials, and how we will design these systems.

Here are our responses to the Chalk Talk routine: