Rm 18 - Mrs Whyte

20.5.16

Room 18 have been helping me upcycle a waka that Mr Larkin found in a loft at school. We are going to take it down to Whakarongotai Marae as part of Matariki celebrations on Thursday the 2nd of June. I've been enjoying seeing the teamwork and creativity from our students! 

20.5.16

This week I finally got round to planting out our poor flowers that have been sorely overcrowded in their pots. We planted the seeds at the beginning of the year. Maddi was an excellent helper and the plants are now hiding between the plants outside Room 18. Hopefully some flowers appear soon! 

19.5.16

Today we had our first twitter chat in ages! We did #KIDspeakNZ - a chat that NZ students initiate and run themselves. The questions were all about modern library environments and what we thought they were like. It was pretty cool! If you have some time, here is the link for the storify of it: Library Twitter chat

12.5.16

In Room 18, and across the Te Aramoana syndicate we have started learning about water and how precious it is. 

The KCDC gifted us a 10 litre bottle of water and got us thinking about what we knew and what we wanted to know about water. Here is what we came up with:

We read some School Journal articles during reading and learnt that water is finite and recycled. The water we have now is the same water the dinosaurs drank! 

We have then been thinking about the water in Waikanae. We talked about the areas of water in Waikanae and made some Google maps with those on them and the activities that people do there. 

This is Shannon and Maddi's water map.

Then we thought about the good affects people have on water doing those activites and the bad affects people have on water. We came up with lots more bad affects than good affects! 

These are the conclusions we have drawn so far about water:

1. WATER IS PRECIOUS 

2. WE SHOULDN'T WASTE WATER

3. THE WATER WE DRINK IS THE SAME THAT THE DINO'S DRANK - WATER IS RECYCLED

4. WE NEED WATER

We watched this video with a cool idea that some surfers have had to help clean up our oceans:

Ocean bins

We liked the original thinking of these guys and will aspire to be innovative like them in the future. 

9.5.16

We learnt how to use this cool programme called Sketch Toy last week. We can create sketches and save them to our blog or share them in other ways. Have a play at www.sketchtoy.com. Last week we used it to help us write up our Maths thinking when we were doing a problem solving activity. Here is an example:

Sketch toy example

9.5.16

Our first postcrossing postcard has arrived at it's destination! So exciting to be connected in this way. We got this response from the receiver: 

Good news, Belinda! Your postcard NZ-142451 to Confederaroo in United States of America has arrived! It reached its destination in 47 days after traveling 13,492 km! Joseph wrote you a message: “Dear Evy and Estelle: your post card from New Zealand is my first ever - Thank you. My favorite books are by Joseph C. Lincoln - who wrote novels around 1900 - always about these retired Sea Captains who come back to Cape Cod in Massachusetts and have to take on a crooked mayor or solve some problems - circa - the 1890's. Simple stories in old sea dialog - fun reads. Joseph C. Lincoln died in 1944 after writing 46 novels - I have 44 of his 46!!! You would like Camden where I live - a small town of only 6,800 people and many beautiful horse farms. We have some 800 miles of horse trails in the local area. Our nearest beach is Myrtle Beach on the Atlantic Ocean - about a 2 1/2 hour ride from Camden - 80 miles of unbroken white sand - very popular with the Canadians in the Spring. I grew up in Massachusetts so life here is different for me. Have a Great Dixie Weekend, Best Wishes from South Carolina, Joseph” Do not reply to this email! To reply go to Confederaroo's profile.

Mathletics -

We have started doing more mathletics in school lately and are challenging ourselves to try and get more certificates - bronze, silver and eventually gold ones! Room 18 have made an awesome start and I can't wait to see them progress. 

Ducklings!

Estelle's Mum has brought ducklings in to visit us twice this term. They are so cute and fluffy! We all love giving them a pat. 

Mindlab visit:

20 of our Year 5 and 6 students got to visit Mindlab in the last week of term. 5 were from Room 18. They created stop motion movies using Stop Motion Animator - a chrome extension and a web camera. It was so easy, we are planning on doing it again sometime in Room 18 itself! So, watch this space! 

Chestnut roasting:

We roasted chestnuts this term. Mrs Whyte found them at a friend's farm and discovered that they are a common Chinese snack. Not everyone enjoyed eating them, but it was fun to cook them. 

Hula hooping craze:

Hula hooping became a craze that swept Room 18 and 19 after we had our inaugural Class Challenge at our syndicate assembly - a hula hooping competition. Good to see kids out their swinging their hips for fitness! 

Mystery Skype:

We did a mystery skype this term, also with the aim of connecting ourselves to others. It was awesome fun. If you haven't heard of one, here is some information and a video link - What is a mystery skype? 

The students all had jobs and I think next time we do it we will be even more organised and awesome! The class we skyped was from Mahora School in Hastings by the way! 

Demolition of Room 10 and 11:

For a few days it was hard to concentrate in Room 18 as a digger came and demolished Room 10 and 11 to make way for the new classroom block. We went out and got inspired to do some writing around it. There were some really cool poems and texts written! 

Reading classroom:

We are a reading classroom. First thing in the morning we silent read as Mrs Whyte does the roll. This term we set ourselves reading goals for a Book Challenge. Some people have lofty aspirations to read 100 books! Mrs Whyte is sticking with 30...

Connections home-learning:

We had a home-learning challenge in the last few weeks of term. You had to do a project around the statement - "Life is better with connections". Some really interesting things came up and I was really proud of those who gave it a go. Charlie created a family tree with some flax weaving. 

Mandarin:

We have been enjoying learning Mandarin this term - we can say some simple greetings, and ask and answer what our names are as well as count to 5! Estelle is a great help as our Mandarin expert! Here she is wearing the chinese zodiac on her t-shirt. She helped us all find out what animal we were. 

Various Google slide shows that some students did during the last few weeks of term (everyone worked really well on these, these ones were just the most finished): 

Shannon's inquiry work on a culture (world connections):


 Brooklyn's non-fiction picture book on fast cars:


Charlie's non-fiction picture book on wolves:



Joe's non-fiction picture book on rugby:



Tai's non-fiction picture book on African wild dogs:



Estelle's non-fiction picture book on Wolves:




Oscar's non-fiction picture book on chameleons:





Maddi and Shannon's non-fiction picture book on llamas.   



 Jess' non-fiction picture book for writing.  

   


Brooklyn, Cory, Joaquin and Tyler's homework project on "Life is better with connections":
                

Year 6 Camp (week 7 of Term 1):

Running up the tyres was pretty daunting, but fun. We had some amazing times! Jess and Wiari both at 28 seconds.

Jess' crazy critter

Shannon's crazy critter.

Tai heading up the tyres. 

Ollie came for a visit!

The pool was cold, so cold...

The waterslide was epic! Not to be forgotten. 

Cory and Maddi get comfy for the movie. 

Daniel mid-bounce.

Evy in the tyre swing. 

Maddi and Shannon hanging out. 

These were Jess' war wounds from the confidence course - quite a few people got these! 

Dezal's Crazy Critter.

18.4.16

My apologies - It's been a while since I've posted the cool goings on in Room 18! It is now the end of the first term and I am going to try and catch up up on a few fun things that have happened in the last few weeks of term. 

So buckle up folks - lots of photos to follow. Well, not follow, they'll be above this writing actually, but you know what I mean!

22.3.16

We created these expectations in the first couple of weeks of term, but I have been played around with creating a Piktochart of them (check out the site - it is really easy and fun). Here is my first effort! We will display them in class soon.

9.3.16

Can you bounce a ball at the same time as 14 other people? 

Can you skip using a skipping rope to the same rhythm as 14 others?

Why would we want to I hear you ask? 

Today Room 18 experimented with these two things. We did so because we have been reading this book:

It is a Science Fiction novel and at one point the characters are on another planet where everyone does everything at the same time. 

From doing the experiment, we learnt that it is very hard to synchronise ourselves in this way and we don't know why you would want to anyway! We'll have to read the rest of the book to see what happens on the planet. 

Here is an explanation of a Tesseract in the book:

9.3.16

This week we have been having Constable Sue come in from the New Zealand Police to teach us about bullying - what it is, what forms it takes and how to deal with it. The programme is called Kia Kaha. I was really proud of the students in the first session. They were well mannered and had good ideas and questions. We have two further sessions with Sue on Thursday and Friday this week. 

25.2.16

I have been meaning to finish this slideshow off, but haven't managed it. So, I will just post it as it is, as some good learning came out of it. We each surveyed a class at school, asking them these questions:

What did you do on Waitangi Day?

How important is Waitangi Day to you? 

Then we created graphs from the information. 

It was really interesting to see that as we got higher up the school, Waitangi Day seemed to get less important to students. Most people seem to have got outside and gone swimming on the day! 

Everyone did a lovely graph, these are just some examples...

23.2.16

Today we talked about something exciting that is going to be happening in our school this year. We are going to be learning Mandarin Chinese! As past of ALLiS (Asian Languages in Schools), Mrs Whyte and some other teachers are doing some learning about it and will be teaching the students. Room 18 were pretty excited about it and wrote down a few thoughts about it:

22.2.16

Today we had our awesome Swimming Sports Day down at the wonderful Waikanae Pools. 

In the morning the competitive swimmers went down. There were quite a lot from our class! They did really well and were very excited to tell me how they did when I arrived with the rest of the class at midday. 

Then Mr Campbell hosted us through a variety of fun races - flutterboards, underwater swim, walking race and horse and cart. It was so much fun to see everyone giving it a go and enjoying themselves immensely. 

After that we had the House relay race. In case you weren't aware, we are WHERO (red). Our racers worked really hard, giving it their best effort, and came 3rd. 

It was a really great day. Below are a couple of photos from the event. I'm sure some of the students will write about it on their blogs as well. 

18.2.16

We have been doing some statistics for Maths over the last two weeks. Here are some of the graphs that we made on Google Sheets. Watch this space for some interesting results in our Waitangi Day graphs - still to come! 

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17.2.16

Sometimes we are still learning to use our cushions and beanbags in a sensible manner, but I think Harley has the idea here! Creating himself a bed to relax in for a moment or two...

17.2.16

Yesterday was our first day of the Move and Mprove sessions that we are participating in for 8 weeks. It is a gym programme that focuses on fundamental movement skills and is run by an outside provider. 

It was really FUN! Here are some photos of Room 18 kids getting into the activities. 

11.2.16

Hi Room 18 whanau! Here is our first post! 

I'm hoping it is the first of many more. Below you can click on a video I made that shows a few of the students and their "one word 16". This was the one word that they decided was most important to them for the year ahead. This might change as we go along through the year and that's ok too. The overall word that stood out in the class was "Fun", so we have decided that this year we will aim to 

make learning fun! 

We have high expectations of ourselves, and are also aiming for a Growth Mindset, Kindness and Respect. 

If you are interested in learning about what a growth mindset is all about, the videos on youtube with this little guy are great (there are 5 in total):