Pop up Shop Challenge

This week we have a pop up shop challenge. Our challenge is to create a play shop with a partner and create advertisements for our shop. Some of the children in Room 14 are going to be given the brochures that we create and decide from these what pop up shop they are going to spend their money in. The first step in our challenge was creating a 'to do' list and then putting our lists onto a daily schedule. Once we had completed our schedules for the day we started on our first task- creating a name and sign for our shop. We investigated other well known shop logos and decided what we liked and disliked about their branding. From there we came up with a shared success criteria on what our shop signs should include. We decided that they needed to stand out, be clearly written, we needed a slogan and a logo to go with it. This criteria is very important as our room 14 customers will use it when deciding which shop to spend their money at! We started our drafts for our signage and are looking forward to creating our real signs tomorrow! 

 

We managed to tick off some of our 'to do' list but have plenty more things to put into tomorrow's schedule!

Emotional Intelligence

This week we have started to look at how our brain works and what is happening in our brain when we react in situations with negative behaviours. We found out that we have a 'learning brain' and an 'emotion brain'. Our learning brain helps us learn new skills and we use it all the time when we are reading, writing and even when we learnt to ride a bike! 

Our emotion brain houses all the feelings that we have ( we found this very interesting as many of us had been to see the movie 'inside out' and could talk about how important our emotions are!) We talked about it was okay to feel angry, sad etc but sometimes our emotion brain can take over our 'learning brain' and that's when we see behaviour like hitting and kicking. 

We learnt that we have nerves that we called 'a bridge' between our 'learning brain' and our emotion brain' and that when we feel strong emotions that may result in negative behaviours we need to 'cross the bridge' to the 'learning brain' and get both sides of our brain working together to help us to use strategies so our emotions don't result in negative behaviour.

We found out that just like riding a bike we would have to practise, practise, practise 'crossing the bridge' and helping our 'learning brain' and 'emotion brain' work together!

We also came up with the feelings that we want to have in our classroom and what our job is and our teacher's jobs are to make sure we are feeling this way in the classroom!

Next week we are going to look at challenges. What emotions we feel when we get stuck and what strategies we can use to move forward. 

Kararehe

This week we continued with our learning about animals. However, instead of thinking about our big idea in science that we have been investigating, we learnt how to say, read and write the names of the animals we have been learning about. On Monday morning we started the day playing some games to help us learn the animal names in Maori.

Once we were familiar with how to pronounce the names we learnt how to put the animal names into a simple sentence. We learnt Ko te ........ tenei (This is a ...). We then began to create our own animal books in Maori for reading. We continued using our new found Maori vocabulary in statistics by surveying our friends and asking them what their favourite animal was and they had to tell us in Maori. 

We also completed an art task to create a camouflaged animal. We spent time looking at examples on an art blog and then had a go at creating backgrounds and animals that blended into the background. We then wrote descriptions for our camoflaged animals. Mahadyia said 'My peacock has beautiful feathers that have round circles on top like eyes' Spencer wrote 'My elephant is like a fat tree trunk without the bush on top' Jaxsyn said that his animal was as dark as the nights sky.

We finished our animal provocation work this week by learning how to read 'He Kuri' and we took this home to read. 

Our Animal Provocation

This week we investigated further the big idea in science that 'scientist classify animals into groups according to certain characteristics' We learnt about subcategories and found that there are 6 subcategories that we can group animals into. We used the countdown animal cards to sort animals into these subcategories. This created lots of debate about which group some animals should go into! Many of us were very surprised to find that bats were mammals! 

For reading some of us read books about certain animals and others had readings to do on the virtual classroom. Once we had finished reading about our animal we came back together as a group and put what we were reading into the subcategories that we had learnt about. We then talked to each other about what characteristics the animal that we were reading about had to make them fit into that category.

We then used what we had been readng to help us create a report about our animal. In our reports we described the physical features our animal had, described where they lived and then wrote about any interesting features that the animal had. 

In maths we continued our understanding of the purpose of statistics by using the animal subcategories and countdown animal cards to sort the information. We then grouped the cards into fives and then used a tally chart to record the information we had gathered. Next week we will look at how we can present that information.

New Provocation 'What is an animal'

This week we started a new Provocation, 'What is an Animal' this leads into our trip to Orana Park in a few weeks. One of the 'big ideas' in Science that we started to think about this week was how scientist classify animals into different groups according to certain characteristics. We began to explore this understanding by thinking about how we would group animals that we were familiar with. Eli said 'I put the cow and the human in the same box as humans eat cows' when I questioned him further and asked if that is something that is similar about them, 'do cows eat humans?' I asked. 'Ahh no, that wouldn't be good, I think I will change that!' Eli replied. Many children grouped the animals according to the physical features of the animals as presented in the picture, 'I put the fish and the cat together as they both have a bit of grey on them' Zoe stated. I put the dog, cat, rabbit and human together cos the human would have them as pets' Brooklyn said. From these observation I could see that our next steps would be to investigate some sub categories within the animal world and look into what makes a reptile a reptile etc

In our reading groups we read via the  national geographic kids site about different animals. For writing we used the information we learnt to create descriptions and in our maths work on statistics we organised animals into a Venn diagram and took a photo of it, imported it into explain everything and talked about what the diagram showed. Next week we will start to explore and learn more about the animals that we have selected.

An MLE morning in Room 7

On Monday morning we had P1 working with us on an IPad task. There were 44 children one 'big' teacher and 5 'smaller' ex-room 7 teachers to help us. We read a big book about Granny and her Popcorn Machine. Then we used drawing pad to design our own machine that created our Favorite food. There were lots of interesting machines, many opting for ice cream but some rather unique! Brooklyn said 'mine is a seafood machine it spits out prawns'. Ryan from P1 had a cream machine! Once we had designed the machine we imported our work into explain everything and used the tools to create labels and record ourselves explaining our work. We then saved it to camera roll and uploaded it to our media galleries on Uspace. There was so much learning happening around using the different Apps on our iPads. We hope that our friends and families will have a look at our multimedia creations!

Numeracy

Each week for numeracy we are learning new strategies and working on our number knowledge. Check out some of the work we have been doing this week. 

Using our senses

Today we starting exploring how we can use our senses to describe things. We had mystery objects that we had to investigate using some but not all of our senses. We then had to think of an adjective to describe the mystery object. The first thing we investigated was coffee granules, we were able to look at it and taste it! Most of us used the adjectives 'horrible and disgusting'! But some thought it was 'crunchy and yummy'. We then tried mint, we were allowed to smell it and taste it but not see it of feel it. Some of us were a bit scared to eat something we couldn't see, but most of us gave it a try! When Zack saw that it looked like a leaf he said 'I'm not a vegetarian'! We then used the sense of touch and sound to work out the mystery object which was rice. Finally we were really brave and had a go at trying these funny looking green things that Kingston said looked like 'old peas'. They were capers and almost everyone liked them even if some thought they were salty! Brooklyn was very proud of himself for eating it, especially after Mrs McLeod told him that his mother would never have tried it! It was a fun session coming up with describing words. Tomorrow we will begin to build our descriptions!

Story Workshop

We spent two days last week finding our stories through different forms of art and media. We had completed a couple of session with Story workshop before but inspired by looking at Room 14's blog we decided to add photos, digital media and questions to help us. We also listened to a piece of music and used the pastels to create how it made us feel. There was also a TV trailer from a programme called the A Team we watched it and then drew a storyboard of what happen before they went to jail. We spent all Monday morning finding our story and Brooklyn, Eli, Caleb and Spencer decided to write notes whilst they built so they could remember what the different features of their city they created were. On Tuesday we started to create our stories.

Sports Extravaganza

Yesterday Room 7 and 8 went to Linfield Park for a Sports Extravaganza run by The New Zealand Institute of Sport. We had a fantastic day learning new skills and playing a range of sports games. A big thank you to the amazing parents from Room 7 who were able to come and spend the day with us! You were a huge help and Mrs Taylor couldn't have done it without you!

What does old look like?

Today we continued to explore the idea of 'old'. We used our ideas from our writing to help inspire us. We then used clay to explore the question 'what does old look like?'. Come check out our finished work in the classroom. 

If I were 100...

We have completed some writing inspired by an app that aged us! Look out for the iMovie that we are making about our thoughts on getting old! Check out some of the photos of us as 100 year olds!

3D models

We have started the 3d models that are based on the plans of our rooms that we created for homework. We will continue working on these this week. A huge thank you to Caleb's Mum Sonya for supplying the shoe boxes for the models and helping the children make them!

Our tasks this week!

This week we have been working hard on our independent tasks. We have created our faces and families faces with material, drawn a picture of what caring means to us and written about it.  We have also been filling in information about ourselves on U space and doing a handwriting task! It has been great to see everyone in Room 7 choosing to take responsibility for their learning this week.

To inspire us for writing we have been exploring some of the different materials we found at the beach on Monday and also creating our stories using sand and other materials.

Position and Orientation

This term for our strand maths we are looking at 'Position and Orientation'. To start off our learning we worked on positional language which we thought was great fun as some of us stood on top of desks! Then we thought about what we would use if we needed to know how to get from one place to another...

'A tomtom' - Spencer

'A GPS' - Eli

'You can go on your phone and look' - Brooklyn

'Once when we were in Australia my Dad used a GPS but it kept getting us lost, he was getting angry at it! - Helena

'My Mum used a book thing once' - Kordae

We then made a maze using string and we had to give a person instructions to get from one end of the string to another using compass directions. We learnt 'Never Eat Soggy Weetbix' to help us remember North, East, South and West. We then went outside and in small groups we created a maze and one person had to navigate through it. 

Beach Education

We had a great day at the beach today for Beach Ed. The weather held out although the water could have been warmer and the wind was rather strong! We started the day with beach games and then went inside for some safety lessons. After morning tea we headed out into the water. All the children were really confident in the water and weren't at all bothered by the temperature! After our swim we headed in for lunch and then learnt about how to identify a rip. Helena got to dress as a lifeguard and role play how a lifeguard would save someone.

Sewing our self portraits

This week Room 7 were busy sewing their own self portrait! For most of the class this was their first time hand sewing and they did an excellent job! It was a great way to get to know each other as we chatted while we sewed. There was lots of great teamwork happening too as students who felt confident sewing we're helping those who didn't feel confident. Many expressed their surprise at how fun sewing could be. "Sewing is actually really fun" said Spencer. Come check out our work. It will be displayed in Our classroom. 

First day story workshop

On our first day in Room 7 we crafted some writing through story workshop. Mrs Mcleod bought in some objects for us to explore and we selected one that helped us find our holiday story. We then created our stories by either painting, building or collaging them. Once we had created them we were ready to write!

Coming soon...

Watch this space to see what is happening in Room 7 in 2015...