The week that was..

First up.. I am continuing to be impressed by the quantity and quality of the Homework this year's Room 26 are producing. Let's encourage them to keep it up!

As you may know, we had PAT testing every day last week and we will do the final listening test this Tuesday (as the swim sports event is on Monday)... We are marking and entering the data for Maths and Spelling ourselves. Once I've analysed the data, I shall be making contact with any parents where I feel it necessary... ie. simply to make you aware of any obvious weak areas that need addressing with perhaps a bit of extra help at home.

Maths: we ploughed on with decimals. I hope you understand the concept of reversibility now, or that your child has explained it to you.

Writing: we are looking at Report Writing and the rules around that. Just check if your child can explain what writing in the 3rd person means.

Reading: we looked at finding keywords when reading in terms of helping you answer inferential questions and also in terms of summarising key points from an article.

Here are the children performing a play in class that they had rehearsed that day during lunch (off their own bat!) when it was raining..

Topic: we had a stroll around the school and stopped at various locations and discussed the connections the children felt they had with that particular area. They then wrote about the area they felt most connected to and drew sketches..

Classroom behaviour: I am really happy with how this is progressing. We still have a couple of children struggling with the challenge of keeping their mouths shut when I am explaining something, but on the whole, I am seeing vast improvement here.

REMINDERS:
Swim Sports is this Monday. We are going on buses from school to Sacred Heart at 9.45am... later than in previous years. This means we will be coming back later. So your children will need morning tea, lunch and a good supply of water to last them. Ideally, they should come to school with togs underneath as this will speed things up. Towel and goggles are essential as are hats for those with long hair...

Waterwise commences this Friday. Sun cream, hats, swim togs and towels are required + boat shoes if your child has them - don't rush out and buy them.. an old pair of trainers will do.

.. and finally.. go the Black Caps.. and ENGLAND too of course ;-)

The week that was...

Well, I got a lot of homework in this week.. a lot of marking for me at the weekend!
Pleasing to see there are so many keen writers in the class. Unfortunately, a few did not bother to carefully check their work for mistakes. Parents, it would be great if you could cast your eyes over their written HW before they hand it in and point out and discuss any glaring mistakes.. the mixing up of 'their' and 'there' seems to be a classic! If we have a 2-pronged attack - me at school and you at home, we should eradicate any spelling/grammar complacency by the end of the year! Thanks.

Maths: I note a bit of confusion on the new strategy. Basically, we looked at using Reversibility for decimal subtraction when Place Value Partitioning does not easily work:

eg. 10.7 - 9.94 = 0.76

9.94 + ? = 10.7
9.94 + 0.06 = 10
10    + 0.7 = 10.7

0.06 + 0.7 = 0.76

NB. Keith was in Room 26 on Thursday as I had a release day and he commented that a lot of the children still don't seem to actually know what a decimal is! I will of course be going over this, but it would be excellent if you could reinforce this by pointing out decimals in action when and where you come across them.

Writing: we finished the comics and started work on writing Reports.. early days on that one..

Reading: we continued with our work on comprehension and also started looking at note taking when researching on the web. Hopefully, will get some of the top readers into novel studies this week.

Te Reo : we continued to look at greetings. Your children should now be able to use Maori to say (at the very least) Hello, my name is...
 
.. and finally... Holly Tudor came in for a visit on Friday. She even had time to read the children a story; they loved it.. as did I!

REMINDER: Please return the Parent Survey forms asap. Many thanks.

BTW. We are doing PAT testing every day this week from 9am. We should be finished by 9.45-10 am. It would be excellent if your children could all be at school between 9 and 10.. ie. please push dental appointments etc out to after 10 am (if poss :-)). Many thanks. 

The week that was...

Great to meet so many of you on Wednesday.. if you were not there or if you know of anyone who missed the meeting, please email your contact details to Rohan Rimmer (our class coordinator) via rorimmer@gmail.com. Many thanks.

The first full week back felt like a really long week!

Writing: we focused on creating comics. I thought this would be an easy way back into writing and reinforce the entertainment value of writing.. We did a lot of preparation work in terms of comic content, layout design, sequencing ideas, describing setting etc. The children did not actually start drawing pictures till Friday.

Maths: the focus is on adding and subtracting decimals. We have started with PVP (place value partitioning) - ask your children to explain, if you are not sure what this is. Next week, we shall be looking at using reversibility for subtraction when PVP does not work easily.

Reading: again, a bit of fun stuff.. reading plays aloud and then some reading comprehension work too. I always emphasise the importance of using part of the question in the written answer, of writing a full answer. This will develop the children's ability to create more complex sentences.

I have started reading Michael Morpurgo's 'Shadow' to the children; they get to develop their listening skills and relax and enjoy a great story.

Handwriting is under way. I think the children are enjoying it and they really focus during the sessions. We are working on cursive writing. I have told them that I am showing them cursive so that they will have the ability to use it or to combine aspects of it with their current style to (hopefully) develop their own writing style.

All in all a good week. The swimming instructors have told me that we have a lot of really good swimmers in Room 26, so I'm looking forward to seeing them all in action at the swimming gala.

PLEASE NOTE: Girls and boys with long hair MUST wear swimming caps this week. Thanks.

Welcome to the Room 26 Blog

This will be updated each week (usually on Sunday) with a brief run down of what we have been doing in class.

Please feel free to post comments or simply to have a look around whenever you feel like it.

Things to remember:

Swimming: weeks 2 and 3 (every day at 10.10am)
Year 6 sport: every Tuesday afternoon
Library: every Wednesday afternoon

PE will be on Monday and Thursday but there will be no PE during the 2 weeks of swimming

We are off to camp in Week 7. As per last year we are going to Camp Merc at Long Bay over on the glorious North Shore!

Read all about Camp Merc here

If you have any questions during the year, please feel free to pop in and see me any day after 3pm, except Wednesday. Alternatively, you can email me at SRamdhanie@Meadowbank.school.nz.

Homework
I will set this on Monday and expect it in on Friday. I do not set a great deal but I do set it every week and expect the children to do it. If they choose not to, I will not chase them up about it as I expect you (the parents) to do this. Year 6 is all about getting your child ready for Intermediate and getting a regular routine going at home in terms of completing homework is part of this.

Mathletics
Please do not wait until the Parent/Teacher interviews to tell me that the Mathletics tasks are too hard and that you are having to do the tasks with/for them. Please let me know straight away if this is the case. You should NEVER give the children the answers but you can explain how to do it and then let them have a go. Many thanks.