The week that was...

Ooh what a nippy week! Hopefully, we won't get too many more cold mornings.

A fun week during which we finished off the fractions of whole number work in Maths, worked on improving sentence structure in Writing and focused on finding key words when looking for answers in a text in Reading. Top readers also worked on their novel studies and top mathematicians also started to look at algebra problems.. I think I will introduce aspects of algebra, i.e. improving your thinking skills, your logic and your ability to follow and recognise patterns and why it is useful in real life, to the whole class next term.

On Tuesday, Constable Gordon came in and spoke to the class about cyber-bullying. He was astonished that 12 children in the class were on, or had been on some form of social media, even though the recommended/permitted age for most of these app's is 13 or 14 years old... (I grew up in a time where you could escape the bullies when you went home. Nowadays, children can potentially be bullied 24/7.. scary stuff!)

 On Wednesday afternoon, we worked with our buddy class, making lanterns for Matariki...

On Thursday afternoon, we had a relaxing, enjoyable time watching the talent quest.

Talent quest snippets from Room 26 entrants..

The talent quest winners...

 Once again, we spent Friday's reading session working on plays:

The children also had time to finalise their plans for Monday's inquiry finale... this term's inquiry is drawing to a close. On Monday afternoon, the various inquiry groups will be setting up their stalls and we shall all be sampling one another's wares. Each group will also be judged on their marketing / sales pitch.


Reminder
Parent Teacher interviews are on Wednesday and Thursday - please ensure you book a spot. School will finish at 1.45pm. Any children that cannot be picked up and walked home with a parent, must remain at school until 3pm. If you have arranged for a friend to pick up your child, I will need either a written or verbal confirmation if this is happening.

The week that was...

2 weeks to go.. what a long term! A bit under the weather, I had Monday off. The reliever left a note: 'They worked really well, but they were rather noisy'.. so NO surprises there then!

Maths
We finished off division (for now) and moved onto looking at fractions of whole numbers.
eg.

What is 3/4 of 28?
Strategy:

1. 28 / 4 = 7
2. 3 x 7 = 21

The above is something we have covered before and something that most of the children get. However, based on the gloss results, the following wording throws them:

12 is 3/4 of what number?
Strategy:

1. 12 / 3 = 4
2. 4 x 4 = 16

So we shall be focusing on the above. If you want to reinforce this at home, it really helps to draw a picture (eg. for the above, a circle split into quarters because the 4 in 3/4 means 4 parts) and then work out how to put 12 into the 3 parts equally... that should lead to the logical conclusion that 4 should be in the final quarter too.

Writing
More work on proofing and editing via Free Writing; this seems the popular type of writing in class. The children enjoy letting their minds wander and this exercise leads to creative pieces. I only allocate 12 min's of actual writing time and then 8 minutes for proofing and trying to spot and correct mistakes.. ie. the mistakes they can easily spot. The children then share with the class.. well, as many as we can fit in.

We also did persuasive writing as this tied in with Inquiry. The children had to write a piece persuading their potential customers why they should buy/try their products.

Inquiry
We are nearing the end of this term's work. As you probably know, the children are creating healthy food/drinks and putting together marketing/sales strategies for their products. I'm hoping the children can make these at home and then bring them in for a tasting session in the final week. The children are mainly working in groups, so hopefully, not all parents will be pressurised into trashing their kitchens.

Reminders:
 
Constable Campbell is coming in on Tuesday to talk to the children about Cyber-Safety (this starts at 11.45am).
Talent Quest Finals: this Thursday from 1.30pm in the hall.

IMPORTANT: Matariki Lanterns: We are making these this Wednesday afternoon. All of the children will need one tin can - with the label washed off.

The week that was...

Well another week that was pretty similar to the previous week! So not much to report really.. 

In Maths, we were supposed to move onto looking at capacity but when I found too many still hadn't grasped area and volume, So I decided to do a couple of more sessions in these areas. At home, maybe you could go over the basics with real life examples: eg. if you were to buy carpet for a room, how would the calculate the area needed to be carpeted? How do we measure the volume of a box?Perhaps you could ask your children a smattering of these questions over breakfast: What's the difference between a 2D and a 3D shape? Why do we need to include depth when measuring volume? Why is area measured in square centimetres/metres etc and volume in cubic centimetres/metres etc?

Get the discussions going at home and you will quickly find the areas of weakness and can then help your children by using examples at home...

In Reading, we looked at stories that had something to do with Matariki for 'tis the Mataraki season again. The majority of the children knew about the Maori myth and how the stars were formed, but very few knew the actual reason for the celebrations. Perhaps, you could ask them and see how much they remember from last week... we also continued working on projecting voices and hamming it up through reading and performing plays..

Sophie Reading the class a story..

Our Buddy class, performing a play about Matariki..

In Writing, we continued work on using a well structured plan to create a well structured narrative and also continued to focus on proofreading and editing.

IMPORTANT

On Wednesday, in the Life Ed. Van, the focus was on bullying and cyber-bullying. Without going into any detail, it is clear that the children do not understand the true ramifications of posting pictures and making negative comments on apps such as instagram and the seriousness of this kind of activity in terms of bullying. Also, they have little understanding of the fact that just because they may have deleted a picture or comment, that that information is likely to still be stored somewhere. This really is a 21st century issue and at school and at home we need to continually educate and warn about the dangers of cyberspace.

And finally..

On a lighter note, the Talent Quest auditions came to a close.. the finals are in a couple of weeks, so check if your child made it and if so, do try and get in to watch them perform.

Reminders

We have a Sports Exchange this Tuesday

The week that was..

Another short one.. if only all the weeks were 4 days long.. in this computerised day and age, I don't understand why we don't yet have 3 day weekends as standard... anyhow..

Maths: we started looking at another division strategy. We already covered the linking of division to times table facts, eg. 3 x 7 = 21, so 21 / 7 = 3 and 21 / 3 = 7.

Last week, we looked at the splitting strategy, eg. 81 / 3 can be split into 60 / 3 = 20 and 21 / 3 = 7; then add 20 to 7 to get the final answer 27.

Going forward, we shall continue with the splitting strategy, working with larger numbers.

The top mathematicians in the class are working on their Maths projects; I had a meeting with them and they have also requested we look at the following: ratios, algebra and percentages. So apart from recapping what the rest of the class does, they will also be working on these areas.

We also did a session on Probability. Interesting how many children know that you have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a number with a single die, but few knew that with 2 dice, the possibilities leap from 6 to 36 possibilities (ie. 6 x 6).

 

We also looked at the snail race game (ask your children..) and then the children experimented by rolling 2 dice a number of times, noting which number came up most (7,8 and 9 were the winners). We discussed why this might be.

Writing: we continued with narrative writing, using the cartoon strips they had created previously as the basis for their stories. The idea behind this was to ensure that the structure of their stories would flow smoothly and that they would be able to describe their story settings in detail. We also had a session that was purely proofreading and editing.. please keep hassling them about this at home.

Reading: comprehension using journals, SOLO activities, group work on reorganising information in a text when looking for an answer and of course, plays. The latter is the children's and my favourite.. excellent in terms of building their confidence and working on the voice projection skills required for Production.

Kate sharing a book with the class:


Other stuff: dictation and spelling are trucking along well. The children are getting the message about checking their dictation using the version on the board, as opposed to relying on the version in their heads. It's quite incredible the number of children who rush over, convinced they have made all of their corrections and have a 100% correct piece of work. They are crestfallen when I find a number of mistakes and only then, double check the version on the board. So the mission going forward: erase the ingrained incorrect spelling from their brains and replace it with the correct version!

Life Education Van: we had a session with Lynn and Harold the Giraffe on Wednesday. The whole middle block dedicated to learning all about what friendship is and how we also need to be good friends to our bodies by eating nutritional food and limiting junk.

The week that was...

Well, Monday started with a spot of Samoan dance as it was Samoan Language week... it was a crackerjack performance!

In Maths this week we worked on statistics by using the data from the Fitness-a-thon as the basis for the investigations. For number, we carried on with subtraction. Next week, we shall start work on division strategies. Please keep practising subtraction at home. Another strategy that is quite useful is 'equal additions'. eg.

1.67 - 0.79
(add an amount to the right hand side to round it up to an easy number.. in this case, 0.21. Then add this amount to both sides of the equation..)

1.88 - 1 = 0.88.

In Writing, we looked at how to plan our work using either a SOLO map, or whatever strategy works best. We also continued with free writing and daily dictation.

In Reading, we continued with comprehension work and also looked at the skills required to summarise a text.. ie. the ability to find the main ideas and the key words that support the main idea, and the importance of ignoring supporting, superfluous details.

Lachlan sharing a book with the group. This 'getting the children to share a story with the group mullarky' is becoming a regular feature.. they seem to really enjoy it!

Friday is reading plays day.. we had mikes, booms, props..

 .. a rainbow monkey

.. and even a whale...

On Friday, a few lucky members of Room 26 were invited by our buddy class to go and help cook some Samoan doughnuts.

Finally.. enjoy your Monday off.. and don't forget that we have a sports exchange on Tuesday afternoon.. so the children must come to school with all of the required kit.

And for all you gooners out there.. FA Cup Champions again... yeeeeehah!!

The week that was..

Monday: well, we spent all morning in the Garden to Table room making Bliss Balls and Moro Bar slices.. guess which one was the healthy snack! Many thanks to the mums who came in to help and a massive thanks to Birgitte Harris for putting it all together. The children had a great time and a real world learning experience. The experience has given the children an insight into the amount of rubbish that goes into unhealthy food and how relatively simple it is to create much healthier snacks. I am hoping they will be able to draw on this experience when they begin their own inquiry work into creating a healthy snack and a business plan to market it.

Maths: we spent the whole week on subtraction of whole numbers and subtraction of decimals for those that were ready. The children who are competent at subtraction worked on Maths projects and then started thinking about how to create their own.

Writing: we followed up the G to T day with some procedural writing. The children simply had to write the procedure for either making Bliss Balls (BTW. a lot of snickering in class when I say this name!) or Moro Bars using the correct structure. We also did a short story writing drill.. in answering a series of leading questions, the children create a story. 

Reading: not much to report here.. I introduced some SOLO reading tasks to the children that will be a part of the reading rotation in the future and continued with comprehension work. 

Augie sharing a book with the class:

Mia Harris, adopting a classic 'let's get down to some serious writing' pose...

Fitness-a-thon: REMINDER!

The children MUST bring back their sponsorship cards so that I can write in the percentage improvement and sign them. Naturally, I shall be taking the opportunity in Maths to teach the children how we work out percentages and then I will compare my answer with theirs..

A dynamic game of octopus.. 5 minutes after the Fitness-a-thon run!! Where do they get the energy?

The week that was..

Testing, testing...

On Monday and Tuesday I focused on getting the Maths and Reading assessments finished. The children helped by getting on with their independent work and helping each other when they were stuck; this was particularly impressive in Maths where they were basically teaching each other.

On Wednesday, one of the Mums who has set up her own baby food business came in and told the children all about it in terms of how she came up with the idea, how she got started and what's currently happening. The children were really engaged and had many questions for her. Clearly, this is all part of our Inquiry this term.. Nutrition and the Food Industry.

BTW. on Monday, the children are going to spend the morning cooking an unhealthy snack and a healthy one. We are then taste testing. During the cooking process, we shall be emphasising the quantity of sugar used and discussing/demonstrating alternatives ie. do you really needs heaps of sugar and salt to make something palatable. If not, why does the food industry do it? (I will also be taking the opportunity to bang on about measurement/units of measurement/accuracy measuring etc. as we are doing this for Strand Maths). Thanks again to Mia's Mum for organising this.

Charlotte sharing a book with the class while I had a well-deserved break :-)

On Friday, the children had a great time rehearsing and then performing plays for our year 3 buddy class. The buddies really appreciated it and I used the session to get an idea of the acting talents we have on hand for this year's production.
 
Maths HW last week: subtraction issue. A few parents mentioned that their child struggled with the decimal subtraction HW problem last week.

The strategy we have been using for this type of question is reversibility:
eg.

2.3 - 0.875

0.875 + ? = 2.3
0.875 + 0.125 = 1
1        + 1.3     = 2.3
0.125 + 1.3 = 1.425

NB. This is year 7 level work. So if your child is struggling, don't worry. If you are helping at home, just look at applying the strategy to 2.3 - 0.8 first and only then try with the 100ths and then with the 1000ths. However, we will be covering this in class in some depth, so there really is no need to worry... and we will not go past 10ths for those that are not ready.

PS. Writing is gong really well, as is the daily dictation. I am trying out a lot of new teaching ideas this year and so far, so good. :-)