Week 5 term four

What a busy time we've had lately.  Apologies for not blogging about it all - hopefully you have been keeping an eye on your child's blog to keep up to date with what has been going on.

This week we finished presenting our speeches, in preparation for the team speech competition.  What a lot of talented speakers and writers we have in our class.  I really enjoyed listening to the variety of speeches, from why we should travel more, to not eating vegetables, to why we should be allowed to swear, and even about whether playing online games is good for us.  All sorts. 

We have also had a huge variety of mini-performances explaining different issues around the world.  Some were based on racism,  same-sex marriage,  and deforestation.   It was great to see the class looking into issues (both positive and negative) and sharing their findings with the class.  Very entertaining and informative.

Week 6 term 2

A short week this week so everything had to be squished into four days.

Tuesday we had some fun games of handball with Theresa.  Our skills are really starting to come together now.  I also got to do some Netball skills with Room 5 this week.  We worked on not stepping with the ball, chest passes and passing in front of the person we were throwing to so they had to run onto the ball instead of twisting back to catch it. I had lots of fun watching them progress.

Our reading group Literature Circles are also improving hugely.  Everyone is starting to show a much deeper level of thinking, considering other's points of view and questioning what the author may have been trying to tell us.  We are also getting alot better at finding evidence to support our thoughts.  Great job!!!!

Finding the area of the big fort provided some interesting mathematical challenges.  We had a bit of a look at Pythagoras' theorem to work out the long sides of triangles (a2 + b2 = c2) and see whether we could use this to help us.  That led to a discussion on what the a, b, x etc meant in maths.  A bit of a deviation from our ongoing maths but fun to find out something different.

I'm also lucky enough to be reading lots of camp recounts at the moment.  They are beautifully written with lots of reflection and descriptive language.  Hopefully, you will find them posted on the individual's blogs, but I will try and get permission to publish some here as well.

Week five term 2

Tuesday we got to do some more handball with Theresa which was fun.  After that, we spent the day catching up on work.  This meant that I finally got to read everyone's camp recounts - very cool.  Check out some of the student blogs to see their recounts.

Wednesday was the school cross country.  It was impressive to see how fast everyone zoomed around the course and I enjoyed hearing the cheering from the crowd, even though I was all the way over at the Train Station.

 

Week four term 2

This week we had a reliever while I recovered from the worst cold I've had in years.

The class had the opportunity to do lots of Asttle testing so we could show off how clever we are.  The results are coming in and we have all done pretty well.  Bonus!!!!

Week three term two

This week we got to start learning handball skills with Theresa.  It's nice to get a chance to work with someone else and to develop our skills in a game we don't usually play.

We also had a reliever in on Thursday which meant the class got to learn another new game :)

Friday was second languages - a little shorter than usual because of School Assembly.  We had fun in Arabic, reviewing how to say hello and reminding ourselves what the letters looked like and how to say them.  We also started to research some countries where Arabic is spoken.

Week two term two

We started this week with a meeting of Te Runanga o Paremata.  It was really interesting to see what the students thought we needed in order to improve the school.  Some things related to adding to the playground, but there were also things to make teaching and learning easier - A very interesting meeting.

We also started a few literature circles this week and Creamy Lemons reading group had some truly interesting information to share.  They had asked a few science questions and then searched for the answer - making sure to verify the information through using as least three sources.  We found out about how Black Holes form, why people dream, why people 'pass wind', and how birds fly.   We had some fun conversations and learned a lot from each others' research.

Week one term two

A great start to the term with Run, Jump, Throw day.

We also started to finish off our visual representations of what collaboration looks like according to the NPDL rubrics.