Term Two!

Welcome back to Term Two! This term promises to be as busy as usual but hopefully will feel much more settled without all the short weeks.
I am introducing the students to a more flexible learning programme this term which should give them more opportunities to learn at their own level and to make choices regarding when they do things and how they do them. However, this doesn't mean that class becomes a free for all and kids just do what they want! There will be set learning intentions and set amount of times for each subject, but students will be able to choose how their day looks and what part of the learning is right from them. I'll be introducing this new way of doing things to the students tomorrow and over the next week. Hopefully they'll come home and share it with you. I'll be looking for feedback from the students over the next couple of weeks. Feel free to ask any questions or come and see me for more information. Over the next few weeks I'll share some links to research that backs up this approach.

This term we continue to investigate refugees. We start by looking at this really interesting poem that shows two points of view and should provoke some great discussion.


Our writing unit is based around learning about writing persuasive texts and our maths will be focusing on aspects of fractions, decimals and percentages.

Tech this term will be running in two blocks - Thursday and Friday of Week Two and then Monday, Thursday, Friday of Week 3. More information about this will be shared with students this week. They will be involved in either robotics or enameling and jewelry making. Both have outside experts taking the groups which will be fantastic.

Have a great week.

A Real Life Refugee Comes to Visit!

Wow!
How lucky were we today with our visit from Sam, a refugee who came to New Zealand from Cambodia?!
Sam shared his story of being a week old and spending 31 days being carried by his parents through the forests from Cambodia to Thailand and then spending 7 years living in a refugee camp before getting his name pulled out of a ballot and being sent to NZ on his own, where he lived for 5 years without hearing from his family or even knowing if they were alive!
The children listened intently and then asked some fabulous questions, not only about Sam's life, but about ways we could help refugees.  I'm sure they'll have lots to share with you tonight.
The children are currently finding out more information about refugees and next term we will look into how a small group of Year 7 and 8 children might be able to help make a difference for refugees in NZ.  It's a fabulous opportunity for us to develop empathy, and understanding for those that are different to us and it links nicely with choosing kind and not being judgmental.


Here's a couple of short videos from this morning.....

End of Term 1

We've made it to the last week of what has been an unusually mucky term. I, for one, am looking forward to Term 2 and a far more settled term!
This week kicks off with athletics - weather dependent - postponement is Tuesday. We have been having regular athletic skills practice with Olly from the Run, Jump, Throw programme, so we should be good to go.
The rest of the week will consist of continued learning around the Commonwealth Games. We will be using a maths lens to look into the numbers around the Games and then using this to investigate our wonderings around the impact the Games is having on the Gold Coast.
As you know, we have been reading Refugee this term and we are nearly finished this amazing book. We are incredibly lucky because we will be having a visit from a real-life refugee called Sam, who has made New Zealand his home. He is coming to talk to the class on Thursday morning. A big thanks to Kim Watson for organising this visit for us. I will post about the visit afterwards.
Lastly, a reminder, that we love getting comments on our blogs, so please keep them coming.
Have a great week.

 

Learning with the Commonwealth Games

Today we starting looking at the Commonwealth Games - what we already knew and what we wanted to know. This lead to some fairly low level - closed type questions from the kids. For example - When did they start? How many countries are in it?
I introduced the Social Sciences Level 4 Curriculum to the kids and explained that we needed to think much harder and much wider about what we wanted to know if we were going to meet the demands of the Curriculum.
After some discussion around society, people, cultures and communities, etc we came up with something that was worthy of Year 7 and 8 learning....

What -

We are learning about the impact the commonwealth games might have on the Gold Coast.

Why -

So that we can learn to think carefully and understand about issues in society and how they impact on all of us.

From here students will move into small groups and take this big idea and turn it into a smaller idea that they choose. They will be encouraged to think about things like - sustainability, waste, organisation, finances, impact on people, environment, etc.

It would be great if you could have some conversations at home around the impact - both positive and negative - as this will help students decide what aspect they wish to investigate.