Japanese

Today we were lucky enough to have Fleur Karasawa, the Japanese teacher from St Mary's school, come and teach a lesson around classroom objects. We have been looking at the differences between New Zealand and Japanese schools and had begun learning some of the classroom objects ourselves, so it was great to have an expert come and help us with the pronunciation.
Japanese language and Maori language both have similar vowels and pronunciation sounds, so we are linking the two languages. Soon we will be able to recall the names for classroom objects in Maori, Japanese and English! Check out the photos and video below of us learning these words.

Mrs Karasawa teaching us Japanese names for classroom objects

Playing BINGO to help remember the words

Playing BINGO


Learning our words

Week 5 Update

This week marks the half way point of the term - already - and the beginning of winter.  Last week the class worked hard to come up with some cheaper options for our class camp to Wellington. Once they had found all the options they realised that they needed to do some fundraising, as they didn't want to ask parents for more money. This meant writing to the Board of Trustees to ask permission to fundraise. We finished our letters last week and I will be presenting them to the Board this week. Check out your child's blog to see their letter - everyone has completed a letter so if it's not on their blog ask them where it is! Once we know if we're allowed to fundraise we will be able to finalise some decisions and get information out to you.

In other news this week, we will be beginning some different inquiries which will require the children to choose from a range of tasks that fit into 8 broad categories. Children will either inquire into chickens, refugees or successful learning and will complete a range of tasks under the headings - find solutions for problems, come up with new ideas, design something original, invent, evaluate, decide, argue, and consider other perspectives. Ask your child to explain what inquiry they have picked and to show you the range of tasks they will complete between now and the end of term.

When children are working with me in writing we will be focusing on advertising - the language used and the techniques used to entice consumers.  In maths we are looking at strategies for solving problems involving decimals, fractions and percentages. In reading we are setting up reading circles where small groups of children will read the same book and have regular catch ups and discussions to share their thinking and understanding.

This week for homework I have asked the children to complete a task around their self management strengths and weaknesses. It would be great if you could have a discussion with them around this task as we will using this information to help with our learning.

Reminders :
Please send back any ripper rugby or basketball notices
Stratford High School opening evening is this Wednesday night
Jones Cup practices start on Friday - remember correct clothing and equipment

Week 4 Update

                       

The last couple of weeks have seen our children involved in some fabulous learning programmes that they normally wouldn't get the chance to experience. Half the class have worked with small robots and worked right from setting up the robot through to creating a dance / performance using the robot and making it 'dance' in time to a piece of music. The routines created will be entered into a competition called Robocup next term.  There has been plenty of opportunity to explore problem solving, maths application, time management, team work and much more.

The other half of the class have had the opportunity to explore hard metals such as pewter, copper, and aluminium as well as softer materials like clay and fimo. They have designed and then carried out the making of necklaces, key rings and badges. They have used tools ranging from a drill press, to files to a kiln.  Skills such as persistence, listening, problem solving, design technique and tool use have all been developed.

A big thank you to Sally and Colin for working with the children and teaching them these new skills and processes.

         

      

In other news, it's back to normal in the class this week. We continue looking into how we can help the refugees and link it to Social Sciences and persuasive writing. We will finalise some of our findings around camp and continue to look at strategies for solving problems with decimals, fractions and percentages.
Later in the week, children should have posted a reflection around their learning in tech and included some photos the share their learning.

You Can't Always Have What You Want!

Sometimes you try something new, a new way of learning, and it's so successful you think to yourself - why haven't I done this before? !!??😏😏

Since we only have one day together this week, I decided to do something different and get the kids to help me organise our Wellington Camp.

We started by looking at the purposes for camp. I introduced the students to the purposes for camp in our school charter and explained that these are set by the Board of Trustees, based on advice from the Ministry of Education.

We worked out our learning goal and how we would know if we've achieved it:

Learning Intention : to plan a week long educational, interesting and exciting camp to Wellington city.

Success Criteria: * our ideas will be practical in costs and meet the budget requirement

                             * our activities will meet the needs of the group

                             * Mrs Waite and the Board of Trustees give their approval

Then we discussed our budget:

33 people at $330 each = $10,890

$1500 from the Board of Trustees

$1000 from the Fundraising Committe

Gives us a total income of  $13,390

I then shared that the accommodation we  have used in the past had quoted us $8500 and the bus company had quoted us $3740. Total for accommodation, food and transport would be around $12,240. Only leaving us around $1000 for activities for the week.  This was a bit of an eye-opener for the students 👀👀 as $1000 doesn't go far for 33 people!

We have now split into four groups - transport, accommodation, food, activities - and are investigating some cheaper options as well as investigating what activities we might be interested in. Of course the activities will depend on how much money we can save on food, accommodation and transport. 

Once we have competed some research and got some of the above sorted, the students have decided they might need to write to the Board of Trustees to either ask for more funds or ask to be allowed to fund raise. 

The buy-in and interest from the kids and the real life budgeting decisions as well as the reality of not having endless funds has been great learning for the kids.

Watch this space to see what interesting suggestions they come up with!!!!

Week Two

Well our first week with our flexible timetable went quite well. The idea behind it is to encourage student agency, which will help the kids learn skills for life. We made plenty of tweaks as the week went on, and now after a fabulous teacher only day on Saturday, I will be making lots more changes in order to really get that student agency up and running!

Students all have maths and writing goals that they are working on in order to help them move to the next level. We spoke this week about learning being a bit like moving through a dark tunnel. If you don't know why you're doing something or where the end is, it's easy to get lost. 

So the analogy is that where we are now is the start of the tunnel, where we want to go is the end of the tunnel, our learning goals are the torches or lights that show us the way, and our success criteria are the signposts that help us check we're on the right track. I hope this will help the children understand a bit more about their learning and the purpose of what they are doing. 

Tech is Thursday and Friday this week and Monday, Thursday, Friday of week 3. The kids have been split into two groups and will either be completing a robotics unit or a hard materials unit. In the robotics unit they will be working with Edison robots and programming them to complete routines and performances, with the aim being on entering a Robocup competition at the beginning of next term.  In hard materials, they will be working with pewter and enameling and also completing some design modelling. Those in hard materials will need closed in shoes but other than that, all equipment will be provided.