What's Up - Week 3

Week Three sees the beginning of homework. This year we will be completing as much homework as possible online within Google Drive.  If this method isn’t going to work for your child, we are more than happy to look other options, however we would like everyone to try for a few weeks first.

On the 22nd of February we will be going to the Stratford Pool for a session on water safety and survival. All Year 7 and 8’s will attend this session. At the same time we will be completing trials for Turnball Cup. An outside swimming coach with help with the selection of this team. We will be travelling by bus on this day. More information will be sent home later in the week.

Continuing with the water safety theme we are lucky enough to have secured a day at TOPEC where we will complete an action packed day of river safety. We feel river safety is really important for many of our kids with rivers on farms and around in our everyday lives. This day will be on the 12th of April. We will be requiring parent help and since the cost of this day is quite high we will be needing parent cars to transport us to and from TOPEC. More information will be sent home closer to the day.

Within the classroom we are busy completing maths, reading and writing tasks as well as some cool art to brighten up our rooms. We continue swimming each day, weather permitting. In maths students are completing a task where they have to construct a tiny house. The house has to have furniture and other required features incorporated. All pieces of furniture have to have their area and perimeter measured and recorded. So this forms our first mathematical focus. In reading students will be begin novel studies this week. These novels will be read in class. Once finished students complete a set of questions based around comprehension and critical thinking. Last week, in writing, we started a piece which required students to be descriptive and show the readers through descriptive words where the story was set. These pieces will be edited and posted onto blogs throughout this week.

Digital Citizenship and online safety is a focus for the beginning of the year. We will be completing lessons in class around this very important subject. Students have also been asked to complete an online game for homework over the next few weeks that is based around making them think about being safe online.

Have a great week.

First Week Activities

We've had a fun and busy week and a half of learning in Room 3. Students have participated in activities such as team building challenges where they have had to work together to achieve a mutual goal. One of these activities was called the Human Knot.

We have also completed several S.T.E.M challenges. These challenges involve science, technology, engineering, mathematics and problem solving in a collaborative environment. So far students have had to work together to save a worm from drowning using only paper clips and have completed a set of cup stacking challenges using only string and a rubber band.

As well as these activities, we have been swimming, completing self portraits, discovering how area and perimeter is involved in building a house and writing descriptive pieces based around our holidays.

Muffin Recipes

As requested here are the links to our 5 healthy muffin recipes....

Zucchini Mini Muffins

Super Healthy Kids Muffins

Carrot Corn and Cheddar Muffins

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins

Sweet Potato and Carrot Muffins

Muffins Muffins Muffins

We had a great day yesterday making and tasting our muffins. The class was split into 5 groups and each group had previously chosen their recipe. The criteria was that the muffins needed to be tasty, have hidden vegetables and be healthy. We invited Room 7 to come and do some blind taste-testing for us and give each type of muffin a vote out of 5 for taste. We had a great group of parents helping us out and lots of fun and learning was had by all. Check out some of the photos from the day. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Invitation Challenge

Our little garden and germination experiments have recently taken us off on another adventure. We have been looking at how much sugar is in foods, including our little garden vegetables. We have discussed how good vegetables are for us but that many children don't really like their taste. So we are going to try and hide vegetables in muffins! 😆The idea is that children will work in small groups and find a muffin recipe that they can alter to include vegetables. They will make their recipe and will be judged on taste, healthiness and the vegetables hidden in them. We are inviting Room 7 to come and be our judges so we decided they needed proper invites. Children worked in small groups to produce an invite. We will judge the invites on the criteria listed below and chose the best two to send to Room 7. 

The criteria is 

* good layout

* clear font size and correct spelling

* correct details like when and where

* good colour and background choice

* appropriate images 

Here are all the invites. What one do you think should be our winner?????

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

Number 6

Number 7

Number 8

Number 9

Number 10

Number 11

Number 12

                             

Germination Experiments

The whole class worked together to make this slide show about our recent germination experiments. We learned so much and now have to complete some more experiments because of the questions these experiments raised.

Maths Trail Findings

This morning we started the day by sharing our findings from yesterday. It was interesting to note that many children had to have very random guesses about measurements as they didn't have any knowledge to base their estimations on. For example some children didn't know how long a metre was, so they couldn't make accurate guesses for how long or tall something might be. One of the questions asked the children to estimate how tall the big tree by the sandpit was. We had answers ranging from 7 metres to 60 metres. The question asking the children to estimate how long it would take to walk around the outside of the school also produced some interesting answers - ranging from 5 minutes to 200 minutes.

But perhaps the most interesting results were around the question about our blue rubbish bin. The question asked the children to estimate how many litres of water it would hold. There were many different answers but most children didn't know what one litre of water looked so had no way of working this out.  Some had used what they knew of milk containers to guess, but most thought it probably held about 2 litres.

We used the pyrex jug to find out how much a litre was and then had an interesting discussion about whether 1 litre in the pyrex jar was the same as one litre in our water bottle - eventually we decided it was.

















The next step was to find out how much water our bin would actually hold. Firstly we poured 15 litres in and then marked this on the side of the bin.

Children then had to use the 15 litre measurement to work out how much the bin might hold altogether. The results show we have a very imaginative bunch who enjoy a challenge. Many of them actually used their knowledge of fractions and thirds - without even realising it!

After completing the maths trail I now have a good feel of what the class needs to learn in the measurement area. You can help at home by pointing out how different units of measurement are used for weight, length, capacity, etc. Being able to visualise these units of measurement from their everyday lives will help them to make connections in the classroom.

Maths Trail

Measurement is our new topic for maths for the next couple of weeks. Today I needed to know what the kids already knew so I could plan to their needs. I decided a maths trail was a good way to make use of the glorious sunshine and get everyone moving on their first day back.

The maths trail was a series of measurement questions as shown below

The children went around the school in pairs estimating and measuring their way through the ten questions. Tomorrow we will compare answers and talk about our findings. This will give me some good insight into what children do and don't know about measurement at this stage. 

Combining Reading and Following Instructions

Today we began a unit on reading instructions. We have some very good readers in this class, but too many times when they are given written instructions, they are unable to follow them. This is usually because they don't read the instructions carefully enough and miss out important information. We talked about all the times in our everyday lives that we (or our parents) need to be able to follow instructions. 

The children are very good at coding and they enjoy it. They competently complete tasks online, however they usually just code and create whatever takes their fancy, rather than following any set instructions. 

Today I handed out some instructions on coding - programming a sprite (a sprite is a creature used in coding).  It was really interesting to watch as half the class jumped on computers and logged on to where they thought they were going to be and the other half came up to me and asked which site to go on. NO ONE actually read the instructions which clearly stated in a box up the top which website they needed to got to!!!!  Guess this shows exactly why we are working on following instructions.....