Wednesday July 1st

Inquiry - Out of this World
Today we are working with the Junior room for a space themed day.  The first activity we did was make some fruit platters.  These fruit platters showed the different sizes of the planets.  We had to use different types of fruit to show the planet sizes.  It was a very cool activity and we were happy to eat the fruit when we were finished!

Freya and Iara with their fruit platter of the planets.

Chloe with her platter.

The planets platter!

Tayden and his planets.

Nina and Maddie ready to eat their planets!

Cooper and his platter.

James and his planets.

Emily and Julienne chomping into their fruit platter.









Thursday June 25th


Out of This World- Space Inquiry

For our Inquiry we have been busy learning all about space. Today we were looking at how the Earth orbits around the Sun and the Moon orbits around the Earth. We made a model to help us get a better understanding of this.


Doing research to get the correct colours of the Sun, Earth and Moon.
Using the iPads for researching.

Tayden, George, Nic, Cooper and James with their models in action.

Esther, Iara, Savannah, Julienne and Georgia

Courtney, Maddie, Bree, Taylor and Chloe with their models

Georgia showing how to use her model of the Earth and Moon in orbit.

Wednesday June 24th

Innovative Learning/Technology Open Morning
Thank you very much to all those who came along to our Innovative Learning/Technology Open Morning today at school.  It was a very successful morning and everyone who came went away with something new that they learnt.  It was fabulous to be able to involve the children in the morning with having them working in their classes so our visitors could see our learning spaces and technology in action.

For those of you who couldn't make the morning, please find the slideshow below that was presented before and after visiting classrooms:


Tuesday June 23rd

Maths
We are so enthusiastic about our maths learning in our classroom.  Being on task and completing our learning is something we are getting really good at.  We are also getting good at teaching each other what we are learning, how clever are we?!

George busy doing his maths work.

Maddie, Julienne and James doing their maths work that was dropped into their google drives maths folders.  Miss Chapman is their maths teacher and she wasn't here yesterday but she could still provide them with the work they needed by dropping it into their drives.

Esther, Bree, Georgia and Taylor teaching each other their new maths strategy.

Cooper busy working on his maths work.

Courtney doing her maths work through her google drive.



Thursday June 18th

Morning Programme
Morning programme is a real hit in our class.  Everyone is pretty good at presenting their topic each week and we get a real variety of things being talked about for the topics people have.  We also get topics presented in a variety of ways including book creator on the iPad, google slides, google docs, posters, paper presentations, iPad apps we use at home and iTrailer.  Some people even bring examples of things to school like cupcakes, pets, fudge and we even had a house bus come one day!  

Children in our class are starting to get more confident at speaking in front of an audience.

Cooper made a poster on Volcanoes for his Our World topic.

Georgia used book creator to do her presentation about animals in the sea for the Marine Animals topic.

Julienne talked about Honey for her Our World topic.

Tayden presented his Marine Animal topic on starfish.

Iara spoke about how humans are destroying our world.

Iara explaining something on her google presentation that she made.

Savannah chose to tell us about Stacey Peeters for her famous person topic.


Here is Chloe's police lady and slideshow from our reading tasks that had to be completed earlier in the term, from term one.





Tuesday June 16th

Writing
For writing we have been learning to write newspaper reports.  Last week we wrote a shared piece of writing on a picture where there had been lots of snow.  This week it is our turn to write our own report on a photo of a hippo that has escaped from the zoo.  We had to plan our writing and work independently.  Miss Ward has been so impressed with how focused we have been.  Using devices has been really good for our writing effort and engagement.

Check out some photos of what we have been learning about and us working below!

My Writing - planning and writing a newspaper report
15/6/15
Example we did as a class:
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This article is about a weather event which was when it snowed recently somewhere.

Who?  People around the Otago area.
What?  There has been an extreme weather event which has resulted in snow falling to low levels.
Where?  Otago area.
When?  One month ago in May.
Why?  Because it is getting close to winter and it snowed.  This is a rare event for May.
How?  Snow came down from the sky and settled on everything at sea level!

In May 2015 in the Otago area, there was an extreme weather event which resulted in snow settling to low levels.  Snow was found to be at lots of people’s houses when they woke up in the morning to get ready for school and work.  It was really cold and the snow made it very dangerous and difficult for people to drive.  Residents were told not to drive or go anywhere.  Staying inside in the warm was the best place for everyone to be.

May is moving towards winter, but this event was rare as snow does not usually fall in autumn.  The people in charge of ski fields in Central Otago were really happy about all this snow as this is exactly what they were wanting! Lots of snow is required to make skiing fun and worthwhile.

Farmers across Otago were feeling unhappy, frustrated and miserable by the situation the snow caused.  They had to feed out baleage earlier than usual and farm tracks became dangerous. Snow is a burden to farmers as it causes lots of problems and extra work.

Some children across Otago had to stay at home due to schools being closed.  Some schools were closed for up to three days.  Children were happy about this and played in the snow building snowmen and having snow fights.

Now it is your turn to plan and write your own newspaper report on the photo below.  Remember you are planning who, what, where, when, why and how on whatever you think this article might be about.  You need to make sure you have looked at the example above and plan and start writing your own article.  It can be about anything but must relate to the photo.

You need to expand on your points just like we did in the shared piece of writing above.

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Your planning!
Who was involved?
What happened?
Where did it happen?
When did it happen?
Why did it happen?
How did it happen?


Georgia doing her writing.

Bree, Savannah and Iara working hard on their writing.

Tayden, Maddie, Courtney, Esther and Chloe working on their writing on the desktop computers.

James getting his writing done on the iPad.

Julienne and Taylor working hard.

Nic and George in the library corner.

Cooper finds it comfy working on his writing here!





Monday June 15th

Maths
In our class we have four different maths groups.  Miss Chapman teaches two and Miss Ward teaches two.  At the moment we are all doing addition and subtraction.  Check out the photos below of us doing our maths work.

Georgia, Esther and Bree doing some subtraction work.

Cooper on Xtramath.

Maddie, Julienne and Courtney flat out doing their maths work with materials.  Some are doing addition work and some are doing subtraction work.

Savannah doing Xtramath on a desktop.

Chloe getting sorted for her maths work that is dropped into her folder online through Hapara dashboard.

Nic and Tayden working together doing their maths.  Their work has been dropped into their drives and they do it from here.  This means we don't use worksheets anymore.

Friday June 12th

South Otago Music Festival
Last night our school participated in the South Otago Music Festival at the Balclutha Town Hall.  This was a wonderful experience for us all and we really enjoyed it.  Our school's item was Brave vs Roar by Sarah Bareilles and Katie Perry.  We practiced it lots at school and we are very thankful to Miss Mosley for all the hard work she put in to teaching us this song for our performance and all the other songs.

Check out some photos of us performing.

All the schools participating singing some of the massed choir items.

Our school doing their individual performance





Tuesday June 9th

Out of This World - Space Inquiry
To re-organise information from our trip to the Dunedin Museum and into the Star Lab, we made comic strips with a drawing and sentence about six different things we learnt on the trip.

Some of the things we learnt included:
- Jupiter is the biggest planet.
- the earth moves around the sun.
- as the stars get older they don't shine as much.
- the sun is a medium sized star.
- Betelgeuse is the name of a star.  It is red and is the biggest star.
- Pluto is not a planet.
- red giants are big red stars that are really old.

Check out the photos of our re-organising activity below and there are some other photos of our inquiry wall in our classroom.

Part of our inquiry wall  - Out of This World!

Another part of our inquiry wall.

Our re-organising activity from the Dunedin Museum trip into the Star Lab.

More of our activities.

Tayden's comic strip.

Esther's comic strip.

Our wonderings wall...we have lots of questions we want to discover!