Thursday August 27th

Busy Middle Room!

We have had a busy few days in the Middle Room. We have been working really hard on our speeches that we will be presenting next Thursday. Morning Programme this term has helped us a lot with our preparation for our speeches. Having a good pace, loud clear voices and eye contact are a few things we have been focusing on. In the Middle Room we are really great at giving feedback to our classmates about what we have done well and also things we can improve on. Today we had two visitors from the Rotary club who came to present the Year 4 and 5's with dictionaries. They have already proven to be very useful and we are looking forward to improving our dictionary skills.
We have also been busy with the Keeping Ourselves Safe Programme. Constable Rochelle Gordon has visited us several times to help us learn some important lessons. We have talked about different situations we may find ourselves in and how to say no if we are feeling uncomfortable. To help us with this we learnt 3 special rules:

Squawk- Say No! Stop that, I don't like that! Use a strong voice
Walk- Walk away from the situation quickly and staunchly.
Talk- Find an adult you trust to tell them what has happened.

For art we have been focusing on drawing. We first looked at observational drawing and now we have started looking into cartoon drawings. We found that the easiest way to draw our cartoons was to use step by step instructions. That means that we are only adding a small section of our drawings at a time. They are starting to come together nicely.

Check out some photos of a few things we have been up to in the Middle Room this week.

Julienne presenting her Morning Programme.

Taylor sharing her speech to the class.

Courtney sharing her Morning Programme.

Nic sharing his speech to the class.

Looking great in mufti raising money for Daffodil Day!

Working hard on our cartoon drawings.

Iara and George working through step by step with their drawings.

Nic getting ideas from the laptop for his cartoon character.

The Year 4's with their new dictionaries from Rotary.

George learning Mandarin with Ella.

Taylor, Chloe and Courtney helping Ella with a Mandarin song.

Monday August 24th

Maths - Numeracy
We just love doing maths in the Middle Room!  At the moment we are learning about Multiplication and Division.  There are four maths groups in our class and Miss Ward takes two and Miss Chapman takes two.  We use materials with the maths strategies we learn about as this helps us for a start to understand new things.  Then we have to work out problems using the new strategy we have been taught, in our heads.  This is called imaging.

Here are some photos of us hard at work in maths:

The Totallies working with Miss Ward using materials to help them share equally.

More equal sharing!

What the Totallies were doing on the Apple TV.

Bree recording her working out on the iPad.

Plusies getting their work done!

 The Subbies working hard.

Taylor recording her answer on Notability on the iPad.  This shows up on the Apple TV.

Working out on the Apple TV.

George using the number board to help out with his maths.

Some more working out on the iPad.

Georgia showing her working out on the iPad.


Friday August 21st

Innovative Learning Environments
Over the last two Fridays, Miss Ward has set us tasks over a certain amount of time that we have to complete.  This means we can pick and choose when we do the work as long as we are balancing our time, to ensure we are getting all the work done.  The tasks we have had to do are maths, reading and writing work.  All tasks are related to what we are learning about in class.  Some of us have been really good at managing our time to get our work done and some people have had to have Miss Ward reminding them to manage their time.  We love having choice about when we can do our work, it is cool to see people doing different work at the same time.  Miss Ward only lets us choose when we do our work for a certain block of time at the moment, e.g. the first or second morning block.  Miss Ward also pulls out people to work with over this time for reading, maths or writing.  This is part of an Innovative Learning Environment as we are able to choose when we do our work, instead of being told (well most of us can!).

Here are some photos of us choosing when we get our work done:

The Totallies maths group doing their maths with Miss Ward.

Maddie, Julienne and George doing XtraMath.

Nick and Iara doing their maths.

Courtney doing her Quick Write.

Esther doing her reading work.

Iara and Nic doing SumDog.

Cooper doing Rainbow Reading for guided reading with Miss Ward.

George doing his Quick Write.

Courtney doing her reading work.

Chloe doing her maths.

George doing guided reading with Miss Ward

Thursday August 20th

Morning Programme
We just love doing Morning Programme in the Middle Room.  This happens four mornings a week and three or four people are on each day.  They have to talk about a certain topic.  This term we are doing mini speeches and we have a choice of topics to talk about.  Morning Programme is a great oral language programme that allows us to practice all the things you need to do when talking in front of a group of people.  We give each other feedback too and we are really good at doing this! Morning Programme is great practice for us too as for writing we are doing speeches this term!

Check out some photos from Morning Programme...

Bree doing her speech on why wearing a uniform is a good thing.

Well done Bree.

George giving feedback.

People waiting to give feedback.

Chloe doing her speech about caring for pets.

Some Middle Room members carefully listening.

Chloe has the audience's attention!

Maddie doing her Morning Programme.

Esther sharing her Morning Programme.

Great job Esther!

Class members waiting to give some feedback.

Wednesday August 19th

Innovative Learning Environments
We are very lucky in the Middle Room to have received some donated furniture from a lady named Sandra.  She donated us a couch and two arm chairs to use in our Innovative Learning Environment.  Thank you very much Sandra!  We love our new furniture and have been very good at sharing it with each other.  We love having new places to complete our work on!

Here are some photos of us with our new furniture:

The Middle Room children on the new furniture.

Cooper doing his maths on one of the new chairs.

Cooper, James, Georgia, Taylor, Esther and Bree completing their work on the new furniture.

Working hard!

Tuesday August 18th

Inquiry

For inquiry this term we have been looking at safety. Our big question is 'How safe are you?' Today we were lucky enough to have a visit from Esther's Mum Anna who is a volunteer St John Ambulance officer. Anna answered all our questions we had prepared about her role in St John. She also taught us how to find our pulse on our neck and wrist.
Thanks for coming to visit us Anna!

Anna explaining her role in St John.


Everyone listening to Anna.

Nic and James trying to find each others pulses. 

Taylor finding Maddie's pulse.