Camp Highlights 2012

Here's a slideshow of some of the highlights from this year's Year 6 Camp! Can you tell how much fun we all had?

Maths Whizz Trial!

This week the student's have all completed their maths assessments and are well under way with their tutorials and activities. the feedback so far is great - 'It's really fun!', 'I can see my improvement already.' and 'I really like learning things that are my next steps!' are just some of the comments so far.

Here's a video of a presentation about Maths Whizz at a recent teaching conference. There is also a parent info letter I've sent home for you to have a look at. Please have a look at your student's account at home. They would love to show you around the programme - if they haven't already!

Maths Whizz!

This week the Matai maths class is starting a trial on a new maths site! We have to complete an assessment first, to help us start at the right place.

Go to this login page and use your logins details (on a small sheet I'll give you) and try to complete the activities before the end of the week. 1 small tip - don't click 'I don't know!' Try to answer every question.

Have fun!

3D Shapes Activities!

WALT: sort, name and create 3D shapes and nets!

Use this Pinterest boards to choose your activity for today. You can do as many as you like!

How to 'Elaborate!'

Today the Pencils had a go at this website to show them how to add more detail to their writing. You can see the words 'unfold' as the story gets bigger.

Have a go! You can create your own by clicking on create.

Sketch Drawings and Pitch!

Paper for trees!

As a follow on from our inquiry into reducing paper use at school, from last term, we received our four trees to plant. Every skip of paper we recycle equals a certain number of plants for the school under the 'Paper for trees' scheme set up by a non profit organisation.

This week we 'bedded' them in to keep them growing until we find a good place for them in the school grounds. Great work, team!

3D Nets / Art!

WALT: create and identify 3D nets - shapes.

 Can you name these 3d shapes we've made?

Research Write up!

The Pens and Quills writing groups will be using this interactive to help guide your writing about your passion project research. Great design starts with great research!

How we like to learn.

Last week's question of the week asked what we do that helps them learn in our class. It was also a chance for them to suggest things we could do better or different.

Here is a brainstorm I'm collating of all their answers. It makes for great reading.



Create your own mind maps at MindMeister I am often impressed with the creativity of our students. Here's Gabby explaining through a video about the idea of 'Kaizan' which is an idea about improvement. Thanks for doing sush a good job at explaining it, Gabby!

3D Nets!

Today we are going to start learning about 3D Nets - their shapes, vertices, faces, edges and how they can be categorised. Work through this interactive series to gain a better understanding before we start our activity.

What is Empathy?

Watch this video and brainstorm ways we can listen with integrity. How can having empathy helps us?

Embeding a flickr image into your blog.

Here's a challenge for your question of the week - embed a picture from flick into your post. You can watch this tutorial I made to help remind you of the steps.

2012-10-22_2017

Writing Masterpieces

I'm writing some comments on everyone's blogs and I thought, Wow! There has been some amazing progress last term with your writing!

Here are some highlights from two great posts... What do you think makes these posts great?

This is by Gabby (her name is no shown at the top).

Cardboard Challenge!

Today we ripped into making our cardboard challenge designs - here's a slideshow of some highlights. It was a great way to have a go at the design process for the first time and we really understood the importance of 're-design' to fix up and make our ideas better.

Great work, everyone!

Cardboard Challenge on PhotoPeach

The Design Process in 1 hour!

The Design Process - Quirky

Sometimes the design process can be tricky and you may need to redraw your design. Here's a video that show how many drawings or concepts a designer can go through before they get to their successful idea.

Using a number line!

Ben W lead a group to make this showme - they are explaining how to use a number line when adding 2 and 3 digit numbers! Nice work, team.

Homework W1 T4

Global Cardboard Challange

What do you think about this? Should we take part (a little late)?

Imagination.is website

Why is reading important?

Here is a great documentary we will be watching today in class. You could watch the rest of this series at home with your family! Make sure you talk about the difficult words she uses and some of the ideas this raises - are you reading every night at home?

Your choice of Technology Portfolio!

Please return this form by this Friday (with money if required). Thanks!

S.D.L. Online!

This term we will be using some online docs to organise our SDL tasks (our must dos!). Below is a screenshot of what it looks like and you can find it on the 'our files' page above.

It is 'view only' for everyone with a paper copy attached to our wall in class. You can star each task as you work through the week on our paper copy. The PA will be in charge of updating your 'stars' on the doc and we can see each others progress throughout the week.

(If you are BYOD I will share the doc with you so you can view it in your google drive)

These task should be completed before Friday or they are a homework task over the weekend. I can email your parents to ask them to help you and I will check your tasks on Monday. You can work on these at home and even before school if you'd like.

When you have finished I will have some 'Can dos' listed at the bottom of the doc.

What do you think? Is there anything you can suggest that will help us be more independent? Anything we could change or add?

Mr Murray's Last Day!

Today we said goodbye to Mr Murray. He will be popping back in next term but we will miss having him with us!

Mr Murray - we have loved having you teaching and learning with us! I'm especially going to miss your technical expertise, your passion and natural gift of putting things in a way that children respond to!

See you next time! - Here's your digital farewell card!

Production Pics

We have a few side of stage production pics in our class dropbox folder you can see. You can even download them if you want to keep a copy for your self. Click on the pic below to get a closer look!

Ben's Showme - Adding Fractions

Today Ben made a great showme about how to add fractions with different denominators! (That's the part at the bottom, remember?)

Nice work, Ben. You're a trail blazer! I wonder who else will share what they've learned in a way that can help others.


You can leave some comments below this post - did his showme help you? I think it's fantastic, Ben.

100 Word challenge - Totara

Here are two of the stories from Totara (when I was relieving in their class) for the 100 word challenge. This is a website that sets a chalenge for the week. This week's task was to write 5 sentences about this picture. Here are the stories from Nick and Bailey.

Nick
One day a lady went pushing her pram and a wheel started wobbling. She started to think it was broken so she went to check it. It rolled down the hill into a pond but a man jumped over like a cheetah and saved the pram. The man said that the water was cold.

Bailey
There was a gardner making his flowers perfect. He was thinking about the roses because he was worried. He was feeling worried because he wanted to win a prize to Hawai. He was gardening as fast as a leopard running. The roses were as red as lava!

Reading with fluency

The Elephants reading group made this digital book from a journal story called, 'Never give up!'  They were able to listen to their fluency and hear what they can do well and what they work on. They wrote down a goal that they will work on - things like pausing at full stops and correcting their reading when they make mistakes. Here's their digital book!

Describing the setting

Today our writing workshop was about how to describe the setting of our short stories. We used this photo to use a snowflake tool about it's physical features and one of our senses.

Here are two amazing setting descriptions from Samantha and Brock. Especially listen for the incredible use of personification by Brock. Great work, Masters!

Paper Surveys - Parents - Competition

We are hoping to gather some data about how we use paper. We have created some surveys for parents, students and teachers at our school. This should help us create some solutions to our 'paper problem' - 'How can we be more sustainable with paper?'

Can you fill in our parent surveys? Every entry to our surveys goes into the draw for a king size bar of chocolate! - Yum!

Parents Survey - Recycling

Parent Survey - 2

School Newsletter Survey

How to make google forms

A google form is an online survey. We're going to make a survey to collect data on our paper investigation.

Watch this 'how to' video to learn how...

What can WE do about it?

Here's a great animated video that gives us some ideas about what we can do to make a difference for our planet. Watch and fill out the think board - while gathering some of those ideas!



Today we thought of some things we can do at home and mimed them to the class - we had to guess what they were and then think critically about the pros and cons of each action. Can you guess the environmental actions from these photos?

Save the Kiwi!

WALT: recall and retell facts. Think critically and make inferences.

eUpdate Week 7

ASB Maths Challenge!

Are you up for a maths challenge? Click on the image below, register yourself with your parents and get into it!

Some of the prizes include money, bank accounts and even gold medals!

Jibbo Bank accounts!

Today we started our first market day for Jibbo. Here are some pics and an embedded form of our bank accounts.

Brock is getting his nails done at 'The Funky Wunkies.'

This business have designed a tech dec playground for us to buy some time on!

You can see how many snidges we are earning through our businesses!

Red Nose Day!

Do you think we look red? Well done, Aidan W for winning our class competition as the best dressed.

Environmental Issue - 2!

Let's watch this and practise our 'remember facts and information' and 'think critically' WALTs for oral language! - Mrs Kerr will help you complete the think boards in your groups...



What do you think about this issue? What can YOU do about it?

A Great News Show

Watch this example of some kids doing a news show and make a criteria for tomorrow's screening!

Inspiration for Jibboo

Everyone was pretty excited about Jibboo this Friday and we had a great discussion about what we can and can't do for our businesses. I thought this video of a boy called Cain might inspire a few people to create some amazing ideas for their business.

 Remember - these are the basic rules.

 1. No sugar (we have a tax but sugar is ruled out due to the next rule...

 2. No products using things bought with NZ dollars - recycled or free materials (not even bought by your mum). 

 3. Use your imagination and creativity - you products or service will do best if adapted over time, based on what your customers want. 

 Here's the pretty cool story about a boy your age (mostly)

Caine's Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

Using expression when we read.

Today the Elephants reading group was practising how to use expression and fluency when we read out loud. We had a go at recording our voices on garageband to see the ups and downs in our volume - one part of using expression. You can see Paige's example in this photo.

That was great workshop today, Elephants! You can see more examples of our literacy workshops on the Literacy Modeling Books link at the top of our blog. We would LOVE some more comments and feedback on what you think about what we are learning.

Global Warming!

Today we dug deeper into the issue of global warming. We're getting better at remembering facts and information and we used this video to help us practise.


In groups of 3 or 4 we stopped at intervals and completed these thinking maps. Thomas and Aidan W did a great job at recalling the information and recording it on their map.

Our big idea this for this term's inquiry is, 'We can make a difference to the world around us!' I can see from the comment in the 'How do I feel about this?' section that we have some work to do to convince someone that they CAN influence or make change, no matter how small. I like your honesty, boys.

How do you feel about global warming?

For a challenge - did you know that there are some people who don't believe that global warming is actually happening? You could ask you parents why...

Environmental News

Today we created a criteria for what makes a great news show. This is called 'feed up!' Here are our ideas.

Remember to work on your next steps from your speech in week 2 - that's called 'feed forward!'

Are you ready to Geocache?

Here is what we will use to get us started on our big class Geocache hunt today. We are going to be putting our mapping skills to the test - BIG TIME!

Jibboo Applications!

Congratulations to these successful applicants!  

Bank Manager - Sophie
Bank Teller - Nicole, Daniel, Kahn
Tax Officer - Cassie
Advertising Assistant - Brock

The Lorax! - Original Book

News Show Example

Next Wednesday you'll be presenting your news show about the environmental issue your team is investigating. Here's an example from last year to give you an idea of what you could do.

What could you do to improve it?

Mars Rover Panorama

Have a look at this amazing panorama from the robot on mars! It's amazing to imagine yourself on another planet like this.

Digital Modeling Books

Have you had a chance to look at our digital modeling books? They are another way you can be involved with what we do at school.

The modeling book blogs are linked from our pages at the top of this blog. There is one for maths and one for literacy. Here's an image from our literacy modeling book.

You can have a read of your child's group work by clicking on their tag at the bottom of a post - all of their group posts will come up on the blog (if you ask your child which group they are in they will know.)

Some of our posts are videos, some are photos but most of them are created using an ipad app called 'paper'. I hope they give you a window into what we are up to - you can even comment or ask a question using the link on the right.

I'd love to hear how you find it or even suggestions of how it could be improved or changed!

Football Skills

This term we're doing a mini unit on football skills. We want to get really good so we can 'waste' Kauri in a football match!

We're using this solo matrix to help us work out our next learning step. This is Thomas's self assessment. He thinks he's at level 2 (solo multistructural) because he's mastered three or more strategies but there are some more skills he needs to get better at. His arrow next to today's date says that he needs to get better at dribbling with both feet so that's what he worked on today during our drill circuit.

Here's a video of the 'elimination game' we played after our circuit. We had to 'maintain possession' of the ball or risk having our ball kicked out of the grid and being eliminated.

eUpdate Week 5

Contrasting Lines

There is a line growing across our main room! We've been learning about how to create contrast with lines and colours. Make sure you pop in and see how far across the wall our combined line is getting.

Teacher's College Skype

Today we had a skype session with some trainee teachers from our local teacher's college. They spent 30 minutes asking us about how we use elearning strategies and technology in class to help us learn!

There were some fantastic questions and I was so proud and impressed with their answers. Here are some of the questions they asked;

 - what kinds of technology do we have?
 - how do we think it helps us learn?
 - do we have any ipad apps we could recommend?
 - are there any negatives to having the technology in class?

It was an excellent opportunity to practise our oral language learning goal for the week of 'Using our Social Courtesies!' I was proud of you all for the way you spoke in turns and the polite, detailed answers you gave - here's a screen shot of the comment their lecturer sent on skype afterwards!

Surprise!

Look what came to school after you had all gone home!

See what happens when you visit our blog after school - you get some little rewards... =) 

Should there be a Milford Tunnel?

We'll be using these links to help us decide whether we would allow the Milford Tunnel.

TV3 News - Campbell Live

TVNZ News

eUpdate #3

Our Class Rules!

Animal Habitat Report

This week our writing task is to write a report about the habitat of our chosen living thing. Some of us have picked snakes, wombats and even the extinct 'Bear-dog.'

Here is how we find out how good our report is. It's called a solo matrix and we move our names up the matrix if we have met that level. At the highest level, the extended abstract level, we need to explain how our animal interacts with 'other' living things in it's habitat.

We can also use this criteria to help us form a great report structure. You can help us research our animals at home if we need it. We've learnt how to use key words in the search bar and to use the most important word first.

Speeches!

This week the students all gave a speech on something they're passionate about. They were practising how to use gestures, maintain eye contact and use expression - among lots of other things!  Well done, everyone. It's a scary thing to give a speech in front of your class and I know for that many of you it was your first time. You should be very proud of your efforts.

Everyone had their speech recorded and you can listen to them here on our soundcloud account (some will be uploaded early next week). Next week we will be posting our speech and the assessment sheet we get on our efolios. Each student will reflect on two things they will improve for their next speech in 3 weeks! I'm sure they will all improve!

Here is Amy's speech that she gave about her love for Dalmatian Dogs.

Moffat Cup

Hay yes every one is excited about Moffat Cup which is in two weeks.
Moffat Cup involves Netball, Rippa Rugby and Tackle Rugby. The schools who are compete in Moffat Cup are Myross Bush, Rimu, Woodlands, Tokonui, Gorge Road and Tisbury. Myross Bush have a good chance of winning the Moffat Cup this year again.

 Go Myross Bush!!

By Ben Wylie.

Using scale with maps

Today we had a workshop on how to read a scale on maps. We used this interactive and you can have another look at home to refresh your memory.

We also started reading, 'Amazon Adventure' by Willard Price. Have a look at this map of the Amazon and see if you can spot the scale and work the distances.

Environment Inquiry, Living Or Not?

Hello, This term our inquiry is all about environment and habitat.

Lately we have been learning how to tell what is alive and what is not.
We watched a video that told us about Mrs Gren. Mrs Gren is a acronym that helps us remember how to tell if something is living or not.This is what Mrs Gren stands for:

M-movement
R-respiration
S-sensitivity

G- growth
R-reproduction
E-excretion
N-nutrition

If something is living it must do or be all of these things.

The teacher read out some objects and we had to decide if they were living or not, here are some of the things we had to sort out,


Living:                                    Non living:

Jelly fish,                                 Vacum,
Cat,                                         Car,
Snail,                                       Laptop,
Fish.                                        Hot air balloon

We also had to go home and talk to our parents about fire and if it was alive or not.
what is you opinion? Is fire alive or not?

Leave a comment and tell us what you think!
Bye for now!

Olympics Project - Homework

Here is a project for you to complete in class and at home before next Monday. Our class is going to all Olympic ready by the time the events begin next week!

Our New Room...s!

We've in! On Friday we moved everything into our new classroom and we're loving the two breakout rooms that go with it. Here's a 360 panorama site that shows you our main room from every angle.

All it needs now is some of our work on display (and our tree to be planted / stapled up) and it will feel like home.  We hope you can pop in sometime soon and have a nosey around.