Creative Spaces/ Maths

Creative Spaces

On Tuesday afternoon this week we will be walking with room 15 to visit a couple of local parks in the area.  As part of our creative spaces unit we have been looking at what is play. This week we will look at what makes a play space? Why do we have play spaces near houses? If you would like to join us on our walk we would love to have parents walking.  We plan to leave school at 1.30 and be back for the end of the day.

Maths - Notebooks

The students will be coming home with a maths notebook this week.  The purpose of the notebook is to identify some of the concepts your child is working on in their maths group at school. If you are able to spend a few minutes each day going through concepts such as skip counting in 2's, 5's and 10's up to 100.  Knowing the number before and after any number up to 100 it will greatly assist your child as they work to cement some of these concepts.

Oral Language

Oral Language

The ability to orally express ideas, thoughts, feelings has been shown to be vitally important in education. For this reason in room 14 we have an oral language focus each term.  Last term the focus was on presenting and listening skills. The students chose from a list of possible topics and presented each week.
This term the students are each being given  a country to find out some information on and then present that information to the rest of the class. To date we have had fantastic presentations on Vietnam, India, Thailand, Egypt and China. As well as learning skills around speaking to others, the students are learning valuable skills around finding information about the world they live in.  A big thank you to the parents who are supporting their children learning in this important way. Below are a couple of photos from the presentations.

Discovery Time

Each week we collaborate with the other classes in the Awa syndicate for a discovery time. This time is where the students get to explore learning they are interested in with a focus around one of the key competencies.  This term the focus is on managing ourselves. our focus this week was on perseverance, sticking with a task even when it is hard. Below are a few photos from this weeks discovery time

WoW week

WoW week ended with a fun parade at our school assembly.  The students looked fantastic, their creations showed both creativity as well as an ability to stick with a task to see it through. For me the greatest thing about WoW week was seeing students trying things out, being problem solvers and persevering with tasks even when they felt hard.  Here are photos from the final parade.

This week we move into looking at creative spaces. What makes a great space to play in? In writing we will be looking at the use of adjectives in our writing.  How we can make our writing more interesting and descriptive.
In maths we will be using skills in skip counting in 2's and 5's to solve everyday problems.  At home please encourage your child's maths by questioning them.  Asking everyday questions that activate mathematical thinking.
Please keep up the good work by reading with your child every night. Spelling notebooks will have new words for the week. It is good to go back over words from previous weeks to ensure the learning is retained.

WoW week

Today the students from our buddy class room 3 came to join us for our final afternoon of creating.  The students have made some wonderful creations which they will share at the school assembly Friday morning at 10am. We would love to see you there.

Trash to Treasure - WOW week

We are well under way with our trash to treasure pieces.  Yesterday we presented our syndicate with a recycled surfboard. The students were then asked for ideas on how we might turn this from trash into treasure. It was decided we would make a syndicate sign.  The students then set to working out a design and each of the students in the syndicate voted for the design they preferred.  the winning design incorporates the river, river stones and a bridge.  Work has started on this and we hope to have it finished ready for friday.

                            The students voted for their favourite design by putting a sticker on their favourite.
      

                              The winning design

Today we have started on our individual trash to flash creations.  The students will be working on these in the afternoons for the rest of the week.  We welcome any parents who would like to come and assist us get creative.  Especially on Thursday afternoon when the students will be putting finishing touches to their creations ahead of the assembly on Friday at 9am to show their efforts.  Here are photos of the students in action.

WOW Week: Trash to Treasure

Next week we are having an environmental WOW week with a focus on trash to treasure.
Can all students please bring an old item of clothing or a piece of recycled material that we can transform form trash to treasure. Ideas for the clothing can be anything from an old t-shirt that we can paint on or adjust, a couple of empty milk bottles we could make into a pair of shoes. A plastic/paper bag that could be transformed into a hand-bag....

Keeping Ourselves Safe

Today as part of our keeping ourselves safe unit we had constable John in class talking to the students about being safe around people they don't know. As part of this we did a role play in which Constable John played the role of a stranger trying to get the students to get into his car. He offered lollies, ice creams and puppies.  Many of the students were happy to get in the back of his imaginary car, despite others saying "No Don't do it!"
Please talk with your child about the importance of not going with people they don't know.  Consider different situations e.g. what to do if you are late picking them up, what to do if someone stops outside your house and tries to talk with them...

We have continued the role plays throughout the day to reinforce this message and even discussed what to do if someone tried to make them go.

Phoebe was very firm in saying No! she was not getting into cowboy Jakes car even though he asked her to help him look for a lost puppy and said that he knew her mum and dad. Well done Phoebe.

In the role play below constable John and 3 others were pretending to be teenagers at the beach encouraging Takoda to come with them to a fort they had made in the sand dunes. They told her not to tell her parents and offered lollies and treats for her to go with them.