First Day Back

Today was our first day back at school in Level 2.  It was great to see everyone in 'real life' and not on a computer screen.  One of the activities I wanted everyone to have a go at during lockdown was the Sand Art.  Only a couple of people had tried it out at home so we tried it today as part of our mindfulness and I am pretty sure that it was a huge success!  There were some amazing creations and if you watch the individual blogs I am going to get everyone to blog their wonderful sand art tomorrow.

Blogging Leaderboard

We decided to set up a blogging challenge.  It officially started on Tuesday 31st August and basically you earn a point for each blog, comment or answer you post on Blogger.  This first round will finish at the end of Monday 6th September and we will start the next round on Tuesday 7th September.  I thought heading into the weekend that we might need a leaderboard set up so you know where you are placed.  Well done to those of you who have made it onto the leaderboard!

Random Acts of Kindness Day!

Yesterday was Random Acts of Kindness Day.  It is a little trickier in lockdown but we had lots of ideas to choose from.  Hollie in our room posted this on her blog.  Well done Hollie for thinking of the other people in your bubble!

Brilliant Bloggers!

In our Google Meet this morning I put the challenge out to the Room 14 students to start blogging about their learning or activities that they were completing in lockdown.  I am very pleased to say that several of the students in Room 14 have taken notice of what I said and already blogged today.  We had Vivienne blogging about Prototec, Taliyah's quote DLO from Mahatma Ghandi, Hollie's quote DLO from Einstein, peanut butter biscuits made by Andre and Finn's times table maintenance.

The quote activity is really interesting. It would be great if everyone tried out this activity.  Taliyah is trying to do one each day and so far she is succeeding!  Remember the links to all of our individual blogs are down the right hand side of this blog. 

Quote of the Day!

Miss Bargent, our Grad Student for this term, came up with this activity that works brilliantly while we are all learning from home.  You select a quote, explain what it means to you, find out about the person the quote belongs to and then share another quote from that person.

Taliyah was the first student in Room 14 to give it a go and we think she has done a wonderful job.

More Yummy Lockdown Baking!

This time it was Finn baking a marble cake for his sister's birthday. You look like you are very confident in the kitchen Finn and the end result looks pretty good😀

The Beginning of our Lockdown Activity Blogs...

Well done Stirling!  Your cookies look very yummy.  Great to see you blogging about your lockdown activities:)

Baking cookies

This week during lock down I decided to make cookies, and we've had to compromise because we didn't have condensed milk so we had to use caramel as an alternative but it tasted the same any way.  Other then that here's a photo of them:

Olympic Traditions

We have completed some research on the Olympic Traditions. Each group presented what they had found out to the class. We now know what happens at the beginning of the Olympics. We aren't sure which parts of these traditions will be carried out this year in Japan due to the restrictions. 

Colour Day

For our playground reward this term we had a Colour Dress Up Day!  We made our whole day about colour and had a great day learning new things. 

The day began with a surprise on each desk - a colourful bookmark and some M & M's.

During maths time there was a selection of times table colour by numbers to complete.  I think Room 14 were very excited to be doing something a bit different for a change.

Next we read about rainbows and learnt that a mnemonic can help you remember things.  We learnt about Roy G Biv and how it helps you to remember the order of the colours in a rainbow.  Room 14 then tried creating their own mnemonics to remember the order of the colours in a rainbow.  Some of these mnemonics have made it onto our blogs.

After lunch we carried out the milk, food colouring and dish liquid science experiment to create explosions of colour. 

 

Super Stars in Room 14

We have just started something new in our class.  It is the Super Star of the Day!  You get to have the trophy on your desk for the day and everyone writes a lovely compliment on your poster that you get to take home.  It is working really well and Room 14 are pretty awesome at giving out compliments.

The Blogging has Begun

We made it our goal for this week to post something on our blogs.  Earlier in the term the students in Room 14 had written poems about themselves following a set format.  This week we made them into a DLO (Digital Learning Object) and, for some of us, learnt how to post something onto our blog for the very first time.  We now hope to post on our blogs at least twice a week and some may post more than that.

Make sure you follow the links down the right hand side of this blog to find all of the students' individual blogs and you can read their poems.  Here is Andre's as an example of what you might find...

The Learning Continues

We feel like we are rolling along quite nicely now.  We are making sure we follow the routines in the classroom and keep thinking about our school values of Care, Share, Learn and Grow.  Lots of different virtues also get discussed as well.  

This week we have continued on our basic facts journey, working hard on times tables, addition and subtraction.  We have visited the library, which is a highlight of the week for quite a few of us and had SportStart and swimming.

Each Friday as part of our buddy session we will be helping them with their spelling word testing.  We did this for the first time this week and it seemed to run quite smoothly.  

We have still been swimming this week, although the air has a definite Autumn feel to it.  The pool closes this Friday so fingers crossed for some nice warm days still.

As you can see from the photos and what you have read in the blog post we are ensuring we are always ready for learning and making an effort to be better than before.

Pyjamas in the Pool!

Well I can certainly say that Room 14's highlight this week was getting to wear pyjamas in the swimming pool as the final lesson.  The water safety lessons this week have been fun as well as very valuable, adding to our knowledge around being safe in the water.

We had our first visit to the library.  We were the first class in the library for the year so we had first pick of the wonderful selection of books we have in our school library.

Our basic facts in maths is rolling along very nicely now, we are well into the routine of it.  We will see improvements in knowledge of times tables and speed of basic addition and subtraction as the year goes on.  

We completed some lovely writing this week about ourselves and about being a good friend.  If you keep an eye on our individual blogs this week you might be lucky enough to see some of this writing.

Please feel free to comment on our class blog so we know you have read it.  

The Week that Was...

 As usual we seemed to fit a lot into our school week.  We started swimming lessons, some days were warmer than others!  The lessons are fun as well as instructional and I know one student was very excited because she learnt how to do backstroke this week.

We completed an activity about Waitangi Day and also the Chinese New Year.  We have created some lovely artwork for our classroom wall which I will share in the next blog.  Some students might also share their artwork on their blog.

Our Circle Time focus was on Moving around the School - we discussed what this should look like and then took some photos to model walking together in an organised way and holding the door open for each other.

Beginning 2021

Welcome back to the new school year.  We have had a very sporty start to the year, with SportStart, swimming and Summer Sport.  We also had the lovely Pauline visit us from the Dangerous Decibels programme to share lots of information and fun experiments about the importance of our ears and our hearing.  

The students in Room 14 are beginning to think about how successful they would like their year to be and are aware they need to focus on the values - Care, Share, Learn and Grow - to help them with their goals.  There will also be a focus on a variety of the Virtues.