Thankyou letter to our parents/caregivers

We would like to sincerely thank our LC4 parent community for your support over the year.  You've entrusted us with the huge responsibility of educating and taking care of your child.  We hope that your experience has been the very best, and so too for your child.

We love our jobs and feel fortunate, as we know there are not many people who can honestly state that.    

That's one of many reasons we would like to say that we do not expect Christmas gifts, it's a lovely thought although unnecessary, gestures of cards are warmly appreciated however.  

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday and keep safe.

We're looking forward to seeing you and your child in 2016.

Lisa & Reid

Week 1 & 2 Term 4

Important Notices:

- we need permissions slips back for the upcoming EOTC trips - snorkeling and Goat Island.  Karma is loading payments into MyMonitor

- School athletic sports. We need parents to help supervise our groups.  Please see or email Lisa if you're available on Wednesday 11 November

The focus at school this term is on Effective Communication, this encompasses many things but is concentrated on Teaming and Collaboration; Interpersonal Skills; Personal, Social and Civic Responsibility; and Interactive Communication. This week we have been immersing LC4 in a film making activity, the students have been developing their collaboration skills, storyboarding their films, learning about camera angles and how this affects the impact of a film.

Here the children are celebrating their digital stories that they made by retelling a Maori myth or legend.  We used iMovie to edit our stories, added in audio and titles.  We also explored drawing using kowhaiwhai patterns and did a brief artist study.

The collaboration aspect and timeframes around deadlines meant that children encountered the 'learning pit' a lot and had to work hard on communicating effectively with each other.

On Tuesday, we hosted some Year 9 & 10 students from Hobsonville Point Secondary School to start work on a PE and Technology project they are completing. The first day was about immersing the secondary students into running a PE lesson with LC4 and getting to know each other. Throughout term 4 they are going to develop an app to support the teaching of a PE skill. We are lucky to be the target audience for their project. LC4 was thrilled to be outside playing T-ball, basketball, cricket, soccer and touch rugby and afterwards provided some great feedback for the older students about how to improve their lessons. We'll be using this project as way to build our communication skills around coaching, teamwork, constructive feedback and will look to create our own PE workshops. The sport skills haven't been determined yet but will be based on the expertise that is on offer, LC4 interests and equipment requirements.

Some of our Term 3 projects continue to provide rewards, this week a cricket coach came to school and ran a workshop with some of our students. The students all had a great time learning the cricket skills although it has taken a lot to plan and organise: 
"It was awesome to see how many kids were interested in playing cricket so I can probably get a team together from the school. The challenge was getting everything organised for the workshop like what time he was coming in and whether we were going to do it inside the gym or outside on the court. Next time I would tell Reid and Lisa that he was coming in earlier. It was really fun and I want to keep getting more kids interested and playing cricket."

Outside Garden Area

The area outside LC4 is bursting with colour and is a beautiful spot for us to enjoy our lunch.

We would like to continue exploring growing plants. If you have any spare pots at home or little black pottles for us to grow some seedlings then we greatly appreciate it.

Term 3 Week 8

Where has this term gone?

The last 3 weeks have disappeared in a blur! Everyone now has their project mapped out, so students are busy researching, running experiments, inviting experts to school and some have been out on trips already. We've also had several visits to school with ASB Financial Literacy, Grasshopper Soccer, Chess and of course Mitre 10.

Science and reading:
"Today we learnt about the science behind bread. We discovered that when dormant yeast is mixed with warm water and sugar it creates a chemical reaction, creating carbon dioxide which makes the bread rise!"

 


Student-led workshops:
LC4 students have been taking workshops in LC1 over the last two weeks. Our students have been delivering workshops in dance, maths, sport and culture to showcase their passions and learning. Aart and Ben were first up delivering maths workshops using Lego and Minecraft. They got great feedback from the LC1 students and have even been asked to run their workshops again. Patience, Harrison and Leilani ran workshops in week 8 teaching Kapa Haka, cricket and netball.

"Today I had to run two cricket workshops for LC1. In the first workshop I ran I got ready and then all the LC1 children came in. It was hard to keep all the kids away from the bat because they all wanted to use the bats. When I got to teaching them the grip and the stance as well as doing a drill I was not expecting it to be so hard to control them so instead of letting them do it by themselves I had to do it with them all the way. The second group was even harder but at least I had more of an idea. There was one kid that didn’t want to take part and another kid that didn’t listen to me. I dealt with it by reminding them to stay on the grey line and in the end that was probably the best workshop of the day. I definitely learnt a lot from the experience and it was also a lot of fun".  

ASB Financial Literacy Workshops:
On Monday the year 4 and 5 students attended a workshop provided by the ASB on financial literacy, our year 6 students will get the same workshop before the end of this term. 

Katie wrote: "Today the year fours and fives went in the breakout space and we learnt how to use a credit card and eftpos cards.There are some differences between a credit card and eftpos card. A credit card has the bank's money in it and a eftpos card has your own money in it. Also a credit card when you use the bank’s money,you have to pay it back by the end of the month but if you didn't pay it by the end of the month, you have to give them more money what you owe them". 

Home Reading:

http://wonderopolis.org/wonders

If you're looking for something to read with your children here are some interesting resources to consider. Wonderopolis is a website dedicated to things children are curious or wonder about, with questions like Who invented weekends? or How does bluetooth work? A fantastic site for reading the news is Kiwikidsnews which has news articles written for an audience of children. Another site worth visiting is the Diary of Wimpy Kid Readathon. Jeff Kinney has another book in this fabulous series due out soon and the readathon has a quiz for each title.

During recent weeks our students have made progress on their next round of projects and worked towards several different deadlines with the aid of tools that we have shown them. This supports their dispositional learning and it is pleasing to hear students talk about how they are collaborating, reflecting on why they miss a deadline or celebrate as they've completed a task they've persevered with. We look forward to sharing their celebrations with you during IEMs and when you visit us at other times.

Term 3 Week 5

Digital Age
Immersion to Projects

This week, our main focus has been on having conversations with individual students, to map their projects.  We are shifting from our immersion phase (exploration) into projects (actions).  This is an exciting phase as we take students new passions and interests to a level where they can engage in learning through authentic work that helps develop their dispositions and life-skills.

Important Notice:  Please make sure your child has a school polo or shirt as we are being filmed next Friday!  see below.

We'd like your feedback on our blog please.  Thank you in advance for taking a couple of minutes to fill out the short survey.

There are some processes that underpin this learning design:

• Student voice e.g. what would you like to explore, find out about and create
• What dispositions will this project help us to grow?
• What is the challenge for you?  The new learning...'beyond the googlable'
• What dent will this project have on others?
• Who can we connect with to help support you with this project?  Who in the community can we go to get help?
• What big questions drive this project?  What questions frame up our project that we can go back to to help us decide if this project has been a success and what learning can we revisit if it didn't work out.
• Where does the core basic literacies (literacy & mathematics) fit into the project.  What knowledge, skills and understandings are we developing?

Projects are an opportunity for the children to collaborate, think critically and develop 21C skill sets.

This is the tool we use to map out children's ideas.  It is created through a conversation with a Learning Advisor.

Project Map

Conferences
We have shared a brief summary of the project mapping with you via our google docs so you're aware of the project and can see possibilities to support your child at home (or school).   If you haven't yet received a note you'll have one by the end of next week.

Student Ideas

These are a few of the ideas for projects that have come from conversations:

• Organising a trip to the museum (or bringing in an expert speaker to school) to learn about Ancient Egypt
• Organising a school talent show
• Organising a lego car race competition to teach energy and science concepts
• Designing and building a deck
• Running cross-common sports activities at lunch
• Writing a book to educate others about different cultures
• Scripting then performing a play to teach others about empathy/tolerance around different beliefs
• Inquiries into; cats, eye health, food science, traditional foods, effective film techniques. architecture
• Creating a new school tradition
• Persuading others to think about the implications of high density housing on families life-styles
• Become an expert in the use of the tools in innovation lab to educate others about design

Project Based Learning

A project to inspire others to play cricket has led to a donation
of cricket bats for the school, with plans for coaching
sessions and a game being considered. Thanks Amita from the
Takapuna District Cricket Club.

The Basics Explained

• BIE Overview
• Lisa's Blog Post on PBLs at H.P.P
• Project Foundry Blog

Fitness/Sports

This week everyone has been participating in daily fitness and our opt in additional fitness of 'run club' will be on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  We have has Sharyn running sports sessions as part of the specialist program on a Thursday and today the students have had soccer taster sessions with Grasshopper Soccer.  During the week we also had an expert in to take the students for karate and it was fantastic to see 15 students try it out!

Brain Breaks

Our students can spend a reasonable amount of time on devices during the day so we have regular 'brain breaks.'  This could be going for a quick run, playing and energizing game or simply going out for a quick walk.

Tip for home: 45 mins physical play before  =  20 mins screen time

Special Event

Next Friday (28th August) the Westgate Mitre 10 team will be coming in to work with some of our LC4 students to build, plant out planter boxes and our school vege garden.  They are kindly donating all tools, seeds and plants plus providing us with on-going garden support.

This has happened as a result of Grace's, Patience and Owen's 'beautify our space' garden project.  What a great example of what students can achieve!

StickyTV have heard about the partnership between our school and Mitre10 and are coming in to film this amazing project.

The children involved will be those who have consistently shown us they can manage their relationships and learning well.  We will be sending home special permission slips for media release if they get chosen.

Can all LC4 students wear a school polo or shirt please.  

You can order the uniform online from The Uniform Shoppe and the sample sizes are available to try on at the primary school.  See Karma to organise a fit.  They can then get delivered to your home address or school.

How to Be an Explorer of the World

Zarlia shows us what a day of foraging can do - she has created a very cool sensory poster for students to explore through touch.

Session with Constable Lorena

On Friday, Constable Lorena came in to speak to our children about the importance of bike and walking safely around our busy community.  The children were very engaged in the discussion and had lots of sensible ideas for keeping themselves safe.

Term 3, Week 3

Immersion

Please have a look at our planning site to see the full workshops that we have run this week.

We have started off the week by inquiring into shapes, geometry and how we see mathematical patterns all around us.

We have explored tessellated patterns and the artist Escher who created art pieces that had us really interested in the illusions and use of positive and negative.

To help us grow our knowledge and understanding we have tapped into Studyladder and Khan academy as well as attending workshops to boost our thinking.  We used some assessment data to help us reflect on our strengths, gaps and needs to find a course that would be of the best use to us.

Have a look at the planner to find our support links that we use to reinforce and extend thinking.

Exploring Fibonacci number patterns and making connections to the magic of mathematics in nature!

Fibonacci Number Pattern
0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13...

Provocation Movie Shared

Exploring tessellating patterns

We were asked to manage our time and have a completed tessellating pattern art work by the end of Monday. Dispositionally, this meant we had to self manage and also collaborate effectively with others.  We also had to problem solve throughout the day when we got 'stuck' or 'in the learning pit.' Lots of the immersion this week has been based on the children problem-solving and having to think about growing resilience.  

Our student led workshops are continuing.  Amy ran an origami workshop, Mackenzie ran a musical theatre workshop & Maia took a Minecraft workshop.

In order to run a workshop:
All students have to complete a lesson planner, showing thought out learning goals, plan and organise resources whilst thinking about the sequence of their lesson.  They then reflect on what went well and what they would do differently.  It's a great opportunity to share our passions and develop leadership skills.

Amy's workshop

Rulers, pencils, compasses and protractors!

Can you please check that your child has the above equipment as we are using these tools as a part of our maths learning.

The weather is warming up and we have been noticing when our energy is sometimes lacking during the day.  The students are able to plan into their day a brain break and go for a run around to recharge.  Lisa is also starting up our regular run club. We will be plotting the distances and also exploring times.   We have also reflected that we need more P.E in our week so some students are going to run student lead sports skills and Lisa & Reid will be taking us for some games.

Today our reading group learnt how to make hokey pokey. We studied the recipe and discussed the vocabulary in the text. We worked out how we would grease, dissolve and froth our ingredients.

Some of our first attempts burnt, so second time around we kept the temperature of the elements much lower and the result was fantastic; crunchy, melt in your mouth hokey pokey!

We then linked this cooking to what we have learnt about adding a base such as baking soda to another element. We discussed baking soda as a rising agent, releasing bubbles and carbon to make our mixture rise and froth.

Term 3, Week 2

This week we have initiated a student-led workshop immersion. Some LC4 students have run workshops before but many have not. We started this immersion by introducing our learners to three different graphic organisers and listing all of our passions, interests and loves. Then Lisa introduced us to a way that we could organise these ideas into what we could teach, what trips could we organise and what experts could we bring into our school.

Some examples of what the students could teach included:
Soccer skills, Te Reo, shading, Cuboro, Netball, Samoan language

Cooking, making pizza, playing an instrument, coding

Places we could visit:
Forests, zoo, air force base, SPCA, skim boarding at the beach, Disney Land, farm, ballet, kayaking, shopping, beauty salon

Once we completed all our brainstorming and organising we tried to write a lesson plan for the workshop. Many of the students found this more difficult than they imagined it would

Thoughts the students shared:
"I don't know what to write"
"I thought I knew lots about this subject"
"I don't know which idea to choose"
"I'm finding it hard to plan the steps but I'm not sure what the other steps will be"

As the week has progressed students have conducted research into their proposed workshops and have worked in small groups to provide and receive feedback and feedforward. We purposefully sought to put them with peers they don't ordinarily work with and they continue to find this an interesting experience.

Our next step is to help the students write detailed workshop plans that include all the necessary steps, in the right order and using the correct language. Once this is completed we will assist the children in building the confidence and skills to deliver their workshop, for some that will be very soon and others may take longer.

On Friday, Jack N and Grace both ran their workshops with 2 students from LC4 and 2 visiting students from Japan, they focussed on passing a basketball and hip hop dancing . Both workshops were enjoyed by all who attended and it will be great to see more students run their own in the future.

Hobsonville Point Market Day and Music Performances
On Wednesday the whole school went to the secondary school to visit the markets and watch several musical performances. Grace was part of the girls Pop Band with LC3 students and did a magnificent job performing in front of several hundred spectators, LC 4 students were full of praise for her voice and courage.

Fleur Beale Author Visit
A group of LC4 students were invited to return to the high school on Thursday for an author's visit. Fleur has authored many books http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/bealefleur.html
"Yesterday a group of 8 people went to the high school to meet an author called Fleur Beale. She started by telling us about herself and that she doesn’t like to do exciting things but likes to write about them. She then read us some of her book called Slide the Corner. Its about a  man who wants to become a race car driver but his parents don’t think it’s a good idea.

She gave us heaps of tips and told us where she got her inspiration from and I really enjoyed it".

The students shared that Fleur often will do research for her novels, if her main character is a racing car driver she will speak to racing car drivers. This is an aspect of writing we hadn't touched on but will have to try this in our creative writing in the future.

Term. 3, week 1

Teachers Reflection

Sitting at a brunch on the last day of holidays (amongst a few teachers) I reflected that the decision Reid and I made about starting the term from a place of curiosity, questioning and fun with a strong technology and science lens was a good one.
So often, teachers will design leaning away from the children without honouring the children's interests and stick to a predetermined long term plan which adds anxiety to everyone as teachers have to work hard to 'control' children who may not be interested.
Also, it brings the dimension of having to cover all the subjects which adds pressure to the day.  We wanted to start from an open ended place and in listening to the questions already flowing before school even starts we are feeling confident that this immersion and start to the term is successful.
The children came to school and spread over tables were various models and provocations with a science theme.  The children were excited and many started to pick things up and explore.  

There was lots of natural questioning and curiosity popping up.  As learning advisors, it is our role to support and challenge the children to create driving questions and guide them to information to help them learn and discover.  This was a great start to the term.

'I think RNA is a micro part of DNA'. It has 'ribs in it so maybe it is to do with the body?'
'Is this thing even on?'
'I think it measures weather'
'Which one is heaviest?'
'Oh cool, it's magnetic.'
'Wait, what's this?? Oh cool!! It's the digestive system?'

From there we introduced the model of sharing and teaching others so the children were placed into groups to help them to develop skills in working with new and different people.  Their challenge is to make a short explanation video sharing their new learning about the science concept that was introduced to them and apply this new learning.

A few of the technology tools that we explored as vehicles for helping to transfer this new knowledge are:
Explain Everything
iMovie
Avatars
Screencast
YouTube editor

We also explored 'what makes a good instructional video' and co-constructed a criteria template to use a framework to help us make an interesting and effective video. During the week the students shared their progress and continued the practice of giving thoughtful, specific and helpful feedback.

One of the difficulties the children encountered throughout the week was managing disagreements, they found that this was harder when they collaborated with new or different people. They have shared that sometimes there would be more than one leader in their group, no one could agree on the best way forward or compromises weren't possible. This will provide us with many possible learning experiences to introduce to them.

By the end of the week all groups had undertaken much research and had made significant strides towards completing their video. It will be exciting to see what these videos look like when they are completed.