Week 3 Term 2

Week 3


Breakers Basketball Student Feedback (Grace)

On Monday, we did basketball with Ben. The first game we did was  Piggy in the middle (Basketball style) the challenge was that we could not move with the ball and you can not throw the ball over the middle person's head that was hard. Next we split up in two groups and played a game sort of like Ball Tiggy but one team had a ball each and the other team didn't. The team with the balls had to tag the other team with no ball. If you got tagged you got the ball. After that we played a game similar but instead of running away from the bball you had to get the ball. The game would end if you did not have a ball then you would have to do 5 push ups.

Star Wars Day - May the 4th be with you ... and Aart's Birthday!

We have a lot of Star wars fans in LC4 and in honouring student voice we are immersing children into some art, writing and reading through this context.  So far, we have run responsive workshops on scale drawings, drawing realistically (learning various sketching techniques) and some knowledge and understanding of the pop art movement and some of the key people involved in it.  We looked at the artist Jim Dine and noticed that his work has lots of expression and isn't 'perfect.'

Writing (New Tool Alert)
BookTrack
Booktrack allows children to add sounds and create a movielike soundtrack to their stories.  We have introduced this into LC4 as a tool to enhance writing.  This means children can publish their stories as an ebook to be read and listened to on various devices, at home and at school etc
The children have reflected that their stories need to have details to be able to build up interesting soundtracks so this is a good provocation for learning about using powerful verbs, adjectives and story structures.
We will have some stories to share next week.

StudyLadder
Reminder:  students all have a school account and there is no need to create new accounts at home. When they use their school account we are able to monitor progress and use the data to help us plan learning.

Why learn statistics?

Basically, it helps us to make a better sense of the world around us!  For example, news articles are filled with statistical data.  The news talks about a 25% change of rain and it links in with science as we delve into questions, analyse and present findings.

Here is a link to an online site that you may like to use at home to help deepen your knowledge and understanding of some aspects of statistics.  There are fun, online games that compliment the workshops the students have been attending this week!

http://www.onlinemathlearning.com/statistics-games.html

Learning Advisory

We have started to explore what accountability, productivity and evidence of learning means to us and how it fits into our world.
We are using our own voice to make connections with these concepts and have come up with solutions for evidencing our learning.

A new reflection tool we are using, to help us recognise when learning is challenging and notice how we get out of the pit is our window model.  We are developing a growing awareness of us as learners and our learning styles and behaviours.

At home you could be having conversations using our shared language.  The question, 'so how are you going to get yourself out of the pit?' may be helpful.

Our Ted Ed Club is building up towards a presentation in a few weeks and a few of our speakers may be presenting at the inaugural GEG New Zealand Student summit.

We have been watching Ted Talks to gain some inspiration and learn about how to effectively communicate an idea we feel is worth spreading.

This Ted talk inspired us, as the man in it was a self taught musician and he was very talented.  We are sharing our favourite talks in a google classroom.  Everyone in the group has a 'Big Ideas' google document to show our learning and we are learning to pitch an idea, give effective feedback and present.

Mother's Day Art
On Friday Jody taught some of the students how to use water colours to paint hydrangeas as part of an effort to celebrate Mother's Day. Some of the painting is shown below:

Responsive Workshops
Here are a few of the workshops students have asked us to run this week:
- sketching (shading) art techniques
- understanding units of time
- using Explain Everything iPad app

Notices:
We have several groups that are working on improving the outside spaces at school for their projects and they are looking for some assistance. If anyone has anything that may be helpful could you please send either Lisa or Reid an email.
The children are looking for:
- Wood for outside art
- Planting pots
- Plants