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.