Sharing our holiday memories with the class

We are working hard to speak clearly in front of an audience and share our ideas confidently. Everyone has had a turn to tell us about something they did or something that happened to them in the holidays. It has been exciting to hear ALL the different things people have done. Our work on asking good questions has paid off because the questions about people's holidays have given us more valuable information when they have been answered.

Anzac research and activities

Last week, Room 5 had a chance to see Daniel's families medals, Phoebe's great grandad's medals and pocket watch from the war and Mrs Field's family's medals. Another class made a field of remembrance outside our room with crosses and the names of soldiers and nurses who died at Gallipoli. they were from Havelock North.  We made (and ate!) Anzac biscuits by following a recipe and created their own poppies by watching a video for instructions. We read about Gallipoli and completed a reading comprehension task. We finished the week by attending the combined schools Anzac service in the Havelock domain. It was fantastic (and so were our class!).

Inquiry into our role as a citizen in our different communities.

In Room 5, we have been finding out about different communities and deciding which ones we belong to. Many of us belong to lots of different ones, like our family, school, sports club, dancing club, and church group. We filled in an oval shaped graphic organiser to show all the different groups we belong to.

We found out what makes a good citizen and what I do to make it easier to fit into my different communities. We found that many qualities are needed for all groups. We made a life sized collage of a good citizen. It is HUGE! We labelled it with qualities of a good citizen.

After camp the year 4 students showed the Year 3s  all the photos of what they did and decided which ones required teamwork and what ones they did on their own. They created questions using the question dice. It was an interesting discussion to find out how many can make up a team for teamwork to happen.

Mr Bloomer worked through the problems a community faces in a natural disaster like Cyclone Pam. We filled in a cause and effect graphic organiser to show what happens in a cyclone. We decided to take action by creating shoe box rescue /relief packages for the families in Vanuatu. Many suggestions were made for what would be needed in their situation. We talked to Tori's Mum who was in the paper. She was part of Gemco's relief aid team sending supplies to Vanuatu. We collected boxes of items that have been sent away to Vanuatu to help.

Tori showed us photos of where her family stayed in Vanuatu in February and photos of the SAME places after the cyclone had hit! Wow! What a mess! The class had lots of questions as a result of this.

We have decided to take action by helping out at Stoney Creek Ranch by providing service to the community. We used the question matrix to help us form good questions. We use question cubes to help us too. We used multiple circles in a Venn diagram to show who in our community has qualities in common. Our class still have lots of questions to find answers to, so term 2 will be busy!

Measuring in Room 5

We began our Maths with measuring in non standard units and progressed into using rulers ( standard units of measurement). These are some of the items we chose to measure. 

What we do in our reading time

Some of our reading time is looking at a big book where we predict the story, discuss language features and look at summarising, clarifying or asking questions. Other things we do are guided reading with the teacher when we discuss a text in depth and look at features of it over a week. When we are not with the teacher, we read on our own, use puppets, listen to stories, make words with the game Upwords, play bananagrams and use board games. There are follow up activities to do with the text sometimes too.

Class Treaty

TerfhughgfhgljgIn our class we agree to follow a simple set of rules that help us get along, have ownership of our learning and social responsibility at school. This means we need to be independent and also work together as partners in our learning. We found out a little about the Treaty of Waitangi at the start of the year and learned that lots of Chiefs and British people signed that treaty too. Ours is displayed in the classroom. It was only made and signed in 2015 not 1840, like the original one.

Farewells at the end of term one to Charlotte and Bruno

Room 5 had a fabulous shared lunch on the last day of term for Charlotte who is going to Darwin, Australia, for the rest of the year and for Bruno, who is going to Hereworth. We will miss two of our lovely Year 4's but we know they will keep in touch. Thank you to all the parents who shared such delicious and healthy (well, mostly healthy!) food for lunch.

The class watch part of a movie, Marmaduke  - the funniest dog around and did an AMAZING clean up job in the afternoon. All the Maths equipment is sorted, desks and tabled are cleaned and tote trays are tidied! Have a great holiday with your family.