Soccer and Netball

The children's soccer and netball skills have also shown improvement the term. Thy can now play a proper game of soccer and shoot goals in netball. They thoroughly enjoy both soccer and netball, it's always nice to see their skills outside of the classroom. Take a look below:

 

Room 5 Olympics Projects

Well done to the huge effort the children put into their Olympics assignments! I was very impressed with the ideas and research that went into them. Apologies to the children who I didn't manage to get a photo with their awesome projects and those who did PowerPoint presentations. There will be special awards at our Team 2 assembly at the end of the term for those children who tried their best and produced something for project day. Great job!

                                    

                               N

Author Visit

        

At the beginning of Term 3, the children had a real live author visit them and talk to them about his job and how to become a published author. He showed them some stories he had written and shared how he came up with his awesome ideas. The children were super engaged and came away inspired by his work. We began writing narratives that week and their stories were incredible! 

Room 5 Art Projects

Throughout Term 2, our Art topic has been a huge hit with the students. I don't think there has been one complaint yet about the class discussions of famous artists, the awesome cross class rotation of new skills from various teachers in Team 2 or the application of various artists techniques into their own art. They have loved every second of our Topic this term which has made me really enjoy teaching it.

To round up our awesome Term, the children were set an at home art project - a list of things they could choose to do, whether it was 1 thing or more. Below is a photo video of each child's project that they completed at home and presented to the class. I was blown away with the high standard and imagination put into each project - I am so impressed with each and every child who gave the project a go! Well done Room 5 :)

Emir also created a volcano as his art project, and let it explode upon sharing day. Watch this awesome moment below!

We also had some amazing projects bought in today from children who were sick on project day. What a great effort guys! I am so impressed, well done. See their hard work below:

Multiplication

We have been learning all the different strategies around how to solve a multiplication problem. The early multiplication lessons are very different to what they used to be - there is no rote learning of the "times tables". It is all about groups, skip counting, repeated addition, forming an equation and being able to explain and talk about their strategies and answers. There are many different strategies to solve the same problem and all are correct at varying levels.

Below are some photos of one group working with me to solve a problem:

Zara and Kitty went through a quick problem together (with a bit of prompting from me at times) and helped each other work out how many there were altogether using various strategies. This video may help you and your child at home too :)

Pacific Mamma Art Trip

What a fantastic day we had on the school trip to the Pacific Art Centre! A huge thank you to all parents who gave up their time to help us. We could not go on these amazing school trips without you. I have created a video with all the photos taken on the day - watch and enjoy!!

Our topic of "visual art" this term

Over the past term, we have had the topic "visual art". In Room 5, we have been looking at famous artists. So far we have studied Picasso and Kandinsky - ask your child what they know about these two artists, you may be surprised at how much they have picked up. The children are fascinated with these artists and the types of art they have created. As a class, we did a self portrait inspired by Picasso's interpretation of faces and we have recently used paint and pastels to create beautiful trees, inspired by Kandinkys famous circles. Come in to class and have a look at the children's amazing art, inspired by these famous artists! Below is a snapshot of Room 5's version of Kandinksys circles turned into amazing trees.

Soccer with Shane

Every fortnight, the children have a soccer lesson with Shane.

They have come so far in a term and half - most of them can confidently dribble and pass a ball and participate in a real soccer game.

Here is a short video of a fun warmup Shane uses to enhance their dribbling skills.

Maths - Rounding to the nearest 10

This term we have started off Maths with a new strategy - rounding to the nearest 10. If you have been to one of our parent math evenings, you will know that a strategy is the way the students work out a problem and knowledge is something they will know automatically (such as skip counting and basic facts) which can assist their use of strategy. As it is only Week 2 of the term, we have only spent 2 weeks learning and discussing this strategy. Below are some photos of the children beginning their use of the strategy.

Below is what I think to be a super cute video of Xaviar explaining rounding to the nearest 10 strategy to Isabella. It is often helpful for all involved, including the teacher, to get the students into pairs and watch as they guide one another through a problem. It is proven that students learn best off one another and they often put things into a different perspective than a teacher has done. I provide the questioning behind the strategy to ensure that both parties understand what they are doing.

This video was taken right after Xaviar had discovered he did potentially understand the new strategy and was more than happy to help his friend through it too. As shown at the end of the video, they needed prompting with the final task but definitely almost there!

Autumn Poems

As part of our writing topic this week, we looked at Autumn and the five senses. To begin our writing, we went outside and experienced Autumn. We looked carefully at the changes that had been made around our school compared to Summer and used our five senses to notice different changes. We brainstormed some adjectives that could describe these changes and used similes to compare them. Our Autumn poems turned out to be very well written and well thought out and the children were very engaged and excited about this writing topic. You are welcome to view their published work on our writing wall in Room 5.

 

Duffy books

The kids loved getting their Duffy books, donated by Mainfreight Air and Ocean Auckland. 

Easter crafts

We had so much fun doing Easter activities last Thursday, while excitedly anticipating a visit from the Easter bunny in the weekend.