Room 3
Quote of the Term - "Change cannot be avoided. Change provides the opportunity for innovation. It gives you the chance to demonstrate your creativity." -Keshavan Nair, Author and Professor
Tuesday 28 April 2015
Monday 27 April 2015
Pages and Signing up
Have you seen our pages? Click on the link to the right to find detailed information about maths stages.
Also......have you entered your email address in the box to ensure you receive updates when they are posted?
Also......have you entered your email address in the box to ensure you receive updates when they are posted?
Friday 24 April 2015
TERM 2
Welcome back everyone! Hope you've all had a refreshing holiday and are ready for new learning.
We have another busy term ahead. An outline of our term activities follows.
Topics:
ANZAC commemorations:
Finalising our study of ANZAC, including poppy art. Photos to follow! They are looking stunning. The special assembly on Friday was a moving ceremony to help the children consolidate their learning on this topic. Many thanks to Sophia and Brad who bravely and competently read excerpts from a book we read in class about Dawn Parades and the significance of poppies. Well done! We felt very proud.
Is this a PLANT?!!
Cycle of Life:
We will investigate two broad topics that focus on plants and mini beasts. It is important to activate our Prior Knowledge, so we've begun this unit by considering the question "What is a Plant?" and have generated some quality questions to decide on what we would like to learn. Ask your children about the Q-Matrix.
Matariki:
Linking nicely in with the Cycle of Life is Matariki. Learn more here. We will learn about Matariki celebrations, set up a Harvest Table, share a hangi and a marae visit. There will also be Dance performances, craft activities, story telling etc.
Musical Production:
This year our celebration is based on the Cycle of Life and is entitled "Mandy's Garden". We will be practicing hard each Thursday. Our girls and boys will be working separately; girls with girls from Room 4 and boys with boys from Room 4. The show will be brilliant as usual and you can see it on Tuesday 30 June.
Literacy:
Writing: Our school-wide focus is Explanation writing. We will learn how to explain a concept or idea. We will continue to write personal experience stories, and poems and also write a report about a plant or mini beast studied. We are learning to use word find resources such as the Spell-Write book and dictionaries. This book lists, alphabetically, common words used by children. As children advance or require more topic specific words, they will learn to use dictionaries. They will also learn to use a thesaurus to find more interesting synonyms to make writing more interesting. Currently, we are learning to use a variety of sentence starters.
Reading: It is important for children to have an in-depth understanding and willingness to use 'decoding strategies'. These are the things good readers do without thinking about it as they encounter word problems - e.g. re-read, read on, look at the pictures, word chunk, sound out or if all else fails - ask someone. This is not cheating! They are important problem solving strategies children must use when facing challenges at word level. Asking children to keep trying without strategies to enable this is not fair. Please encourage children to use them.
A continued focus on Activating Prior Knowledge is important as this comprehension strategy allows children to gain more from what they read. Prior to reading, children discuss their knowledge of the topic they are about to read about. Please encourage discussions prior to reading, during reading, and after reading in order to assist your child's understanding. This is crucial. We will also work on Making Inferences. The Cycle of Life study lends itself well to working with Non-Fiction texts and we will learn about the structure of non-fiction books and articles.
Maths:
Our focus this term is to articulate our thinking. Discussion is important to learning .....more details on this later!
Here's to a GREAT term!
We have another busy term ahead. An outline of our term activities follows.
Topics:
ANZAC commemorations:
Finalising our study of ANZAC, including poppy art. Photos to follow! They are looking stunning. The special assembly on Friday was a moving ceremony to help the children consolidate their learning on this topic. Many thanks to Sophia and Brad who bravely and competently read excerpts from a book we read in class about Dawn Parades and the significance of poppies. Well done! We felt very proud.
Cycle of Life:
We will investigate two broad topics that focus on plants and mini beasts. It is important to activate our Prior Knowledge, so we've begun this unit by considering the question "What is a Plant?" and have generated some quality questions to decide on what we would like to learn. Ask your children about the Q-Matrix.
Matariki:
Linking nicely in with the Cycle of Life is Matariki. Learn more here. We will learn about Matariki celebrations, set up a Harvest Table, share a hangi and a marae visit. There will also be Dance performances, craft activities, story telling etc.
Musical Production:
This year our celebration is based on the Cycle of Life and is entitled "Mandy's Garden". We will be practicing hard each Thursday. Our girls and boys will be working separately; girls with girls from Room 4 and boys with boys from Room 4. The show will be brilliant as usual and you can see it on Tuesday 30 June.
Literacy:
Writing: Our school-wide focus is Explanation writing. We will learn how to explain a concept or idea. We will continue to write personal experience stories, and poems and also write a report about a plant or mini beast studied. We are learning to use word find resources such as the Spell-Write book and dictionaries. This book lists, alphabetically, common words used by children. As children advance or require more topic specific words, they will learn to use dictionaries. They will also learn to use a thesaurus to find more interesting synonyms to make writing more interesting. Currently, we are learning to use a variety of sentence starters.
Reading: It is important for children to have an in-depth understanding and willingness to use 'decoding strategies'. These are the things good readers do without thinking about it as they encounter word problems - e.g. re-read, read on, look at the pictures, word chunk, sound out or if all else fails - ask someone. This is not cheating! They are important problem solving strategies children must use when facing challenges at word level. Asking children to keep trying without strategies to enable this is not fair. Please encourage children to use them.
A continued focus on Activating Prior Knowledge is important as this comprehension strategy allows children to gain more from what they read. Prior to reading, children discuss their knowledge of the topic they are about to read about. Please encourage discussions prior to reading, during reading, and after reading in order to assist your child's understanding. This is crucial. We will also work on Making Inferences. The Cycle of Life study lends itself well to working with Non-Fiction texts and we will learn about the structure of non-fiction books and articles.
Maths:
Our focus this term is to articulate our thinking. Discussion is important to learning .....more details on this later!
Here's to a GREAT term!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)