Celebrating people in our classroom

Here are some examples of fantastic learning from members of Room 3. We like to think that learning can happen at any time and in any place, so all of this did not happen in the classroom but their skills and knowledge has all come back to us:

Anika and Summer

This is a stop-motion movie that Summer and Anika made in the school holidays. We are inspired and want to try this in class. They can be our experts!

Rachel's Kowhaiwhai Art

My painting is about my family and how they make me feel. It is a kowhaiwhai piece of art. I got to go to Featherston School, on a REAP course, and we got to learn about kowhaiwhai and create our own.

Modern Learning Environments

We thought you might like a little window into how our modern classroom operates during the day. Research tells us that students are more engaged in their learning when they get to 'drive' it with good support from their teachers and their families.

"When I have my headphones on I have music playing and blocks out the other noise. It helps me to concentrate on my work." Asha

"I like that we can do stories together on the computers (shared google doc). It makes it easier." - Rachel
"I like working together and how plan our day and choose what we do. If I want to finish something I can do it at another time." - Eva
"I can plan my own day and I can choose when to do my reading, writing and maths. I like writing the best." - Ella

Ollie, Phoebe and Winky working on a reading task together.
"I am painting a butterfly to put on the lake on the wall, that we did. We read a story about a frog on the lake and we thought it would be cool to make our own lake." - Ollie

This maths group planned (themselves) to met up at this time and work collaboratively on a task set for them. They are using their computers to record their work and using materials and discussing with each other.
"I just like it that I have someone to work with and that helps me to work it out." - Charlie

Maths with Room 6

Click the link here to see the post on the Room 6 blog about our collaborative Maths session today on Shape. All of the students have been asked to do a little follow up project and to post what they have done on their blogs, so don't forget to check those out too!

Students - here's the information you needed from today to do your follow up project:

W.A.L.T communicate the language of shape. Especially translations, reflections and rotations with plane shapes.

We will know we can do this when:

in every box I have at least 1 ½ arrow

my patterns will show reflection

my pattern might rotate

it’s all repetitive

Reflection: How many different ways could it work? What were the things we needed to do to work this out? Who found this easy and could do it again? Who still needs some help with this? Make up success criteria so we know if we’ve done this correctly.

Homework: Make your own frieze with geometric shapes and repeated colours and display it on your blog. Make sure you write a blurb about what we are learning about and include 3 pieces of ‘shape’ language in your blurb.

and just because I know you loved it so much...here's Transformation Style for you again:

Fat and Colour

Today in class we have performed a Science experiment all together, so we could get our heads around what we need to do for our own Science Inquiries for Science Fair.

Fat and Colour

Statement of Purpose:

We want to find out how soap affects fat. We want to know this so we know how dish-washing products work.

Hypothesis:

We think that soap works by dissolving fat. We think that because when Mrs Rutene washes the bacon pan at home the fat doesn’t move when she puts water on it but when she use dish-washing liquid it breaks the fat up.
Here are some other hypotheses:

Fair Testing:

We used two metal trays and the same raw milk in both the trays as the fat. We also used the same food colouring in both trays. This made our test fair because all of the conditions were the same except for the water/dish-washing liquid.

Equipment:

Tray

Food colouring

Milk - wholemilk not low fat

Dish-washing Liquid

Procedure:

1. Get two metal trays and fill both with whole milk.

2. Add 3 drops of food colouring to different places in each tray.

3. In the first tray put drops of water on top of the food colouring. 

4. In the second tray put drops of dish-washing liquid on top of the food colouring.

5. Watch and record the results.

Results:

In the tray that had water added: nothing much happened except maybe it spread the colour out slightly. We could still see the fat sitting in the milk.

In the tray that had dish-washing liquid: the colours spread out which showed the fat was being spread out and we couldn’t see the fat in the milk anymore. The colors spread out like a wave and faded/mixed into each other.

Conclusion:

The experiment proved my hypothesis was incorrect because the fat didn’t dissolve, but was correct because it broke the fat up.

Discussion:

This investigation could be extended to trial more than water or dish-washing liquid to see if anything else is more effective at removing fat. It could also be extended by trialling different types of fat to see if some are easier to remove than others.

Writing together...

...leading on from yesterday's collaborative maths lesson (with R6). We joined up with them again today for writing. Check out their post and photos on the Room 6 blog.
Also check out the complex sentences we came up with on each of the student's blogs. Your challenge is to see if you can identify the Independent Clause, the Conjunction, and the Dependent Clause, in each of their sentences.

Welcome back to a new term!

Here's a little Welcome Back tune from 2004 - yep this song is older than most of you Room 3ers ;)

We've started the term with focus and can-do attitudes. We're really hitting our stride now and showing what self-motivated learners we can be. For the past two days we've used planners to decide what our day is going to look like. We need to make sure we get all of the set tasks on Google Classroom done this week (whether in class or as homework) plus see our teacher in our learning groups. We have been giving this style of learning the thumbs up!

Today, we got to collaborate with Room 6 for Maths. We all joined up in the Hall for some problem solving work. We still don't think we've solved the problem but we sure know a bit more about squares now! Why don't you ask us at home about it.

Thanks for a great term Room 3

What a great end of term we had in Room 3. We talked about Matariki and made stars with Matariki poems on the back (which are now hanging in the classroom). We shared news. We celebrated our best writing on our blogs and watched our movie, which wrapped up our class read. Oh don't forget this:

Have a great holiday everyone!