Term 3 Contract

The children are busy organising their own timetables this term. They have a set number of tasks to complete and a blank timetable in which to do them. They do have to see me at set times for Reading and Maths but can manage their other activities themselves. This is a great chance for children to practice independence and time management skills.
Here they are with their timetables in front of them. Some children are doing poem reciting, handwriting, spelling learning, writing tasks.

Miss Walpole - Guest teacher for the morning

Miss Walpole is leading the class this morning. She earned this privilege as she displays great diligence in class. Here she is leading the class for a spelling activity. She then went on to review the criteria for instruction writing. I am impressed by her behaviour management - look at the focussed students.

Te Reo Maori

We have been learning some more Maori phrases.
Do you know what the children are saying?

Boat Building Challenge

Today we completed a boat building challenge.

We had to build a boat that could be used on a voyage.
It needed to:-
float for 2 minutes
hold 10 100 blocks
have a space for storage and shelter
be no larger than an A3 piece of paper.

There was a lot of cooperating, revising, problem solving, testing, designing, compromise and creativity taking place in our room.

Floating and Sinking Experiments

How's this for exciting learning?

It's great when kids jump for joy discovering new things.
We have been predicting which items will float and sink. Harriet was jumping for joy every time her prediction came true.

Incredible writers

We are just sitting down to write a story about an adventure on a vaka. I am creating a word bank for their writing. I asked for some words that they might need. This is what they suggested

adventurous
lightning
tsunami
courageous
overboard

I am so impressed with how more complex their vocab has become. they want their writing to be specific.
At the beginning of the year the suggestions would have been
water
sea
boat

What a great class.

Tawhiao's Pepeha

Tawhiao brought in his Pepeha to show the class. He was very proud of his whanau and it created great discussion about where we are from. What an awesome way to present it too.