Enjoy!
Been a while since this has been updated, but that doesn't mean learning has stopped in Room 19!
I've been focusing mainly on the other blog - the one that the children write in. And in fact, there are now two. Room 19 has a blog that is all about whatever we're up to in class, hopefully with a focus more on our topic eventually (once children get their head around just using the blog). The other one I just started up today will be solely for children's writing, and each child will have an opportunity every week (that's the plan, anyway) to do their writing straight into the blog instead of into their writing books.
The blogs can be found here:
Room 19 - Nest of Learning
Nest 19's Writing
We hope you enjoy our blogs! Please also sign up for a blogger account, or use your gmail account to sign in, and leave us comments on our blog. The kids would love to have your feedback.
Also don't forget our class wiki, which I'm currently in the process of updating for this term's topic.
Room 19's wiki
Thanks for dropping by!
We're going to do a real push for topic this week and hopefully get our posters finished by the end of the week so we can present them on Friday.
We've finished our Tapa prints. I'm going to get them framed and take photos to put up on our Wikispace.
As part of our ICT drive, I've also decided to make a blog that will be solely for the children to update and manage (with my help). I will be encouraging the children to take photos of what they're up to during class time, and hope to give them a little time every week to ge some journal entries together with their photos. We may even get savvy enough to make a video or two and put them up (eventually). Small steps. I will be keeping an eye and making sure that only those children whose parents gave permission for their photos to be on a class blog have their photos up there. I will be talking to the children also about their being a first-name-only policy when using the Internet. Or maybe they could all come up with aliases? Wouldn't that be fun!
At the end of this week I won't be sending home a book - but please do keep up with the reading during the holidays, even if it's you reading them a bedtime story for 15 minutes every night.
Oh, and to give fair warning - next term, in Week 1, Room 19 will be hosting the school assembly. We'll be showing our Tapa prints and maybe even one or two topic presentations, depending on how well they go.
What has happened in the meantime? Easter certainly did, and the kids wrote letters to the Easter Bunny as part of our letter writing for written language. The short week after Easter I did a lot of running records (reading tests) on the children, both individual and whole class, and so they were fantastic doing their independent work. They wrote letters, did reading, and kept themselves quietly busy.
We read another Book Awards book at the library on Friday and it seemed to go down quite well. There have been a few overdue notices go home recently, so please remember to bring those overdue books back.
I know that I was slack in giving out reading on Friday, but with the short week and everything else, it sort of didn't happen. Then today I think I had the most kids I've ever had NOT turn up with a book bag. The reading is all set for the week, so I hope to see more book bags tomorrow as people bounce back from their weekend.
Topic is going... slowly. We didn't get a chance to do much last week, so we're going to do a bit of a catch up this week and hopefully get some good headway on it. Tomorrow the kids are going to find out that they'll need to present their topic findings in poster form to show the class! We'll see how they take it. :-)
So for now, ciao!
We've made more headway on the tapa patterns. The kids are starting to come to grips with how tapa patterns work and have made some really beautiful practice sheets.
The kids haven't so far made any further progress on their research topic - we were somewhat thwarted today by the computers being down, and I had wanted to cycle some kids through to search for things on the Net. Instead we did our tapa patterns and then moved the classroom around. The kids got to choose where they would sit, with a few little criteria (the mat remaining where it was, clear path to the cloakbay and no one with their back to the board). They did very well and we'll see how these new self-chosen groups work together.
In the afternoon we learned about Scottish Country Dancing. It involved me getting dressed in my Scottish kit and the kids got to learn two dances. We all had a lot of fun. In fact, as I sit here typing I've still got my kilt and ghillies on!
I hope you all have a fantastic weekend and we'll see you next week.
In other exciting news, I had an ICT meeting the other day and we looked at using wikispaces. I've set up a class wikispace, with the intention that eventually the children themselves will have pages on the wikispace that they can update.
Don't know what a wiki is? Check out www.wikispaces.com and find out. Our class wikispace is at http://npsroom19.wikispaces.com. There isn't much there yet, but there will be. I'll keep using the livejournal as a diary of what's going on, but for resources and display, the wikispace works much better.
So keep an eye on both these spaces for futher exciting updates!
Tomorrow (Thursday) the children of Room 19 will be doing their Listening PAT. It'll be the first time they will do a PAT, and at Year 3 it's the only one they do. When they reach Year 4 they'll do the Math, Reading and Listening ones.
And, as always, swimming is on Friday. I have three groups for swimming, so anyone who can come in and help out is appreciated. It's from 9.00 to around 9.45. Thanks!
Oh, and one last note - Keep up that fantastic reading! It's so good to see so many children doing nightly reading with a parent, grandparent, aunty, uncle or older sibling every night. Yay!
The kids were sorted into three groups this morning for swimming, so I now have them ability grouped. If you ever want to come in and help with swimming, that's perfectly fine and the answer is always YES. Most emphatically. The more eyes on the kids in the water the better, and it also spreads my load a little.
We had a packed day today, and I hope not too many children got home with massive headaches. I know I have one - just from all the sun and heat! We spent a great deal of our time outside today, and our "quiet time" after the Sports Night practice was probably one of the more peaceful 20 minutes we've all had in class. We all just rehydrated ourselves and sat back for a moment, reading and listening to music. The rest of the day was hectic, though.
That's part of the reason we didn't get around to swapping books for the weekend! So please, this weekend, it's either re-reading their book from Thursday a few times, or reading their own books. Most children got books out of the library today and have taken them home in their book bags. These (and public library books) do count as home reading so please record them in their Home Reading book.
Oh, and if anyone would ever like to take Stratus home for the weekend, please let me know. I'm not offering it to the kids in general, because I don't want them pressuring and pestering their parents to please have Stratus for the weekend, but the offer is there. He's low maintenance, but he is noisy. He gets seed, loves some fresh apple or other fruit or vege (just not avocado), needs clean water, and gets covered at night. Once he's covered, he goes to sleep pretty quickly and remains quiet while he's covered.
We just got started on working in our math groups today, and the kids even helped name them. We have the Kiwi, Tui and Pukeko groups. Right now we're doing addition and subtraction, starting mainly with addition, so you can reinforce this at home by helping to teach your kids their basic facts to 10, then to 20. If they're already pretty clued up on those, try basic facts to 50 and even 100!
We're also looking at getting into the real research and individual learning part of our cultures topic. I'll be sending home a Home Learning sheet tomorrow where the kids need to (with your help) fill out where they were born, what languages they can speak, and where their family is from. Down the bottom is also a space for them to write which culture they're interested in learning more about. This will come home in an old recylced "homework" book that they all got given in their desks at the start of the year. I'll use these infrequently to send home little bits and pieces that they need family assistance to answer. When they all come back we'll put some pins in our new world map showing where everyone is from.
Just a reminder about the Home Reading books - I know that parents get very busy, especially if they're also working, but please do fill out the Home Reading book with your kids every night. They get no other regular homework, and keeping up reading is so very important. Thanks!
During this first swimming lesson I'm just going to be mainly finding out where the children are at, letting them play a bit in the water, and reminding them about rules in the swimming pool area. There probably won't be any teaching of new swimming skills until next week.
