Next week we will be doing swimming on Wednesday, from 10.00am to 10.40am. This is because our normal swimming time falls on Good Friday and we won't be here!
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.
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.
It's quiet around the school without the Kauri Team children around. Down a whole third - the biggest third, too! We're still making headway with our topic - cultures in our class. We've started looking at tapa patterns for our next art project, and I'm hoping to get the children to incorporate symbols and icons from their own cultures into their tapa patterns. We'll see how that goes!
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!
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!
