Pages

Saturday, February 20, 2016

Cycling, Cybersmart, Sharing and Swimming


The students of Room 9 quickly wrote some comments about some of the learning that went on for them in Week 3. We are practising for when we have our own blogs. 
Big Foot came in and taught us some important safety rules and messages when riding our bikes. 

"On Monday we learnt about bike safety with the bigfoot people.They taught me about laws, and riding on the road when you want to turn a corner, or stop.They taught me to lift my left hand when turning left and my right hand when turning left." Izzy

 "I was so excited to practise riding a bike that I didn’t even realise that my bike was too tall for me! (aaahhhh the good old don’t realise thing). The bike was a bit too tall that my seat had to be a bit lower I kept almost falling off the bike because I wasn’t use to mountain bikes neither was Sifa (Sifa was my partner)." Benson

                                  James came in and he and his expertise were a big hit!! 
                                             The students kept up with him faster than I did.  
 

"This week I learnt how to ride a bike when doing Big Foot.(I started off not knowing how to even ride a bike). I also really enjoyed the Cybersmart class with James. I learnt how to use screencastify and made a video about How to change your password." Joyce

"This week I Iearnt about Screencastify. The good thing about Screencastify is, you can video yourself changing your password, going on to the class site and you can save the video so if you forget how to change your password or anything else, the video is in your drive so you won’t forget. Awesome, right!" Travis

We have a buddy reading class every Wednesday and everyone was buddied up with a Year 2 student in Room 4. Stories were exchanged.

"Reading with Room 4 will be fun because we can be involved with Room 4. I hope my buddy  Ethan is a good reader." Tiakiwai

The school pool has been repaired and is back in business!!!

"This week we have been learning how to swim the reason why we have been learning how to swim is because we need to keep safe." Sadie

"I love to swim at school even though the water is so cold." Max


Friday, February 12, 2016

Setting up Systems and Satellite Phones


Shahin collecting organisms  
On Tuesday we were privileged enough to talk to a student explorer visiting The Auckland Islands on HMNZS OTAGO with the Sir Peter Blake Trust. Shahin Najak is from Lynfield College and she won one of only 14 places on the voyage, because of her huge involvement with her school and fighting to protect the environment. Shahin spoke to us by Satellite Phone from the ship on Tuesday morning. It was a static connection but it was excellent to hear her voice and hear what they have been doing down there. We asked her some questions and she spoke to her mother who works at our school. We also posted some questions on their website which they answered for us. It has been very interesting checking out all their blogs and photos. 

"It is so cool having a chrome book  because you can do home work on it and R9 gets our own class site. It was fun calling Shahin but we could not hear her that well." from Travis

During the week we have managed several different tasks on the chromebooks, including creating new passwords, copying files, and organising them into folders in our drive, then completing the set work, signing in and out and finding our work again! The students could write their comments for the Class Blog on a shared document.   

"It is so cool having a mini laptop because we get to take it home at the end of February. We are able to create our own password. R9 has a class blog + a gold fish, we got a phone call from Shahin Najak & we got to go swimming with Rm8 after morning tea. New digital class rooms are awesome and these are cool comments when everyone is writing together." from Tau


I am really lucky to have a chromebook. The thing I like about chromebooks is doing the All About Me work. This year has been a blast because of the learning we have done on our chromebooks, it has been so cool, Room 9 is the best class to be in and CHROMEBOOKS are THE BEST! by Kayci


Words and phrases taken from comments written by Room 9 students excited 
about learning on Chromebooks. 

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Out of the Box Day and the Day After.

Whew! What a Welcome Back we've all had. Chromebooks arrived at Waikowhai and they are awesome I think you will agree. Out Of The Box Day and the Day After are done! A whirlwind of excitement, discussion and focused attention. I really enjoyed learning how to use them and launching our class site. I especially enjoyed meeting the students that will spend the next ten months together in Room 9. YOU! So much learning happened with you all getting the basics of how to navigate around your Chromebooks so quickly and so well. It is going to be exciting watching you all become experts........ and making sure I keep up with you!!
Joyce, Storm and Kayci all smiles. 
Yay! Yes this is cool Julie!
Waiting to be opened.....



This coming week we will
start looking in depth
at Cybersafety, so we
get the most out of our
new tools and keep
ourselves safe all the time.
We will also be exploring
what we think our Inquiry topic,
INTEGRITY,
is all about.

Maanov hyped!
Getting down to business. 

Benson and Zoe following instructions.
Our cool class!
Tau super excited.
Charlotte seriously excited!
The best smile Storm!