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Saturday, August 20, 2016

Fab Blog? Good Blog? OK Blog? Bad Blog?

Last week, with James our Cybersmart teacher, we looked at all the components that make a good blog comment; a comment that others will want to read again, consider and respond to. We were working on our Learn Create Share cycle in the session. We have learnt about blogging a few times since creating our own blogs, and so we could share ideas on the padlet below. The whole class created this padlet together. 



Then we looked at some comment examples and checked them against what we thought makes a good comment, and against a rubric for great commenting. Next it was time to write some good comments using the learning we had just completed. Before posting them, (or sharing) we checked each others work. 
We all work at different paces, so some of us can whiz through the three parts of the Learn Create Share Cycle. Others of us are challenged to fit all three parts of the cycle into the time we have, we have to stay focused and that's more learning too! 
BUT we all got great comments posted AND we shared our learning through a screenshot of our work and an explanation of what we did,  for our own individual bogs. 
You can check them out on the side panel of our class blog. 

RESPECT




At our school,  our core VALUE is …. RESPECT.

It comes with a
RESPECT CODE.

Four important areas
that we all need to
make sure we have
respect in.







This code tells us the best way of behaving all the time, with everyone that belongs to this school or visits
this school.

In Room 9 we have spent a lot of time looking at our goals for learning, behaving and using our chromebooks.

We were asked to think about the areas in the Respect Code that we needed to work on and write ourselves a Respect Goal to work on and to share at our assembly.
These were our ideas...



To make the most of our time at school it is important that we look after each other, work together and acknowledge our differences. 


Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Ms Southwell Leaves

Students arriving to school late, with an 'interesting' range of excuses,
that they delivered to Travis who played Ms Southwell. 
When told that our gorgeous receptionist was leaving our school after ten years of service, one student piped up "Wow! That's longer than I have been alive!"

Which put the time and effort Ms Southwell had put into our school into very clear perspective for the whole class.  We were given the task of organising her final farewell assembly, and the students were determined to give her the best of send offs.
Room 9 pulled together an amazing performance of small skits that highlighted some of the jobs and activities that Ms Southwell performed in her daily routine. Tasks that touched the lives of every student and adult in the school.
Ms Southwell, well loved. 

Singing Ms Southwell up to the front.



Max and Caroline giving her flowers. 
       
Mrs Petersen showing off the special book. 

Then she was asked to come and sit on a special chair on the stage where the school gave her flowers and a specially made book of many messages of love and care. After speeches the whole school sang her two very special songs, before heading home for the weekend.

We wish her well in her new job in the city and look forward to her visiting us.
A final farewell song and a salute to her dreams of a different future. 



Monday, August 15, 2016

Practise at Abstract Art

In Week Seven Waikowhai School will hold an Art Show. We are completing two art pieces for it. One will be an Abstract Artwork created from several different media on a large rectangular panel. We have spent several sessions playing with different shapes and media to understand what abstract art is. Some ideas we had around what Abstract Art is .... art that looks at how colour and shapes go together. It does NOT depict a person, place or thing. Instead it is about feelings and patterns and forms that make you WONDER what the artist is thinking about. Sometimes it might have clues to help you.  It can be painting or sculpture with any material or media.  
We have completed 8 different test pieces so far, to prepare for a final piece of artwork. We did them quite fast, with music and examples flicking through on a slideshow. The improvement in our quality of work as we have gone through the process is often really noticeable. We did 3 pieces in pastel, 2 pieces in crayon and dye, 1 in a mix of both and masking tape, 2 pieces in paint.
Below is a padlet of some of our work. We will put posts up on our individual blogs soon.

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Music Knowledge

Room 9 has Music this term. The focus is on percussion after seeing the Strike performance last term. We will look at percussion that uses the human body, instruments and found objects. We will create and use sound cards to use when we put music to narrated story. A quick 3 minute challenge to get as many words we know about music into a shared padlet is a great way to use padlet, we find.