Thursday 7 August 2014

Week 3, Term 3

Kia Ora

Wow, Week 5 already.  Team Kereru are certainly making the most of our learning time in and out of the classroom.  Our new modern learning space has been a change for the children.   The addition of beanbags, tables, stools, a couch and magazine racks to hold our stationary has been an adjustment, but one the children are all ‘taking in their stride’  I look forward to completing a PMI (plus, minus and improvement) chart with them to help adapt our space to suit our Teams’ needs.

In maths we are focussing on position and orientation.  This is a topic dealing with directions, compass reading and coordinates.  It is a really fun interactive topic.  If you want to help out at home play battle ships, give directions using left, right, north, west, south and east and talk about the direction the wind is blowing, also read maps together and talk about scales and distances.   We will continue to focus on fractions during numeracy time. We have been playing with play dough (making fractions) and trying to use real life examples to help show why fractions are important.

In writing we are concentrating on instructions.  We have found that instructions have to be very specific and need to use language that is appropriate to the topic.  So far we have read instructions and put instructions in the right order.  We will be writing instructions for our buddies as well.  We were really proud of Arin and Peyton who both shone at the LMV speech contests.  Remember to check the children’s blogs to see their speeches.

In reading we are focussing on the main points of a texts and what a word is, e.g. cat is a noun, eating is a verb and red is an adjective.  We are also looking at suffixes and prefixes and how they change words, like hopeful and hopeless.  Our main focus for this half of the term is narratives and the language that goes with these texts.  We have found another series of books to read in the class ‘Extreme Adventures’ that we are hooked on. 

We have loved learning about the Commonwealth Games and are extremely proud of our Kiwi competitors.  We can’t wait for the next ones which will be televised at better times of the day being in Australia.

Our Product and Process Technology is going to be really interesting.  We are starting with McDonalds products and looking at why, how and where it gets made.  We will also branch into other products to show their processes.

We are thoroughly enjoying having the Menzies College Year 13 students here to teach us cooperative games. Our five sessions will go by quickly.

Our website of the week is a collection of easy hands-on cool science experiments you can do at home from Steve Spangler Science.


Remember also to use our Maths@Edendale blog.  Just ask your teacher for the stage you should be working on.  http://edendalepsmaths.blogspot.co.nz/


I wish all the busy farming and non-farming parents the best for the rest of a very busy term.  

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