Home Learning

While St Albans does have a 'no homework' policy, it will always help if students do some learning at home. I would expect that students are reading every day for at least 20 minutes, learning spelling words and also learning basic facts/times tables. They can do this by using the times table wheel in their home learning book or using Sumdog. Home learning consolidates the learning done at school and also allows kids to build up their knowledge so they are more confident at school. The home learning book they are provided with is theirs to use for whatever purpose they think will be most helpful to them. Please see me if you have any questions about this.

Twitter Chat

I think that in this technological age we need to empower our kids to be cyber smart. This is one of the reasons why participating in kidsedchatnz on Twitter is really important. As one of the administrators of the chat put it: "We need to teach our kids to be responsible, respectful and mindful collaborators."

I look at the topics every week and choose topics that are relevant to us. The chat teaches us not only the above skills, but also to be succinct in what we write. We get the message across using a limited number of characters.

These are the questions for this week. Kids, talk to your parents about Twitter and see if you can come up with some ideas for replies to these questions!

This week our topic is 'Your School'

Here are our questions:

1. What do you like about your school / What makes your school special?
2. Does your school have any special physical features? Describe its layout and physical features.
3. Where exactly is your school and how many students and teachers does your school have?
4. Describe your classroom. What does it look like? 
5. How would you like your learning to happen in the classroom?
6. Is there anything you would like to change at your school/in class? What is it?
7. Do you think it is good to have your own blog? Why?
8. What other technologies are you using in your learning? Tell us why you are you using them.
9. What fun things do you like to do when it is raining during lunch time?
10. Tell us what you liked about school today.

WEEK 5 AT SCHOOL!!!!!

Hi, this is  Finn A and Samantha!

Week 3 we went to Halswell Quarry we learnt lots about the different types of rocks, like Basalt rock. We also learnt about the 12 men who lived in the cottage and shared 1 bath!

This week the Year 6s have been doing Cycle Safety. This is when Cycle Safety come to our school and teach us how to ride a bike on the road safely. Constable Debby came and talked to us about legal requirements that you must have when you are biking. Most people didn't have a red rear reflector which is a legal requirement. Our instructors were Sophie, Cristina, Keith and Yasmine.

On Fridays some year 5 and 6s go to Hagley Park for sport like soccer and rugby and netball and there are A&B teams for sport and Hockey go to lots of places on a Friday.The rest of the people stay at St. Albans and play sport themselves on a Friday.

This week we have been learning about Pangaea and all the continents were originally joined together.

In our class we have a student teacher called Miss Barker and she will be staying in our class for 6 weeks which is nearly the end of the term and she fits in like one of us here in Room 23 and she's getting along really well!

All the year 5 and 6s have been doing AVAILLL which is where we watch a movie with the subtitles on and read-watching and doing lots of fun activities. The year 5s are with Mr. Williams and they are watching Holes and the Year 6s have just finished watching The Wizard Of Oz and we have Mrs. Hanson.

We have been learning about SOLO it is  Prestructural, Unistructural, Multistructural, Relational and Extended Abstract. It's so we can show how much we understand and how we can get better with our learning.

WELCOME MISS BARKER!

Today is Miss Barker's first day in Room 23. She is a student teacher from the New Zealand Graduate School of Education and she will be with us for 6 weeks. I encourage all of our whanau to come in and meet her!

Year 6 Cycle Safety

Remember, if you have a bike, please bring it on Wednesday this week for Cycle Safety! (And next Monday and Friday) Don't forget a helmet! If you don't have a bike, they will lend you one.

Twitter Chat this week

For those of you who would like to do the Twitter chat this Wednesday, the topic is 'Family'. Here are some of the questions that you might like to think about. I have only included the questions that are relevant to us.

QUESTIONS

Q1. Who makes up your family? What position were you born in your family? Oldest? Youngest? Middle? Only? What's it like being that position?

Q2. What is special about your family? What do you love about your family?

Q3. Would you prefer to be in a big family or small family? Why?

Q4. Do you have any family traditions? (Holidays, fun activities etc)

Q6. What's the best piece of advice a family member has given you?

Q9. It's Mother's day on Sunday, can you send a special message to your Mum, or someone who you consider to be a Mum to you (this could be a grandparent, aunt etc)?

Wicked Week one and two

The last couple weeks have been busy.

In week one we learnt a lot about World War One and ANZAC day. It was really interesting how much ideas we came up with as a class.We put up our ideas on the wall and there were a lot of words taking up the paper. Some of the words were Gallipoli, trenches, poppies, sacrifice.

After doing some more learning about the ANZACs and ANZAC day, we turned our ideas into Haiku poems. Haiku poems have 3 lines. the first line is 5 syllables, the second line is 7 syllables and the last line is 5 syllables.

Here's Thesara's haiku:

Blood red poppies grow
Where brave men risked everything
We shall not forget.

Now Olivia's haiku:

Petals flutter down.
Red blood will flow through fields
We'll remember them.



Time for the cross country results for Room 23.

Everyone finished the track. It was hard but we gave our best shot.

People going to zones are
Lucy
Phoebe
Kegan
Jamie


On Thursday Nicky Dyer kindly baked us some ANZAC biscuits and we helped too.We enjoyed eating the fab biscuits they were as crunchy as peanuts but don't be worried they had NO nuts. Mrs Hanson sprinkled to much sugar into the bowl so some of the biscuits came together like a massive cake but they were still yum.

THANK YOU Nicky for baking the ANZAC biscuits they were the best biscuits and we just wanted to thank you.

Thank you for reading the journeys of our last couple of weeks

By Lucy and Olivia T