Life Cycles

This term Room 2 are learning lots about Science!  We are learning about living things, life cycles, classification and adaptation.  Lots of exciting things going on.  We have kicked off this term learning about life cycles.  Here is a video that Room 2 watched on YouTube about the life cycle of the Monarch Butterfly.  We were absolutely fascinated and asked lots of questions.  Here is the video so you can watch it with us.  Please talk to your child about their learning.  We learn heaps but as they say, if you don't use it.....

Pacific Power House

Tonight Mrs C went to the Pacific Power House meeting to present the new school website in it's development stage.  Some of the gorgeous kids from our class were performing as part of their Samoan Language Nest and Poly Club learning.  Check out these videos of our superheroes being super stars:

Louis And Iose Love Eels!

We had to write a question about eels then go to chrome. We had find information to answer our question. 

By Iose and Louis

Angela And Journey's Eel Inquiry

We went on chrome books for our inquiry ,we were learning about eels so we were thinking about questions about eels ,and we were trying to agree which we're going to and we chose Where do electric eels live? Then we searched the question and we found the answer. 

 By Journey and Angela

Harley And Keilani's Inquiry

We had to find out about our question. We did this on the chrome books. We used google to find out information about our question.

By Harley and Keilani

Getting Creative in Our Stories Through Animation.

We are learning about Nuturing Nature this term which covers eels, conservation and preservation.  We will learn about life cycles, adaptation, survival, the 7 basic life processes and loads more.

Mrs C had a challenge for us.  

To make connections for us Mrs C found the story The Watercress Tuna and the Children of Champion Street.  You can watch the story here:

 


We decided that we wanted to write a similar story but make it about us and connect to our learning about Porirua.  So we went through a process to plan our story:
AWARUA THE TANIWHA OF PORIRUA AND THE CHILDREN OF CONCLUSION STREET.

We planned our story and used our friends as the characters but also objects out of the cultures within our class as the gifts that Awarua would give the children.  After writing our story Mrs C showed us how to use an app called Explain Everything on the iPads to create a movie from our story.  

Here is what we created together in that session:

This had lots of learning attached but we felt we did a pretty good job considering it was our first go.  We discovered the importance of locking our backgrounds (so they didn't move mid-recording) and learned how to group objects together so that they moved together.

Our Creations:
This was our first time using this app in this way so our attempts aren't perfect but we really enjoyed adding this creative layer to our writing.  Here are some of the animations that we produced.  None of them are finished but the process was the main learning we undertook.  Enjoy these tidbits of our animated works:

Fractional Fun - that's the one!

Here are some more of our awesome superheroes learning about how to create fractions.  They know these things about fractions:

• The parts MUST be equal.
• The denominator is the bottom number - we call him Mr Bossy because he tells us how many parts there need to be altogether.
• The numerator is the top number - he runs around collecting how many we need.
• We know what the different fractional parts are called.
• We know that there is a strategic way to cut something into quarters, by starting with half

Here are some photos of us working with fractions.  Please ask us about our learning at home, we are so loving maths and busting to share it with you!

Our task:

 

We needed to make our eels like this:

Here we are making our 5 eels before cutting them into fractional parts as explained in our task:

 

 We solved it, here we are looking pretty pleased with ourselves.  We are fractional experts now!

Journey and Naomi working well together to solve the problem!

Louis and Chorus made a great team!

Blessing and Niah worked well to make equal parts.

Koko and Waitohi knew what to do, they were pretty happy with their Eel solving.

Harley and Keilani worked together, learning as they went.

Keilani's Knowledge with Fractions.

This week Keilani's maths group have learned about how to make fractions.  They have learned that fractions are how you cut an object into equal pieces and that the number of pieces is dictated by the denominator.  For their follow up to learning task they had to match the correct fractions to the correct fraction word.  Keilani worked so hard on hers that it went up on our Quality Work Wall.  Keep up the awesome effort Keilani!

Strategic Thinking

In our class we have been trying something new at the start of maths.  A quick 3 mental maths challenges where we continue to practice and implement the strategies that we have been learning over the year.   Mrs C has noticed that if we stop revisiting these then we tend to forget them so we agreed this was a good way to keep our strategic thinking active.

Each maths session starts with three questions and Mrs C writes the strategies used and who demonstrated them.  Maths is not only about being able to solve problems but also about being able to explain how we got our answer!  Infact Mrs C says, it's all fine and well giving an answer but the most important part of maths thinking is being able to explain how you got there!

Here is an example of our warm up questions and some photos of us working in our brain pools to talk strategy and to work the problem through:

Working and sharing our thinking, careful, strategic thinker stations ahead!

Rainy Days in Room 2

I love how the rainy days bring out the creative juices in Room 2.  Better yet, lucky Mrs C is left little presents like these at the end of the day:

If you have any mega blocks or duplo at home that your children have grown out of we would love to put them to good use.  There can never be too many of these in Room 2!

Funtastical Fractions!

This term we are learning about Fractions.  Here is a learning story about a groups' success yesterday.  When we tested for Fractions, this group knew 1/2 and that was it.  By then end of their maths lesson yesterday they were pros at being able to identify fractions by name but also how to create fractions with equal parts.  Here is what they did:

We unpacked our learning intention by breaking it into parts we knew.  Then Mrs C set us a problem to solve:

We had to cut our chocolate bar into quarters...here are some photos of us experimenting with this idea to see how it might look.

Iose found this challenging but this was the idea, to discover what we didn't know.

Malachi wondered if all of his parts were equal.

Javier was very creative with his cutting but here he is, thinking about whether he has been successful or needs to work on this some more...

Mrs C decided we needed a bit of help and taught us an easy way to get this right.

That's looking better Logan, the thumbs up suggests Logan knows so too.

Wow Iose, look at that!  Well done buddy!

Javier is the King in Room 2 of creative approach, check out how he saw an easier way to solve this problem that worked better for him and how he learns.

Malachi was much happier with his equal sharing this time round.

The next part of our lesson involved splitting eels into parts, equal parts.  Here we are concentrating on rolling out our eels so that they are the same length:

Look at the clever work of these mathematicians, they can all split an object into equal sections and they know what each of these fractions are called.  Awesome work my Superheroes!

Happy Birthday Louis!

On the last day of term we celebrated Louis' birthday (3 days early but he got to celebrate with his friends from our class).  His Mum Estelle made Chop Suey for all of us as a shared lunch to mark the occasion.   It was the yummiest Chop Suey Mrs C has had for a while!  Louis, we hope you had the most awesome day on your actual birthday!  You can tell us about it next term.  Estelle thanks so much for the yummy treat!  Here are some photos of our special lunch:

Estelle the super chef.

The birthday boy waiting for his turn.

Waiting patiently in the line for our turn.

Yum!  Thanks Estelle.

Michaela and Niah blessing our kai...

Keilani gets a Principal's Award!

Keilani worked really hard to get 5 certificates so that she could get her first ever principals award!  Here is a photo of her with Mr Uluilelata, Nan was so excited that she joined in the photo too.  We are all so proud of you Keilani.  Keep working hard like you have.

A Treat for Mrs C

Last term Michaela's Nana Sue went overseas and on her travels went via the UK.  Mrs C lived there for 3 years and loved Galaxy chocolate, you can imagine her surprise when Michaela turned up with this present for Mrs C!

Thanks Nana Sue, you are the best and Mrs C loved her chocolate.  Hope you had lots of fun shopping over there and had an amazing time on your trip!