The Little Classroom Up the Back: Time to hit some grammar...PLUS amazing mould photos for downloading

Grammar was the focus of this morning's first lesson after forty minutes of shifting in the new furniture. Nearly all class members pulled their weight carrying out the old furniture and bringing in the new, repositioning computers and reconnecting them, cleaning up messy areas of the room and cutting away plastic wrapping from the new art stools. Students have stunning new blue desks, an art table with six leaning stools to go underneath and I have a lovely shelving system so I don't have to be constantly grovelling on the floor to find books and lessons etc. A big thank you to the wonderful Mr Norm Hopwood who helps me out enormously. He definitely deserves double the wage he is currently receiving. The room is looking amazing.

Also thank you Anthony Burrows; I promise I will stop complaining now... for a bit anyway :)))).

The persuasive posters that came in on time now adorn the front display along with The Lorax reports. The percentage of students who will pass English is rising! Well done, and believe you me, the hard yakka is well-worth it. Hopefully the other persuasive posters will come in tomorrow.

Below is the spelling/grammar activity they had to complete in table groups. Students did a great job.

Make plurals from the following. Think... do we drop the y and add ies...OR do we just add s? We discussed the rules for this on both Monday and Tuesday...now can they apply it.

At the bottom of your classification list write a rule which would help a younger student in the school.

abbey dolly pulley alley
berry jockey fly chutney
city gallery survey chimney
story lolly valley donkey
honey trolley spy copy
journey lady nanny dragonfly

Just before recess we talked about common nouns and played a quick ten minute game of name a common noun. I shuffled a set of alphabet cards and students had to quickly say a common noun beginning with that letter. Now that was interesting.

After daily phys.ed. and a Maze Grid, I gave a lesson on making a square-based pyramid from card from scratch. Students did reasonably well with their compass skills and net construction. I brought in some of my husband's woodworking glue today as this makes the gluing up of tabs infinitely easier. We will keep persevering with the development of fine motor skills.

Music options students did the whole in and out and in and out of the classroom thing from 12 o'clock to three but I have every confidence in them that they are keeping up with any new major developments!

In the afternoon students were given time on their mould studies, and their persuasive posters if they were a bit behind with them. A few students also designed, published and printed off their covers for their Science reports. They are keeping all published pieces in their portfolios.

Below are photos taken of the mouldy bread samples (day 7 for the majority of students) which students can directly download from this site to insert into their Science reports. I suspect a few of these samples are also harbouring colonies of bacteria. Let's keep them securely taped up! I felt a bit queasy looking at some of these. Hmmm the electricity unit is definitely less stomach churning. I hope these are labelled correctly; I am sure the students will tell me if I have them wrong. Thanks you AK for being a great recorder today.