Where is 'Storm Boy' Greg Rowe now? Monday/Tuesday

Tomorrow we will watch this clip and then students will have the morning to write up the notes about the camera angles in their Storm Boy booklets  that we focused on so closely on Friday.

The Spelling words for this week are: ure and words with  tricky double consonants:

signature sufficient
temperature    territory
measure committee
treasure suffocate
moisture graffiti
manufacture assassin
culture curriculum
pressure apparatus
gesture colleague
literature appropriate

As it is a short week this final week of term one, the tests will be held on Thursday afternoon.

Today, Tuesday we did Spelling Bingo, spent the morning working on essays on the use of filming techniques in Storm Boy. We discussed what the introduction could look like and students then wrote a few more paragraphs focuses on the different angles used with specific reference to the film

Following recess and daily phys.ed we started on the next major unit which focuses on bilateral, rotational, planes of symmetry and their applications in the real world. The front cover of the booklet they have is the assessment and states clearly what is being assessed in this unit. We will also be doing some simple collage work to show bilateral symmetry.  Then it was off to library. The afternoon block was dedicated to Quiet Reading, symmetry work, science report writing, and more time on the Storm Boy essay.

Sample, KF and AW are working on another approach

The girls started on their reflective diaries.

Dictionary usage, "ful" and "sce", triangles...

We started the day with Spelling Bingo, focusing on ful and sce words. Students have spelling tonight instead of the usual maths as they didn't do the spelling on Monday.  These words will be tested on Friday.

There were two spelling groups this week. 

We also talked again about how to locate words in a dictionary; this is a real skill and children need to be shown how to do it efficiently without wasting time by just randomly flipping. When you are young they are hard to use. The internet is also of course extremely quick and handy for checking spelling. We discussed the use of the two header words at the top as a quick way of checking what words appear on that page. We will focus on the pluses and minuses of spell checkers on computers soon. Ample time was given in class on the spelling contract.

Library was taken by Mrs Louis Sutton today and the students were very well behaved and enjoyed their session. 

After lunch we had silent reading a focused closely on triangles, looking at what is a triangle and how are they classified. Some students has quite a few misconceptions and hopefully we have ironed these out. They will continue with this task tomorrow looking really closely at equilateral, scalene, right angled and isosceles triangles.

I sat down individually with each of the grade six students and went through their last persuasive text they wrote and talked about their future goals. The tangrams they did with Mr Mac have been backed and are now in their portfolios. Our next focus will be on quadrilaterals. Students need to keep making their 3D shapes and get them glued onto their boards. Twelve students will be presenting their Explanatory postrs on their chosen 3D shapes in assembly this Thursday afternoon.

A couple of students have finished their soft toys and borrowed my camera to get a few shots outdoors to use in the advertisements they will be writing to promote their toys.

All photos students take go into the 5-6 Coote folder on the Photo Drive so students can access them to use in their reports, diaries, stories etc...

Good luck to those students running in the Huon and Channel Cross Country tomorrow.

Assembly, Hanami, Squash, Spelling and you guessed it... more mouldy bread

Hanami

The comprehension passage

Cutting out the blossoms

The naked trees

Following the usual whole-school assembly and a 5 degrees celsius start in the little Siberian classroom, my students did their desk change for the week and we headed off to Japanese class together. I always enjoy these sessions because I learn so much about another culture. I used to teach the upper primary Italian program at Illawarra Primary School. The lesson today focused on the Hanami. Students did a short comprehension piece and then cut out blossoms to adorn the trees which had been prepared for today's lesson. Next week I will hopefully post up a photo of the finished product.

After recess students went to their daily physical education sessions and then got straight into the phyical eduaction lesson which focused on squash skills.  It was then back to the classroom for the remainder of the day.

This weeks' spelling is focusing on the "drop the y and add ies rule." We discussed the rule that if a consonant (eg. b,d,f etc) precedes the y then the rule is to drop the y and ies. We looked at what happens if the letter which precedes the y is a vowel 
as in donkey, valley...then the rule  is to simply add the s. Knowing our language there is surely some word which doesn't follow this rule but it usually works.   Eight students already understood this rule and applied it capably on various occasions in standardised test so they published work and had extra time on their Science projects (yes, the mould) or on typing up their recounts about the grade 6 camp.

After lunch we successfully watched the whole clip on moulds in Mrs Franz's room whilst her students were at Japanese because their internet connect is more reliable than ours. This film will definitely assist students with the write-up of their background to their science reports.

Following that students had time on their Spelling and their Science investigations. We discussed how the cm squares could be used to work our percentages of mould on a surface area.  This weeks spelling bingo words are:

family families

daisy  daisies

city  cities

lady  ladies

butterfly butterflies

baby babies

activity  activities

memory memories

hobby  hobbies

carry  carries

bury   buries

marry marries

cry  cried

hurry hurried

apply applied

Individual feedback was also given on the prime numbers lesson we did on Friday. Some students are still have problems with this concept so I will do another quick lesson on Tuesday and discuss composite numbers at the same time. There are also new books to the classroom library.

As from next Monday I will no longer be teaching on a Monday as I need to have the time to visit my dad in Devonport on a more regular basis. I spoke to the class about this during the afternoon session and trust that they and parents understand my decision.

Maths Relay Part 2 and the Swimming Carnival

This morning before the swimming carnival, the students participated in another maths relay, this time using intermediate and advanced maths problems. They stayed in the same teams they had on Friday. Students quickly realised understanding the question was as important as any maths skills they needed to apply. This time there was 40 points difference in the range, with the top score being 87. Measurement questions and fractions caused the most crumpled eyebrows.  

Sample questions

Team work helps

This week, the spelling bingo words will be words are contractions such as doesn't, didn't, o'clock etc. They will be tested on these words on Friday morning. 

We left school at 11-30 to make our way to the Hobart Aquatic Centre. The swimming carnival went off well with us just making it back to school by three o'clock. I snapped off quite a few photos whilst on crowd control (which always seems to be my job.) I had the photos developed at Big W and backed them. Hopefully they will go up in display in the library or in some central place in the school tomorrow. I've just noticed I haven't captured all swimmers and I apologize for that.

Swimming Carnival

Also, I desperately need funnels for Science tomorrow.
Thank you Andrea for the games for the classroom, greatly appreciated.

First Art lesson, 2D vs 3D, and...a Softies update

Another busy day with a long meeting at the end, but a productive one. First up it was Spelling Bingo and a partner test on the individual words and then we had two more chapters of the class novel, The Pinballs, before my darlings trotted only next door for their first art lesson with Mrs MacCrum. Students are designing their own personal banners which will be hung in the classroom when they are done.

After recess I took them through compass usage and students constructed their own Venn diagrams to compare the attributes of a plane shape and a 3D shape. This was completed in their large activity where will will do some problem solving and other lessons in the Measurement and Geometry strand of the National Mathematics Curriculum. Some students decided to take it home to add more to it. We will revisit their efforts on Friday and students will add missing detail in another colour.  I am endeavouring to make students aware of book presentation and to take pride in their work. We played three quick games of Guess the Number just to break up the double maths lesson. I was impressed to see so many students taking the initiative to consult the wide variety of Maths dictionaries in the room to clarify their thoughts and to investigate angles, area, volume and axes of symmetry..

In the afternoon I tested a handful of students working on level 4 of the demon words(tricky words) whilst the grade five students went off to do a music test. All students have had a test on level 1 (fifty words) and about a third on level 2 and a sisxth on level 3.  The words they are having trouble with are listed on their Individual Spelling Card and I would appreciate any testing parents can do on these at home and sign off on any words which have had five partner tests. The remainder of the grade 6 students did some quiet reading. Then I sat the grade 6 students down and talked about threading needles, using blanket stitch in order to make their needle holders. Each students has a large, resealable storage bag which at the moment houses the felt for the holder, four pins, a needle and a double-sided sheet demonstrating some basic stitchery they could use when sewing their softies. Two of my grade 6 boys really surprised me with their amazing sewing skills and both were very helpful when I was trying to teach so many students to thread needles, knot cotton and use blanket stitch. About half of the grade 5 students have made a start on this, we will catch up with the remaining group tomorrow. Homework was to finish the design of their softie in their Writer's Notebook and to make notes about materials etc. on the other side of the page. Students need to think carefully about the application of their practical skills to the design, too fussy or too many sharp small angles or thin sections can be a disaster when it come to the actual cutting out of the felt and the  sewing. I have also asked students to personalise their notebooks so they are special. We will be using this book a great deal for planning and producing quality written pieces. I have encouraged them to review the PhotoStory of softies made by students their age in the third last blog,  and keep it simple. I didn't take any photo as I was far too busy threading needles and sorting out some quite amazing knots. 

Also, after a hectic day,  I also now  know how to do a canteen duty at lunch and a supervision on the top car park after school,  which will be  my pleasure every Wednesday. Gotta love the fluro jacket! The ultimate fashion statement.

Be Positive - Monday 20th

Be Positive,this was the central message delivered to students today in a half hour assembly first up. I then went to Japanese up until recess with the students and learnt a few new words. Students  focused on writing their name in Japanese, months and dates and prepared there books with a page for 2012. Following recess the students had Physical Education and then Library. In the afternoon we started our spelling contract on a-e words, which are the ones we use in the Spelling Bingo game using the Smart Board each morning. The words for this week are:

haste               separate

taste                demonstrate

inflate              appreciate

imitate             calculate

slate                evaporate

isolate             participate

rate                  generate

educate           vibrate

eliminate         concentrate

fate                  operate

Students play two games each morning selecting from these words, a game of five and then a game of eight. To win the words must be correctly spelled, there must be a margin and date, and the words need to be signed off by another students after they have checked them for mistakes. The winner's write their name in the Spelling Bingo Book and there is a prize for the most wins at the end of each term. The words change each week. Every Monday night the focus will be either on a spelling unit of a component of grammar.We talked about time management skills and book work. Students also have a card with their own individualised spelling lists of words taken from their writing. and spelling tests. There is going to be a focus on handwriting...

First Days Back...

Well, we now have had two days back at school with the students. I have twenty-four in my class which is the smallest class I have had for seventeen years. I am used to having classes in the 28-3o range so this is wonderful. One year I had thirty-three and that was quite a challenging year. There are sixteen boys and eight girls. We discussed ratio using this information. The days have been very hot and muggy but thankfully we have air-conditioning in the classrooms; I have never had this luxury before. A lot of people think Tassie is always cold but we have our fair share of stiflingly hot days with high humidity.

What have we accomplished so far? The students have learnt how to play Spelling Bingo and one boy did a great job of running it today. We play it first up every morning. More on this later. The students have all been tested on fifty demon words and some students on a hundred. Students worked in groups looking at the classroom games  in case of wet weather, and they have have had time to explore the classroom in pairs and ask questions about what's in it. 

Our class novel is called The Pinballs by Betsy Byars, and it is all about relationships and learning to get along. The central characters are Carlie, Harvey and Thomas J. Students have been filling in a tension levels graph as I read the story. It's basically a line graph following the plot.  They have a contract to complete with a reasonable amount of choice in the second section, and and rubric so they know what is being assessed. We have read through the rubric before starting the novel.  I have two copies of the book, and as I read one another student follows along with the second copy. There are enough chapters for every student to have a turn at this. Today I gave them a task called The Otherside. We all read an excerpt from the Mercury about an entrepreneur who was interviewed about his life and reactions to things. The triggers I gave the students were:                                                   My first memory is...

I love being...

My favourite time of the day is...

When I lose my temper I...

The thing I fear most is...

The thing people first notice about me is...

When no one is watching I like to...

The thing that would surprise people about me is...

The hardest thing I have ever done is...

I really don't like...

The thing that makes me laugh loudest is...

When I can't sleep I...

Most students have completed a first draft but some still need more time. I really enjoyed reading the first lot of finished drafts and have learnt a lot more about my students. I use sticky notes to make the corrections to their spelling and grammar, and students have to  transfer these to their Individual Spelling Lists to learn and do activities with. The ISL has been fully explained to them. More on this later.

The students also had their first assembly this afternoon looking at the Keys to Success and getting to know new  students and staff. In the classroom we have also being focusing on time management skills. There will be a focus on mathematics tomorrow. Students were also given a detailed list of all the stationery they received yesterday (Wednesday 15th) and what each is for. I asked them to get it signed by their parents as their first homework task.