An enviroschools play

One of our reading groups the Pukeko readers have taken their reading to the next step by creating a play about what they have read. The Pukekos read an article about an enviroschool and as Paroa are just embarking on their journey as an enviroschool these bunch of rad readers used their knowledge to write and present a play to the class. Ka pai to mahi, Ngā Pukeko, you guys are indeed showing yourselves well on the way to being Ruma ono, Rad Readers by using your reading to generate new understandings, and you showed some tumeke team work while you were at it!

The video link is below, it is quite quiet so you may have to turn your speakers up.

Writing our Games Instructions

We have been writing instructions for games with the Ruma ono hacky sacks. We started by creating a ruma ono game sensation called 'Think Fast', where we learnt that for writing instructions for games we need:
The title of our game
The goal of the game
The equipment required
Then how to play the game.
Below a link to a video of how we co-constructed our games. Our games need only a few rules simple easy to follow rules.
We then all went away and wrote our own games, which we taught to a teina class Room 3.

Room 6 Think Fast

Adding In Parts

Kia Ora All,

Here is another maths strategy that would benefit all the students in Ruma Ono to practice at home and it's easy to adjust to different levels. I recommend watching the video with your child and coming up with examples to practice together. Perfect Friday night fun for the whole family.




Rock On,
Mr M

Maths Strategy Touch Up

Kia Ora All,

Here is a maths strategy that I've been working on with a bunch of students this week. It's a really useful one and I recommend looking at it with your child. If you want to know how to pitch the level of questions you make up for them to practice with here are my suggestions:

• easy: 12 x 5 = ?
• slightly harder: 56 x 8 = ?
• hard: 352 x 4 = ?
• very hard: 983.463 x 6 = ?

Rock On,
Mr M

Inquiry Wall

We've kicked into gear with our inquiry by recording our prior knowledge about plants. We've also discussed what plants students may like to grow. I'm hoping to get some seedlings started in the very near future, so your child may talk to you about what they want to grow. Below is an image of the inquiry wall to date. Special thanks to Sonny for thinking of a humorous title for our inquiry.

Term Four!

Kia ora All,

I hope you've had a great holiday break and are ready to rock 'n' roll for one more term. Here are some important announcements for the oncoming term:

• This term our inquiry focus is "Diggers and Planters". As part of the study we'll be growing our own seedlings. Many students have been experimenting with New World Little Gardens, so we'll be looking at branching out (pardon the pun) and growing a regular seed from scratch. If you have any expertise in this field please talk to your child about how to do it as I have no idea...
• At the end of last term I did a maths test to see where the students are at with their number knowledge. I'll be working on some stuff around this in class this term, but I've also set a bunch of Maths Buddy tasks covering gaps I found. Some students will have really a lot of lessons set - I'd recommend making sure you have regular Maths Buddy time set aside as part of your home learning. 

Enjoy the rest of the holiday break.

Mr M

Literacy Circle

We've been thrashing the Novel Studies hard this term. I aim to meet with groups every second day and have the groups share what they've been working on and discussing the book on the days that I don't meet with them. I caught these guys running a tight session with heaps of respectful listening and intelligent comments going on. Here is a small slice of reading life in Ruma Ono.

Rock on,

Mr M

Official Paroa School Anthem

Kia Ora All,

Here is the Official Paroa School Anthem. The school band is ready to unleash this bad boy in assembly in week 5. Mr Sinton White will be doing some filming from week 9 onwards. We'll use the footage to create the ultimate music video. We're super excited about this one! Make sure you learn the song so that you can sing along in assembly and in the music video.

Rock On,

Mr M

Welcome to Week 10

Kia Ora All,

Week 10 is about to swing into gear. Routines in Room 6 have been solid for a few weeks now, I'm familiar with the work habits of the students and we've got a couple more weeks to make the most of.

On Wednesday Top Team is happening. Hopefully your child has given you the information form that went home earlier in the week. If not, ask them about it. If you're able to help out with it please let Andrew or myself know.

I've really enjoyed seeing the different pieces of writing happening this term. If you've been following the programme closely then you will have noticed that we're moving from the more engaging and fun type writing activities to exploring some in-depth techniques for planning stories and including descriptive language techniques. I spent an hour and a half this morning finally sitting down to comment on the huge quantity of pieces that the students have shared with me that I haven't had a proper opportunity to feedback on. The vast majority of students have been working hard on their writing as part of home learning, which is awesome to see. Well done parents! 

I'll try to get another blog post happening before the end of the term showcasing some of the student's writing. However, in the interest of work/life balance this may not be possible...

Rock On,

Mr M

Home Learning Fun With Narrative Writing

I've been experimenting with my writing programme this year. Term one has thus far been about getting to know the students as writers and presenting them with a range of writing activities designed to both engage them and explore the process of writing. Kids are often hungry for opportunities to do narrative writing, but this genre is difficult to teach and often students produce results that are not as strong as in other genres. The reasons that I can see for this are twofold: 

• Firstly, the story has no plot and just carries on until the author decides that they have produced enough pages and decides to stop. 
• Secondly, the author tells you what is happening the whole time rather that showing you what is happening. E.g, Telling you what is happening = Bob woke up... Showing you what is happening = Beep, beep, beep, the clock showed 6.30 am. Bob's eyes slowly opened...

The video below will help with descriptive language to a degree, but mostly deals with a great way to help students plan the plot to their narrative. The key is to have each box depict a new event in their story and not include too many boxes. In my experience, at this level, if you include more than 6 boxes the story gets too complex and the students aren't able to hold it together. The first box should set the scene (check out this lesson for another idea around that) and the final box should resolve the problem in the narrative in some way. I always say that no teacher or parent wants to read a narrative that ends with "and then I woke up" or "and the he/she died". Those two endings are the classic go-to endings for children's narratives and all the students in my class are far more creative than that!

I recommend sitting down with your child and doing a story board together (this takes a maximum of 10 minutes for me in class, but may initially take you longer). They can then do a draft of the story independently. This is often quite short and includes 1-2 sentences per main story event. Don't be disappointed - this is normal. The next thing is to choose 2 parts of the story to describe in more detail (showing, not telling). If they take on your feedback and add some detail you've been super successful. You can then get them to proofread for spelling and punctuation. After that get them to add in some visuals and publish. Publishing ideas include: reading the story aloud and recording it, creating a pocked book, writing the story neatly onto piece of paper, typing it into computer, drawing illustrations to go with the words or making a comic strip.

Number Lines

As part of Toki Pounamu we'll be experimenting with making lessons available so that they can be revisited by the students and whanau as home learning or in class. Here is a quick breakdown of a concept a couple of groups worked on in maths this week. I recommend sitting down with your child to look at the concept sometime in the next week or so. Feel free to adjust the numbers to make them bigger or smaller depending on what suits their ability. In group lessons I have lots of fun making up funny or interesting word problems to go with the equations. Here are some ideas you could use in a home learning situation:

• watch the video with your child
• get them to show you the concept or figure it out together
• make up some examples and do them together
• make up some funny or interesting word problems to go with your equations
• challenge family members or friends to your word problems   
• link it with your writing in other ways e.g., make a pocket book of maths problems or a how to guide for this maths concept or similar
• search Maths Buddy for number lines or tidy numbers concepts. Choose a lesson at your level and give it a go. If the lesson you find's too hard or too easy find the same concept in a level up or down.