Welcome Back to Term Four!

What a busy and exciting start to the term we have had! Room 4 is still missing Mrs Law in the classroom, but we have been excited to see her around school in this last week. Mrs Paterson is teaching us for four days a week, and we have Miss McGrath on Mondays.

It has been very busy, we experienced Chinese Language week in Week 1 - come into the classroom and see our wonderful display of dragon masks. We have been creating some beautiful pieces of art with Mrs Paterson, there are pictures of 'marbled' balloons hanging in our classroom. 

This week we have been extremely lucky to have extra people helping us with our learning. We have had Constable Cyrus teaching us about Road Safety. Check out the photos below of when we went on our walk, to practise crossing the road and watching our for sneaky driveways. 

But that's not all...we have also had the Tread Lightly caravan in school, teaching us how to be environmentally friendly and sustainable, which fits perfectly with the rest of our learning this year, and the theme for our Celebration Day! We went to the caravan to undertake some activities, we played games to help us think about what we had learnt and we also planted some seeds to grow! 

For these extra activities, we had some wonderful family volunteers to come and help us with our learning. THANK YOU to all of our volunteers - we love it when you come in to work with us! 

Just a reminder that it is our Room Four assembly next Friday - we hope to see lots of you there. Have a good weekend everyone. 😄

Collaborative Creativity with Cats!

Today we worked with Room 3, and the students from Room 1 joining both Room 3 and Room 4 in Term 4, to create our artistic cats! 

Working in pairs, we layered four strips of paper across each other. These strips were RECTANGLES. We glued each strip at the centre and then gently bent them upwards to reach the top, then glued them into position again. This created a SPHERE.

 

Whilst waiting for the glue to dry, we practised our skip counting. We had to count in either 2s or 5s upto 100 and back again. It's awesome when we find the chance to do maths whilst doing art!

We repeated this process with smaller strips of paper, which produced another sphere. This became the cat's head! We stuck the body and head together, and then fixed them to the base, so our cats wouldn't fall over.

Then we had to finish our cats, by adding: a tail, ears and whiskers. We had lots of fun, and enjoyed Participating and Contributing with each other. Miss Lane had fun joining in, and we all know how crazy Miss McGrath is about cats! We hope you like our photographs Mrs Law! 

Music & Dance, plus 'Fun with Fractions'!

Wow, another few busy weeks have flown by in Room 4! 

We have had great excitement in preparing for the Celebration Day in November. Lots of wonderful parents came in to help us with our papier mache creations - which will be on sale on the day! Mrs Rai and Miss Lane were our teachers for this artistic adventure, and we would like to say a huge 'Thank You' to them, as well as a massive 'Thanks' to Mrs Law who surprised us with her 'Guest Appearance' to advise us on our artwork. 

We are also having a lot of fun on Fridays during our Cultural Group preparations. As you walk around the school on Fridays, you will hear voices raised in singing, and see lots of different movements through dance, as each group practises for the Celebration Day performance.

So, 'What has been happening in the classroom?' we hear you ask. Part of our Mathematics time has been focusing on fractions. We have done this through equal sharing of objects to find either, one half (1/2), one quarter (1/4), one third (1/3) or one fifth (1/5) of a set. Have a look at these photos to see how we worked together to understand the concept and practise this skill:

Here we are discussing our mathematical thinking...

We were lucky to have Mrs Batchelor working with us...we shared our ideas, 

showing super skills of Participation and Contribution.

When we work together to share ideas, we have to show the value of 'Respect', which includes good listening and responding appropriately! These students demonstrated this wonderfully.

MISS McGRATH AND MRS PATERSON WOULD LIKE TO SAY A BIG 'THANK YOU' TO ALL THE PARENTS AND FAMILIES OF THE STUDENTS IN ROOM 4, FOR ALL THE SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT YOU HAVE GIVEN TO US IN MRS LAW'S ABSENCE. 

WE WOULD ALSO LIKE TO THANK THE STUDENTS IN ROOM 4, FOR THEIR SUPER ATTITUDES TOWARDS EACH OTHER AND THEIR LEARNING. ENJOY THE HOLIDAYS CHILDREN AND WE'LL LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU BACK IN TERM 4! 😃😃😃

Fun with Mrs Shinn!

Room 4 loves to visit other teachers and classrooms as part of our Junior Developmental Play programme. Yesterday, we were very lucky to visit Mrs Shinn in Room 1. Our focus Key Competency was Thinking - we had to ask each other lots of questions! Some examples of the types of questions we asked are:

• What are you making? 
• How did you do that? 
• Could you show me how to do that? 
• Could you help me to do that too please?

As well as 'Thinking' these activities also helped us build upon our skills of Participating and Contributing. It is really important for us to join in and help each other - we are getting very good at this!

Thanks Mrs Shinn for helping us with our learning!

Thumpa and Twitch

Instead of baby sitting, I have been 'rabbit sitting'!!
Thumpa and Twitch are Engelique's and Lucas' pets.
Thumpa is grey and Twitch is creamy.  They are very cute and becoming very tame. At night time they love to run, jump and leap while they are playing. They are very good friends and sometimes even lick and wash each other!
Make sure Room 4 you are still being friends with everyone... but you don't need to wash and lick each other like Thumpa and Twitch!
Love from Mrs Law

Sleepy afternoon nap time

Updating You About Our Learning!

We have been super busy over the last few weeks, learning lots of different things. Some of these are:

• Different writing styles
• Mathematical symmetry
• Music and Dance

Have a look at our wonderful butterflies. We see symmetry in nature every day. These butterflies have reflectional symmetry - both sides of the butterfly have the same use of shape and colour, but one side is a reflection of the other so it faces the opposite way! We have been using our positive mindsets, that even if we have made a 'mistake' on our butterflies, then it's actually a brilliant learning opportunity not a 'mistake' at all! Awesome work by Ashwin, Luisapeta and Cole!

       

Using our bodies to create symmetry, we worked with buddies imaging that one of us was the mirror. This was a lot of fun! Can you do this with one of your buddies?

 
 

 
 

Today, we had a lovely surprise when Mrs Simpson and baby Violet came to visit! Mrs Simpson listened to one of our reading groups - we think Violet was very interested in what the students were talking about. Room 4 are looking forward to having Mrs Simpson in the class next Thursday when Miss McGrath is away at camp with Year 5 and Year 6. Be sure to check out the blogs for Waitemata, Manukau and Hauraki sometime soon!

This afternoon was very musical! Rooms Three and Four came together to create musical representations of animals moving. We'll post some videos soon! Meanwhile, have a think...if you were going to create a piece of music about a tiger, what would it sound like and why? 

We love hearing your comments on our blog...please post some soon!

Welcome back to R4!

Hi everyone,

I'm sorry R4 have not been on their blog for a while. We are missing Mrs Law, but it has been interesting seeing the photos that she has put up on her blog! Wow - what a break, we hope you feel better soon Mrs Law.

Miss McGrath and Mrs Paterson are going to be putting up some of our learning VERY soon! However, until then....don't forget to come along to our assembly on Friday. We'll be sharing our learning from 2.15pm onwards, in the school hall. See you there!

HELLO ROOM 4 - Term 3 Week 3

Some of you asked me if I could share the last X-ray I had taken.
Here it is and also a photo of my plastered and bandaged arm.
My arm gets very heavy if I walk for a long time.
Next week I go and visit the bone doctor. Yay..... 
I have my fingers crossed the plaster and bandages might be taken off.

     

                                                      Can you see the two bones starting to mend?

HELLO FROM MRS LAW

Hi Room 4.......I thought you might like to see the Xray of my arm.  
Can you see where the bone is broken?
I HAVE TO USE MY LEFT HAND TO DO EVERYTHING, WHICH IS REALLY TRICKY. 
I have to learn to hold a pencil in my left hand.....nip, flip, grip! It's really hard to do!

Have fun at gymnastics next week....and look after 
Mr McGuire, Bronwyn, Mrs Batchelor and each other. xx

Learning Through Play

Each week, for one afternoon session the Junior classes spend time 

'Learning Through Play'.   

Each of our classes gives the children a different play experience. Playing also incorporates our Key Competency focus for the term, using our SOLO Taxonomy rubric. 
(see at the end of the post)

This term it has been Participating and Contributing, with the emphasis on working and sharing ideas and thoughts with a buddy or within a group.

This is a great chance to develop our school wide focus of Oral Language, Speaking and Listening.

Today Room 4 visited Room 2, the emphasis being the Key Competency and 
Oral Language through role play and entertaining each other, which they just loved.
The photos explain it all! 

        
         

                                                                                                   

 

Caleb demonstrating his gymnastics skills, techniques and STRENGTH! Frank and Wiremu also....

STARS MATHS GROUPS

Sual, Marcus, Nora, Grace, Luisapeta and Brayer have started exploring and understanding numbers using PLACE VALUE with Tens and Ones. 
Heaps of discussion today...let's keep exploring together STARS....

Portfolio Task

Busy working on our Portfolio task to share with our mum's and dad's  to show our learning about Mrs Jones.

Portfolio Task

Busy working on our Portfolio  Inquiry task about Mrs Jones,  to share with our mum's and dad's.