Rakau sticks

This week in Room 6 we have been doing some maori stick games. I played my students a beat and they had to repeat it back to me. They then had a go at making up their own and playing it to a partner. Quite a good way to build up rhythm and work on listening skills.

Week 3, Term 3 2014

On Monday for our inquiry we were looking at the life cycle of a bird - we focused on the pūkeko. I had seen this great wee activity on Pintrest where children create their pūkeko out of paper. I did lots of modelling around this before I let them go off to create on their own. 

They are still cute, but not what I had in mind.

Once they had finished their life cycle it was very hard to follow... so on Monday night I went away and changed my plan - we redid them on Tuesday with a template and the children used crayons and paper to match - was a much better lesson! 

My inquiry seems to be drawing out a lot of questions that caught me off guard especially when we spoke about baby birds and humans - I really had to think about what path to take it down when answering these sorts of questions. "Where do baby humans come from?" "Why do only eggs that live with a boy bird have babies inside?" 

For writing I am continuing needs based group work where I pull children out where necessary. This is working really well and my students are getting taught exactly what they need. On Thursdays we have a free choice writing day. I decided to change things up a bit after reading an article on a classroom who had removed all desks and had little nocks for kids to work in. I did this a lot with my class last year as I thought they were better prepared. However my class really surprised me and the quality of writing didn't slip at all. For the whole time they were completely silent (usually there is a small amount of chit-chat going on). During this time I also wrote my own story to help with modelling the importance of it.
Below are some of the opinions from my students.
"I liked it because I got to lie on the cushion and write my story. It was comfy." - Travis (Year 2)
"I didn't like it because the sun was in my face. Next time I will pull the curtain." - Glaceous (Year 1)
"It was nice and cosy." - Logan (Year 1)
"Because it was nice and quite" - Cayden (New Entrant)
"I like sitting where I wanted to because it was quieter than when we sit at our desks because their wasn't people close to me." Kalyx (Year 2)

On Wednesday I met with my mentor teacher and we discussed the Record of Oral Language after I had tested a couple of kids. We spoke of some ways to help develop their Oral Language in different ways.

My reading is going good and I have my Principal in taking 3-4 groups per day. I tested 6 children and am so happy that 4 of them are ready to move up a reading level. I can definitely see the buddy reading that they have been doing has helped their fluency. Now just to continue a big push on high frequency words and comprehension strategies.

My goal for week 4:

• Record a lesson in each of reading, writing and maths to reflect on and help inform my teaching.

Ruru Art

Today in Room 6 we had a fun day doing art. I LOVE teaching my students art but I often don't do it enough. The following idea I borrowed from my Mum who teaches a class of similar age. I altered the idea to suit my resources and to fit with my topic and I am really pleased with the result.

The steps I took to complete the image were as follows:

1. We painted the background blue with a black tree and branch.

2. We bubble painted the bodies by bubbling up a mix of colouring, detergent and water. Then placed our owl body over top.

3. We cut out our wings, feet, beak and eyes and stuck these to the body. The body was then stuck to our background.

4. Our final outcome was these cool we Ruru (owl) pictures - they are going to look awesome on our wall.

Baby birds

Today we were looking at baby birds. We talked about where birds come from and how they get out of the shell. We didn't know for sure so we watched this great wee YouTube clip to see how they hatched.

We then discussed what baby birds eat. We decided that we eat different things to them. As a class we then sorted some items into foods that baby birds eat and don't eat. We also had to use our prior knowledge of different birds as some baby birds do eat meat!

We did this together and I then I displayed it on the visualiser so that my students could check where the words go. This was a challenge for some but most quickly got the hang of it.

Beans - Brain break

Stand up, sit down -brain break

Brain breaks

This term I have started introducing brain breaks into the class. When children start to go a bit 'off' we come to the mat and have a break. We usually have 2-3 a day and they last approximately 2-3 minutes (such a small amount of time out of the day that help bring their focus back in)!
Will post them in a separate post, check them out below (apologies about the quality).