All About Learning

Emily's Calf Club Day

My favourite part of Calf Club Day was when it was prize giving. It was my favourite part because you could win prizes. I won a 1st ribbon for having the best pet. My pet was a lamb called Snowflake. 

For my vegetable creation I created a bunny. I used potatoes, carrots and two raisins for the eyes. 

This is my lamb, Snowflake. 

I created a horse for my clay creation. I decided to do a horse because I love horses and it was easy to create. 

For petal art I wrote 'lamb' because I had a lamb for Calf Club. 

Garry's Calf Club Day

My favourite part of Calf Club was my Minecraft construction and playing with Hannah's lamb. 

For my petal art I created the word cow, with pink petals. 

I created a liquorice mouth, a beard made out of sprinkles, a jelly bean nose and two eyes made from M&Ms. 

For my clay creation I did a pig in a paddock, eating hay. 

My vegetable creation is a giraffe. It has carrot legs, a potato body and a carrot for his neck. 

By Garry 

Rylee's Calf Club Day

My favourite part of Calf Club was when my lamb won two 4th ribbons for how he looked and when I won second place in Minecraft. 

This is my vegetable creation. I created a lamb with broccoli in his mouth.  

Here is my petal art. It spells lamb. 

This is my pet lamb, called Emerald. When you run around with him in a paddock he jumps up in the air with his little feet. 

I also decorated my cookie to look like my lamb. 

By Rylee

To Room 8, From Ollie

I've been missing you all so much that I decided to come up with a plan so that Miss Gentil would HAVE to take me to school. My plan of attack was to cause as much trouble as possible so that Miss Gentil wouldn't want me to be at home by myself. 

First I started eating out of Miss Gentil's bowl of muesli this morning. Then I jumped into the bowl and started flicking all the seeds and dried fruit around. Miss Gentil wasn't very happy, but I kept going anyway. Then she picked me up and put me down on the bench, while she started to get ready to do the dishes. This was the perfect opportunity for bath time!! I flew into the sink and began splashing around in the water. Miss Gentil had, had enough of me getting into mischief so she put me into my pet mobile and put me in the car. I'm so excited!! I can't wait to see all of Room 8 again. 

Here are some photos of my master plan in action. 

Learning How to Use Storyrobe

Today we learnt how to use Storyrobe. In groups we played different maths games and then we made movies about them. We had to take photos of us playing the game. Then we uploaded to Storyrobe. Next we recorded our voice for each photo. Once we had finished we played the movie to check if we made any mistakes. Then we showed our teacher. Miss Gentil had to help us upload them to YouTube. 

Here are a couple of the movies we made today. 

By Hannah 

Learning How to Use Educreations

Today we learnt how to use Educreations. This is the first video we created. We have been learning how to use our addition facts to help us to solve multiplication problems. 

Is That an Earthquake?

Today I read Is That an Earthquake? I hope you like my reading.

By Josiah 

listen to ‘Is That an Earthquake?’ on Audioboo

No, Skipper!

Today I recorded No, Skipper! I hope you like the story. 

By Josiah 

listen to ‘No, Skipper’ on Audioboo

Adventure Learning Reflections Week 6

Every Wednesday we have Adventure Learning in our classroom. This term there are nine groups, learning about everything from Minecraft to Emperor penguins and how to speak Spanish. I'm so proud of everything that you are achieving Room 8. It's so exciting to see you all learning about topics that you're passionate about.

Here are our reflections from Week 6 

Created with Padlet

The Ant and the Grasshoppers

This is my book for this week. I enjoyed recording my voice. I made a few mistakes, but then I recorded my voice properly after lots of practising. When I went to Mr T he said he was impressed and Miss Gentil said she was proud of me. I got a principal's award sticker from Mr T. I hope you enjoy the video.

By Josiah 

listen to ‘The Ant and the Grasshoppers’ on Audioboo

Adventure Learning Planning Week 6

Check out our Adventure Learning plans for this week. There is lots of exciting learning happening in our classroom. 

Created with Padlet

Adventure Learning Week 5 Reflections

Here are our Adventure Learning reflections from Week 5. We use Padlet to write our reflections. 


Please note that all reflections are completed independently by the children and are not edited my the teacher. This is to show the progress that we are making with reflecting on our learning. 

Created with Padlet

Minecraft in Adventure Learning

For Adventure Learning we are doing Minecraft. In our group there is Emily, Josiah, Brianna & Nicole. We are learning how build  houses and gardens. I built agarden from a Minecraft book. Here is a photo of my garden, compared to the one in the book.

This is the garden from the Minecraft book. 

This is the garden I made today. Have you got any ideas for how I could make it even better?

By Nicole 

Minecraft Survey

Hi! Our names are Rylee , Hannah and Duprey.
Do you use Minecraft in your class room? If your answer is yes we would love you to full out our form , here is the address. We would love to see all your answers. 
It will help if you could answer our questions.
The site is just below. Click the website and it will take you right to it. We have also sent our survey out on Twitter to get more answers. We're excited to see your answers. 


Here is the link - goo.gl/AmYM92 

Our Blog About Emperor Penguins

For Adventure Learning we are learning about Emperor penguins. Today we created a new blog so we can share our learning about penguins with the world. I also made a QR code. When you scan it, it will take you to our blog. We are going to print the QR code and stick it onto the whiteboard. We hope you enjoy reading our blog. We would love some comments. What would you like to know about Emperor penguins?

Here is a photo of Emperor Penguins, from Wonderopolis. 

By Kyle 

The Traveling Rhino Project

In Room 8 we are participating in the Traveling Rhino Project. There are five rhinos that are traveling to schools all over the world. The Traveling Rhino Project is about teaching children about rhinos and how we can save them from becoming extinct. We want people to stop poaching the rhinos for their horns. 

The rhino we are hosting in our class is called Lesedi. She has all over Australia and NZ. This is what she looks like. 

Today we explored the Save Our Rhinos wiki page. We learnt that there are five different species of rhino. The black became extinct in 2013 because people kept poaching. It makes us disappointed that people are doing this. The black rhinos had the biggest horns so we think that's why they became extinct first. People think that they can use the horns to make medicine to make people better, but it's not true. We are going to think of some ideas to try to help save the rhino and teach other people about why it's important. 

We read this story below. You might like to read it at school or at home.  

http://saveourrhinos.wikispaces.com/file/view/Ronnie-and-the-Rhino-Horn.pdf

Caves, Campfires and Watering Holes

This morning when we came to school our furniture was still in a big pile! We were excited because we knew that this meant we were going to redesign our learning spaces for the term. In our classroom we have cave spaces, watering holes, a campfire space and a sandpit. We also have mountain top spaces in our class. 

Here is some information from Core Education about the different learning spaces we have in our classroom. 

'E 'Otua Tataki Au - This is a Tongan song, sang by Josiah and William

This is a Tongan song that our Dad taught us. We kept on singing and singing and then we knew the whole song. We hope you guys check it out. 

By Josiash and William 



listen to ‘'E 'Otua Tataki Au’ on Audioboo

Wacky Hair Day

Today was Wacky Hair Day!! Check out some of the awesome hair styles that we came to school with today. Miss Gentil even coloured her hair with hair chalk. Pic Collages were created by Rylee and Nicole F. 

How to Create a QR code

I have been learning how to make a QR code. A QR code is a code that you can scan and it will take you to a blog, website, YouTube video or read something to you. This week we have been taking photos of ourselves holding a blank piece of paper. Then Miss Gentil printed our photos off and put them onto coloured paper. Next we stuck a QR code on. The QR code links to the posts that we have posted on our class blog. 

Here is how you can make a QR code

1. First you need to go to www.beautifulqrcodes.com
2. Put a link to anything you want like a blog address or YouTube clip address into the text box. 
3. Select what colour you would like the QR code to be. 
4. Then click generate. 
5. Right click on the QR code and click save as to save it to your computer. 
6. If you want to insert your QR code onto a blog you can upload it like you would a normal picture. 

You can scan your QR code using a QR code reader app like this one. Search for QR code reader on the Apple Store. It is a free app. 

Thank you for reading my post. 

By Kyle

Apps of the Week

Every week we are going to spend part of our Friday morning learning how to use some new iPad apps. The first app we had a go at exploring today was Explain Everything. Explain Everything is an app that you can use to explain anything. You can draw a picture and record your voice while you're drawing it. We discovered that you can change the colours by clicking twice on a colour on the left hand side of the screen. We could record our voice by clicking on the red circle that is in the middle, down the bottom. You click it again to stop recording. Then you push play (the green arrow) to hear what you recorded. You can also upload your own photos from your camera roll. 

Here are some of the ways we think we could use this app to support our learning:

• To explain a maths strategy. 
• To share what we've learnt about our Adventure Learning topic. 
• For Science Fair e.g. draw a diagram of our experiment and explain it by recording our voice. 
• We could retell a story that we have read during reading time. 
• We could use it for Buzz About Books to do a book review. 

Explain Everything app icon 

The next app we got to explore was called Maths Slide Addition and Subtraction. Four people can play Maths Slide. You choose which colour you would like to be at the start. Then you get given a maths problem to solve. You slide your answer into the middle. If it is incorrect it will slide back. Whoever gets rid of all of their numbers first wins the game. 

We could use it for our maths to help us learn our addition and subtraction facts. We think it's good that it has different levels so that there is a game that every maths group can play.  

App review written by Room 8

Kids Cafe Day

Room 8's Adventure Learning and Kids Cafe Presentations

These are our Adventure Learning and Kids Cafe Presentations. We created our eBooks by using My Story on the iPads. The Kids Helping Kids group also put together a small movie to teach other children how to knit. 

We have been learning about caring for Red Eared Sliders. 

Click here to view our eBook. 

We have been learning how to make a bee garden. 

Click here to see our eBook. 

We have been learning how to care for Green and Golden Bell Frogs.

Click here to see our eBook. 

I did an extra Kids Cafe presentation all about horses.

Click here to see my eBook. 

We have been learning about the SPCA. 

Click here to see our eBook.

We have been learning about dinosaurs. 

Click here to see our eBook. 

We have been learning how to knit, as well as how we can use our new learning to help babies and young children in South Auckland. 

Click here to see our eBook. 

Kids Cafe

We are lucky to now have five iPads in our classroom. We will be integrating these throughout the curriculum and our every day learning experiences. Over the past week the children have been learning how to create an eBook using My Story. I have been looking for ways for Room 8 to share what they create on the iPads with a wider audience. That's when I came up with the concept of Kids Cafe. 

The idea of Kids Cafe is to get more children teaching each other. I wanted to take down the four walls of our classroom, distance and time barriers. So I started connecting with teachers via Twitter. Soon a bunch of enthusiastic teachers came on board and were excited about giving Kids Cafe a go. There are quite a few teachers from different parts of NZ, as well as a teacher in Canada and one in Malaysia. Kids Cafe is an awesome opportunity for children to share what they're passionate about through literacy and connect with other classes on a global level. 

Kids Cafe runs on a four week cycle. 

Week 1 - children contribute their ideas for presentations to a Google doc. 

Week 2 and 3 - children create their presentations. This could be an eBook like we did, a YouTube clip, Google Presentation etc. 

Week 4 - Each class to run their own Kids Cafe Day in their class where children learn from other children all over the world, directly via the presentations. Note: these are all uploaded to a Google Presentation. They're either embedded or a link is provided. 

To find out more about Kids Cafe you can visit the blog - http://kidscafenz.blogspot.co.nz/

Diligence

The school virtue that we're focusing on at the moment is diligence. Diligence is working hard and doing the best that you can. When you are diligent you take special care with what you're doing to try to make things turn out right. Sometimes things don't turn out the way we want and that's okay. We can always learn from our mistakes, but being diligent means you put in 100% effort in and aim for excellence. 

After we had a class discussion about what diligence is we shared some examples of when we had been diligent. Here is what we came up with...

Being diligent is when you're...

• Baking cookies and you're trying really hard to make sure that you carefully follow the recipe so that your cookies turn out right. 
• Carefully planning and putting Lego pieces together to construct a Lego castle. 
• Focusing carefully on your dance moves and aiming for excellence. It's important to be diligent when you're dancing, because otherwise you could hurt yourself. 
• Trying your best to construct a sentence or paragraph correctly. You have to remember to try your best with spelling, punctuation and organising your ideas. 
• Working hard to improve your Maths on Maths Whizz by doing some at home or while you're waiting for the bus, as well as in class time. 
• Taking time with your learning and care with your presentation, instead of rushing it to try and do a quick job. 
• Trying again and again to get your horse to jump over the jumps so that you can lift them up to the next level. 

How can you show diligence this week? Don't forget to draw a picture and write a couple of sentences at home this week. You will get to share these on Friday. 

Tweets of the Week

Every week during the @Kidsedchatnz chat the teacher that moderates the chat looks for tweets of the week. This week Emily's tweet was selected to be one of the tweets of the week. Well done Emily!! Emily gets her tweet posted on the Kidsedchatnz blog and also gets to wear the Kidsedchatnz badge for a week. Here is the link to the Kidsedchatnz blog - http://www.kidsedchatnz.blogspot.co.nz/

Here is the Kidsedchatnz badge. 

First Term 2 Twitter Chat

Today we participated in our first Twitter chat for Term 2. The topic today was Outdoor Education. It was a flipped chat today. That means we watched a YouTube video before our chat. You can check out the YouTube video below. 




Then we discussed the Twitter questions in small groups and shared our ideas with the rest of the class. Here are the questions that we had to think about today: 

1. Do you agree with the people in this video on what outdoor education is? Why?
2. What do you think are the benefits of learning outside the classroom?
3. Do you think learning outside the classroom should be part of all the 'normal' lessons? Why?
4. Do you think going on a field trip is a good out of the classroom learning opportunity? Why?
5. Where would you like to go for a learning outside your classroom experience? Why?
6. Would you rather use a Virtual Field Trip instead of physically going to or visiting a certain place? Why/ why not?
7. What does your school do for outdoor education?
8. Outdoor education is about outdoor activities, but it is also about learning about the environment. Why is this important?

We all took turns at writing and tweeting a tweet today. Everyone had a turn at doing something. Miss Gentil helped us collect our tweets, by using Storify. Here are some of our tweets from today. 

Adventure Learning Week 10 Reflections

We ran out of time to do our Adventure Learning reflections last week, but caught up today before we did our Week 11 planning. Here are our reflections on Padlet. 

Created with Padlet

Learning about Anzac

In Room 8 we have just started learning about ANZAC this week. This week we will be participating in the first Trans-Tasman Twitter chat for kids. Room 8 please discuss these questions at home with your family and be prepared to share your ideas on Thursday. 

Q1. How does your country/school/family celebrate ANZAC Day?

Q2. What does ANZAC day mean to you personally?

Q3. Do you have any extended family that fought in Gallipoli? What stories can you tell us?

Q4. Do you have any extended family that have fought in any other conflicts?

Q5. Do you think ANZAC day is important? Should we celebrate the day? How else could ANZAC Day be celebrated?

Q6. During Gallipoli, Australia and NZ fought side by side. Do you think the relationship between the 2 countries is important?

Q7. Why are poppies sold before and on Anzac Day? Why was the poppy chosen and what does it represent?

Q8. How did the Anzac biscuit originate? Do you have a favourite Anzac biscuit recipe that you would like to share?

Q9. Have you ever been to an ANZAC Day celebration? What happened and how did it make you feel?

To find out more about Kidsedchatnz you can visit the blog: http://kidsedchatnz.blogspot.co.nz/ 

You could also check out some of these links: 

·         The last post sound clip -  http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/sound/last-post-anzac-day ·         History of the last post -  http://www.anzacday.org.au/education/tff/bugle.html ·         Create a poppy and learn about its significance -  http://www.awm.gov.au/education/programs/prepost/PRIM_makePoppy.pdf ·         Virtual tour of Gallipoli -  http://www.anzac.govt.nz/gallipoliguide/gallipoliguidegallery.html

Lots of Socks Day!!

Today we all wore lots of socks to raise awareness for World Down Syndrome Day, also known as Lots of Socks Day!! World Down Syndrome Day takes place on the 21 March every year. The date 21/3 represents the three copies of chromosome 21 that people with Down Syndrome have. 

Check out the photos of us wearing socks in creative ways. We even got a shout out on More FM this morning!! Did you remember to wear your socks today? 

We watched this YouTube clip to learn more about Down Syndrome.

 



Miss Gentil also shared a photo of her friend Dan. We think Dan is awesome. 

We made these posters for you Dan to say happy Lots of Socks Day!! 

Happy Lots of Socks Day Dan!! - Video Maker