Home Learning Update

I've had a couple of parents recently enquiring about home learning. I have done blog posts in the past about what I consider to be a solid home learning programme. Homework is of course optional, a decision to make as a family, but there is a homework sheet available if your family participates. It is up to your child to pick up a homework sheet themselves, but I do endeavour to check them weekly and read any comments from parents about what they've been up to at home. Here are my recommendations.

• I feel strongly that students need to be reading a novel daily at home for 20-30 minutes.
• Reading to your child daily is also highly recommended.
• Reading Eggs is a good supplement to novel reading, a few people have let me know that their child tends to guess the questions rather than actually reading properly. This isn't an issue I've run into in the past to be honest, but is something to be mindful of at home. I monitor what the students are up to when they are working on the programme at school.
• Maths Buddy is a super way of getting some maths into the home learning programme. I set tasks weekly and these can be completed at home.
• Daily diary writing or similar is a classic home learning task.
• I do try to suggest home learning tasks related to the class programme via the blog as they occur to me. Keeping up with my weekly updates will give you occasional ideas.

You won't do all of these things all the time (except the reading hopefully), but in my view they are all useful tasks that will help your child learn. 

Rock On,
Mr M

DLO's

Kia Ora All,

The students have spent the best part of Friday learning to do some basic videos using chromebooks and creating a DLO about some statistics we've been working away on over the term. DLO stands for Digital Learning Object. The aim of a DLO is for the students to explain what they've learnt and celebrate and share their success with whanau and their peers. Scroll down the blog page, or click on your child's name, to see if they got a video completed today.

The briefing I gave the students for the DLO was that it needed to include:

• The goal (create a survey and graph the results).
• Show and explain the survey.
• Show and explain the spreadsheet created from the survey.
• Show and explain the features of the graph.
• Talk about what they could tell from the graph including at least: most popular, least popular and difference between them.

When you view and comment on your child's video, it would be a good idea to view the brief and give your child a comment telling them one thing they nailed, something to work on next time and finish with a positive comment.

Rock On,

Mr M

Information Report

Kia Ora All,

This week we've been reading and highlighting the key ideas in information reports about sea creatures related to our Rocky Shore inquiry. Next we've been making notes (hopefully in our own words) in our reading books. In writing time, we are currently in the process of producing our own information reports about the creatures we read about during reading time.

If you want to link your home learning programme to a school activity this week, you could read an article of interest with your child and get them to show you how they take notes. Here is a website with some fish fact files. You will also find others with a quick google search.

Then you could look at the success criteria below (I always have a goal and success criteria for writing time, this is an example from this week's writing programme). You could get your child to use the notes you took in your reading to write their own information report on the animal you researched.

Rock On,

Mr M

Carmyn and Emily's Statistics DLO

Kahu and Kiyo's Statistics DLO

Aonghus, Luca and Aurora's Statistics DLO

Max and Lochie's Statistics DLO

Aliana and Gabriel's Statistics DLO

Jack and Brody's Statistics DLO

Room 5’s Amazing Camp

I woke up for some reason .  My dad was on me and I said get off me dad, you’re so heavy.  He flinged off me like a silver bullet.  He said “good morning Lochie”.  “Good morning Dad, what’s on today?” “Nothing, why”.  “Because you’re going to Bridge Valley!!!!!!!!!!!” Dad said excitedly.  “Oh yeah, I forgot about that!”  “Have you got my bags ready?” “No, I need to pack them!!”   “Ok then get up”.  “Ok Dad.  I will get ready for camp!!!”  

“See you Mum and Dad”.  “Have a good time at camp Lochie!!”.  “I will have lots of fun” I said excitedly.  Woa I was not expecting it to be like that anyway.  It will still be fun”.  I wonder what cabin I am in?  I just have to wait and see. Yay I am in the cabin with Louis, Kahu, Kiyo, Broady, Aonghus and Teru!!!!!

The next morning for breakfast we had toast and cereal with fruit and yoghurt and it was so good!!!  Then we went for a swim and I went on the water slide.  I also went on the hydroslide and it was fun.  There was a person called Georgia who taught us to play Get Fresh.  I wet Logan on the head and it was fun.  I liked camp coze it is awesome!

By Lochie

Welcome to Week 9

Kia Ora All,

Welcome to week 9. I'm back on deck this week as my wife's back is much improved.

• The rocky shore mini inquiry is under way. Any extra research you do at home is always useful around inquiry topics such as this one. If you're looking at spicing up your home learning programme or daily reading sessions with your child, I'm sure they'd enjoy doing some research with you on the internet. This would tie in with a writing opportunity if you're looking for one. Drawing a diagram of a sea creature and researching facts to include on the diagram would be a potentially neat wee home learning experience.
• I've been continuing to monitor and set new tasks on Maths Buddy. Students have time at school of course, but if you want to include maths in your home learning programme and haven't yet looked at Maths Buddy with your child, I'd encourage you to do so.
• Well done to those of you who managed to locate your child's writing on the blog and leave a comment. If you haven't managed to do so yet, below is a short video about how to go about it. 

Rock on,

Mr M

Welcome To Week 8

Kia Ora All,

Welcome to Week 8. As you may have noticed, we've been working on publishing our camp recounts through the blog. I've managed to post almost everyone's camp recount. Those who aren't posted yet, will be very soon. Great job to those of you who have already read your child's writing and posted a comment. Receiving comments online about work they are celebrating is very motivating for the students. If you're not sure how to comment on the blog, just reading it through with your child and offering praise is worthwhile and motivating.

• This Wednesday we're visiting Paton's Rock as part of a school-wide inquiry topic entitled "The Rocky Shore." I recommend having a chat to your child about tide pools, times you've been to the beach to look for creatures, what lives in these types of environments and other relevant things around the topic. This helps to activate prior knowledge (things they already know about the topic) and builds connections between what we'll be reading about at school and their existing real life experiences. 
• Please keep up with the home reading. Most students I spoke to on Friday had novels on the go and said that they read daily at home, so great job parents! It's getting into that tired point of the term where everyone begins to flag a little bit, so make sure you keep up with the home reading. It all helps.
• I'm going to be away for a few days this week to help out at home as my wife has hurt her back. If you need to contact me, please flick me an email and I'll endeavour to respond. 
• If you haven't filled in our statistics surveys, please click here and have a crack at them. 

Rock on,

Mr M

Teru's Camp Recount

BRIDGE VALLEY

We were pulling up the drive to BRIDGE

VALLEY adventure camp my car was

Going psycho i was so excited my heart was  pounding like a hammer.

I saw the Hydro slide it looked

AWESOME we got told were our

Cabins were our in them i was with

Kahu,Kiyo,Louis, Lochie, Brody, Aonghus. First activity we had was climbing. I made it the highest in my group. Next we had high ropes. It was like all these really strong metal ropes. We are wearing harnesses and clips called carabinas. We also used tweezels to open and close your harnesses. That was a big day, I thought. We had dinner and dessert and saw all the photos of the day.

We had a good sleep and then went in the kayaks. I’m not that good at kayaking but I still loved it. That night we got to go on the hydroslide. I went on it first with Zeb. I was as fast as a zooming rocket. So we did it again and again until I said “Let’s go on the black slide.” That was even faster. We went on the aqua tramp for a few minutes and then we went on the diving board. It was a really high diving board. I was going to do a front flip, but I decided not to. Again we had dinner and another good sleep and we also saw the photos of the day. We had another good sleep.

I was really tired in the morning and it was the most tiring day. The first activity we had was abseiling. I loved abseiling, probably more than high ropes. It was a bit scary, but really extremely fun. We made some damper, it was delicious but smoke got in my eyes, it burnt. My damper cooked really quick. Then we played a game called get fresh.

Then we played a game that was even more fun. It was called Drip, Drip, Drop. It was like Duck, Duck, Goose except you go drip, drip drop. On drip you drip some water on their hear. But if you want to say drop on someone you drop a full bucket of water. And then Logan got a whole bucket of water, and guess who he poured it on? It was me! I got soaked.

It was getting late so we went caving. We found the Gorilla with eyes of glowing red. It looked sick. We had dinner and dessert and then we looked at the photos of the day. They were funny.

We went to sleep and in the morning we had breakfast, it was yum. It was the last day. We used the air rifles. I shot 3 targets. We also did archery I hit the target 3 times. It was my 3rd favourite activity.

Then we had iron man race. All the teams versed. It was like first person ran, second person kayaks, third person jumps off the diving board, fourth person ran, fifth person did the obstacle course, sixth person ran, seventh person did the playground, eighth took the basketball shot and got it in, ninth ran, tenth caved, eleventh ran (which was me). We won.

Bridge Valley was so fun!

By Teru

Toby's Camp Recount

     Room 5 camp 2017

I woke up. Another regular old day I said to myself… “Toby!!! I suddenly jumped “ mum  it’s  7.30  in  the  morning’’ I know “then I remembered “it’s room 5 camp”! it took 10 minutes to pack my stuff. Then we zoomed of to school.  It took 2 hours to get to bridge valley camp. The high ropes were awesome. It took half an hour to do the practice course.  Ten minutes later it was my turn on the high ropes.  At the end I went down the flying fox.  It was scary but fun.

By Toby

Emily's Camp Recount

Camp bridge valley .         I Woke up too exited  to speak .I got dressed not a moment to lose . I jumped in the car like a   boomerang.I knew it was going to be awesome !!! We arrived there. No one knew what was going on it was a … raft race. We went to our  teams. When it was my turn my heart was beating like drums with no air .I was so scared  of the eels .Then I got on the raft . Kick and kick ...till I  got Dragged under the raft I was crying I could have died . The day went fast I didn't like the first day of camp .Because I got dragged but the rest was fun I guess. SWIMMING .The diving platform it felt like it was 300m high but it was not .I jumped into the eel eating lake !I went to Aliana and we swam to the little island .We wanted to go on the tramp so we did till Emma’s dad threw us off . It was really fun I hope to go back .

WATER SLIDE.The water slide was so small .I went on it .It’s so fast Mr Cullen pushed me when I was on the slide .I went so fast I hit my head at the bottom  .They were super fast the black one was the Fastest by far .It felt like a flying monkey on a slingshot .I wanted to do more but Mr Cullen said that's for tonight.

I love it so much I hope to go back again!!!!

Statistics Surveys

Kia Ora All,

Room 5 have been working away at learning the ways of the Google Docs. As part of our ICT and statistics programme, we've put together some quick surveys. We'd really appreciate it if you took a couple of minutes to tell us your favourite choices on the below surveys. Videos and graphs of our findings to follow!

Rock on,

Mr M

Welcome To Week 6

Kia Ora All,

It's week 6 already, I can't believe how quickly the term is flying by!

• This week we're starting Add / Sub in maths. This means I'll be taking groups and looking at some strategies for adding and subtracting numbers.
• While home learning is totally optional, it is vital that your child reads at home every day. I spoke to a number of students last week who don't have reading material on the go at home presently. Please have a conversation with your child about what they are reading and make sure they have a novel or similar. Also, reading to your child is highly recommended.
• Only one student actually showed me their homework checklist from last week. It was a bit of a squeeze to get everything done on Friday; if your child did participate in home learning and forgot to show me, get them to show me sometime this week. 
• The below video is a piece of rewindable learning (lessons that can be revisited) around a maths concept we'll be looking at this week. I recommend viewing the video with your child and doing some examples together at home. Apologies for the budget camera work!

Rock on,
Mr M