Sunday, March 29, 2015

Short Final Week of Term one and more Bunnies

Students will be working on their Battle Bunnies for homework and any unfinished spelling units or genres of writing. (First Person, Instructional/Procedural Text/Science write-ups). They each have a list of what they need to complete. The Easter craft session with our buddy class today went extremely well. A PhotoStory of the session will be made. Their completed First Person pieces will be moderated with other teachers this Thursday at Kingston Primary along with the time and measurement task completed this morning.
Battle Bunny Focus
 

Some of Our Bunnies


By SG

By SG

By AG


By JS

By TW

By TW

By TW
By AG

By NB
Well done AE...love this jacket
Skirt to come by HI







Butterfly Bunny by CS

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Homework March 23rd - 25th Spelling Unit

This week it is just finishing off the spelling unit focusing on the "drop the y, add ies rule."  There are  three levels and your son/daughter has received his/her appropriate level. A detailed introduction and over an hour was given in class time to work on this unit today. The Spelling Bingo game has focused on these words too.

Click below on the link to play interactive  game to test your skills:


Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Battle Bunny Sewing Challenge



As  an add-on to the Jon Schieszka "Battle Bunny"  Unit, students will be sewing their own bunnies. They are currently learning the basic blanket stitch and making a needle and pin holder.. Stay tuned...

The prototype is on the hop...


And a BIG thank you to Leonie for all of her hard work helping me with the preparation of the bunny patterns. Greatly appreciated!

Another one stitched in black for something different.

Battle Bunny with a detonator by AG


Monday, March 16, 2015

Plasticine Pictures


This unit of work also involves a considerable amount of design and some careful preparation. Students'  homework this week is to work on the pre-planning for this unit. Students need to produce a design which has layers, a main focus and a secondary focus. They have a list of the colours available. On Monday students viewed the tutorial by illustrator Barbara Reid and we discussed the necessary elements for a successful design. These pictures will be done over a period of a month as it works best with only two students working in the art area with the Plasticine and tools at one time. I have already sent quite a few students back to revisit their designs so that they can achieve at their best with this medium.  Below are two models of  preliminary plans:
:



 This first two picture were just finished today by two very talented and persistent young girls. (24th March)

By CS


By KL

Two more completed today March 16th

By SG

By AL

More from March
By CG




By RC

By GL
By GL

By NB

By SJ





Wednesday, March 11, 2015

The Box...

Well today had a few surprises...Mrs Andropolos came in the morning for 50 minutes as I had a meeting about how to use the spelling program Word Shark and gave the students the challenge to make this box, using the following extract from The Key to Rondo by Emily Rodda (Well done AL for working out the source!)

The box was about as big as a shoebox, and had four short legs.  Its lid was smooth, shining black, quite plain except for a narrow, oval-shaped ring of real silver in the centre.  Its sides, however, were painted with amazingly detailed scenes, and this was what made it so special, and so interesting.

The long side at the front was a town filled with houses, shops, and people.  The long side at the back was green and peaceful, with a castle on a hill, a queen in a long blue gown, a dragon flying high in the sky, and a river winding down from misty mountains.  One of the short sides was a coast of sea and golden sand.  The other was mainly forest, where tall trees rose from a sea of lacy ferns and shadows seemed to flicker with the stripes of tigers.

The class was so engaged with this activity I decided to keep going with it as it was such a fabulous, innovative idea.  So after their music on they went with the challenge. A PhotoStory will be produced showing their journey through the comprehension, design and team work aspects of this task,  The afternoon was also spent explaining the Plasticine 3D pics we will start on next week. Another plus...Fireman Barry commented on how amazing and attentive the class has been during the fire safety program.

Beginnings...

Art works underway...

One group finished early and it's amazing!


Leg construction...love these


Peek-a-boo



Monday, March 9, 2015

Are Your Homes as Safe as Houses? Firefighter Barry and Homework 10/03/2015

This title is the  opening and very wise question from Barry Blackwell or Firefighter Barry as he is affectionately known  by the  students.  I think all teachers adore him and appreciate all he does; I am sure the Tasmanian Fire Department are aware of what a gem he is. He is fabulous with the kids and has a friendly and fair approach. I also love listening to him and every year, even after some 18 years, I always learn something new. Today the students had their first lesson in fire safety. Tonight's homework is based on today's lesson.



Today Firefighter Barry discussed the importance of smoke alarms, their positioning in a house, and also showed how they worked and how to keep them maintained. Apparently they can be purchased for as little as $6. He also emphasized the importance of having an escape plan for the whole family in the event of a house fire.  The students viewed some footage from a Current Affair showing just how quickly a fire in a house can spread and the damage is can cause in only a matter of  minutes. The focus was on the fact that within a minute dense smoke fills the air and it is impossible to see and after a minute the room temperature soared to a whopping 600 degrees! And please remember if you are in a top bunk don't roll out of bed, just climb down the ladder  as normal. And as Barry said, ...a normal crawl is much safer than the slower Hollywood commando style!

Here is the task students need to do for homework tonight and tomorrow night. He will be collecting any finished ones tomorrow in the second lesson and will give students feedback Students need to show the exit plan and write down or show the safe meeting place on their plans. I have asked the students to apply some form of scale to their plans as part of the maths program. If you are struggling for time, bring plans along on Monday next week.






Sunday, March 1, 2015

First Person Literacy Activity

Students were exposed to five examples of the First Person section published in the Mercury weekly and asked to plan a page of their own. Here is a sample of one of the First Person articles and a student's finished text. Students can bring clothes along to dress up in and ask a friend to take a photo to go alongside their finished text about themselves. They will learn about laying out a page and can use the program of their choice to achieve the effect they desire. I look forward to reading them and finding out more about my students; especially after hearing about their early morning starts to the day. We focused on text layout, elaborating on ideas, and the use of the ellipsis in some texts.

Sample from the Mercury

Example of an interesting read


                        

Homework for this week March 2nd until March 6th





It is about sixty minutes a week. The school policy is three nights at twenty minutes. Students can work out the split of the sixty minutes themselves as some have some afternoons with sporting and music commitments. All homework is marked. It is usually a task that has been fully explained and scaffolded in the classroom and just needs finishing off.

These week:

ch words
classifying them into the sounds they make. They have ruled up four columns in their Skills Book to do the task in. This week and next week the focus for spelling is this sound.

eg. church, chair, chicken

character,Chloe, choral
chassis, chauffeur, chef
choir
Words with ch Introduction

The letter combination ch has three distinct sounds:

1. The most usual is the way it is pronounced in words like: chair, check, chicken, chop, chuckle much, rich, such
2. However, in words taken into English from Greek ch- sounds like k: character chemist, chorus, etc. ache, echo, school, etc.
3. The third group, drawn from French, if written as it sounds, would be a combination of S and H as in machine (ma-sheen). In words taken into English from French, ch- sounds like sh: chef, chauffeur, chaperone, etc. machine, moustache, parachute You don’t need to remember this in order to spell the words proper
4. this ch as in choir is extreme

These words will be formally tested on Monday 16th of March. Any problem words will be added to ISL cards.


The rest of the week students have place value activities to do which should be completed in their grid maths book. Students can also log on to Maths Online (mainly Wednesday and Thursday ) to do the place value problems they have been set.


Maths Online focus is place value and time using analogue and digital clocks. The majority of this work is revision designed to fill in any existing gaps in the students' knowledge. Students have a week to complete these tasks.