New Year, New Class, New Blog

Please check out Room 20 Class Learning Log (Blog)

http://raroaeames.blogspot.co.nz/

Ka kite ano / See you next year

Well done everyone on such a tremendous year. Thank you Room 19 for all your energy, fun, humour , motivation and contributions to a very successful 2013. Have a lovely Christmas and New Year. Good luck Year 8s for High School and Year 7s, see you next year.

Room 19 Sing Off

Syndicate Shield Day.

Today was Syndicate Shield Day. All students were involved in a range of challenges throughout the day, including: Maths challenge, literacy quiz, google a day, cooking, spelling, T-Ball and the most popular, the inflatable confidence course. 

Wheels Day

Scooter day was set up to encourage students to travel to school using wheels in order to reduce vehicle drop offs, in turn lowering carbon emissions. It was also a day to promote safety when using Scooters.

Self Directed Learning

Today's the day. Self directed learning day. Students have worked really hard to plan their own day of learning. Every student has created a carefully constructed timetable which takes into consideration both needs and interests. 

Saumya explores Khan's Academy with a focus on Trigonometry 

Maddy, Sophie, Rebecca and Caitlin are developing their netball skills

After a block of cooking, Alice Sarah and Caitlin focus on a strategy game called Risk

Logan and Jordan with help from Emma are learning to use the 3D Printer.

The Kakapo, Short Tailed Bat, Giant Weta Debate

The Kakapo, Short Tailed Bat, Giant Weta Debate was a huge success. Students carefully planned their arguments and thought about the rebuttals. They questioned the relevance of information, they backed up their opinions with facts, they quoted organisations and carefully constructed speeches to get their messages across. It was an impressive display.

Environmental Debate.

Continuing on with our environmental focus and combining our educational options inquiry, all the students are involved in a debate. The topic stemmed from an article which came out earlier in the year about whether it is worthwhile spending money on species such as the Kakapo.           

Feathers fly over kakapo comments

The multiple skills students need for the set up of this debate include:
Managing themselves and interacting through an on line environment.

• Research skills
• Analysing information
• Generating ideas
• Questioning
• Justifying their arguments
• Exploring a range of view points
• Comparing
• Giving feedback
• Collaborating

Planning Document

WINNER NZ’s BEST CLASS BLOG: Room 19 – Raroa Normal Intermediate

Great news, the Room 19 Class Blog has won the New Zealand Interface magazine 'Best Class Blog'

This award recognises the hard work and enthusiasm of the students in Room 19. The blog captures the motivation, energy and tremendous efforts of the students.  -   Well done!!!

School Wide Environmental Focus.

Tou rourou, toku rourou, ka ora te iwi

                         (with your contribution and my contribution we will thrive)

This week the whole school is involved in a focus on Environmental sustainability.

The school wide focus commences with the Environment Immersion/ Hook week or Expo week. It involves many contexts:

Conservation; Sustainability; Ecosystems; Biodiversity; Pollution -recycle, reuse, reclaim, Climate Change, Human Impact; Endangered Species Native plant and animal life; Water issues et al.

To promote authentic learning in our school and to make connections with the outside world, we are pleased that the following Stake Holders have agreed to be a part of the event. They will display their resources alongside our Action Stations.

They are:

• Meridian Energy - Mini Wind Turbine and Solar Panel 
• Sustainability Trust 
• Capacity - Aquarius display 
• Sustainable Coastlines - Container 
• NZ Hygiene - Biodegradable products 
• Mojo - Biodegradable Stationery 
• Emergency Compost Toilets 
• Commonsense Organics - Food 
• FutureInTech - Science Career pathways 
• Goodnature - Science Researchers 
• Lindsays Apiaries Johnsonville - Bee Keeper 
• Forest & Bird 
• Department of Conservation 
• Ignot Metals Porirua 
• WWF Organisation NZ 
• Island Bay/ Taputeranga Marine Reserve

Our aim is to encourage our students to problem solve and to come up with innovative solutions to environmental issues.

Ultimate

The sun is out and it's game on. The school wide sports competition is Ultimate frisbee. With a win and a loss we are in for an exciting competition.  

100 Percent Pure Debate

On Friday Room 18 and Room 19 had an interclass debate. "Should New Zealand scrap the 100% Pure Campaign.

 

100% Pure Campaign debate - ‘Caring for the Environment’

In the upcoming weeks Raroa will be involved in a whole school focus titled ‘Caring for the Environment’ It is going to be an extremely exciting learning Journey packed full of amazing, stimulating learning opportunities.

Today we started the ball rolling by exploring the 100% Pure Campaign and the debates around whether the campaign should be dumped or not. Collectively Room 19 researched, inquired, debated, discussed and analysed a wide range of articles, youtube clips, news reports and even looked at another school that had ungone similar investigations.   

Next door Room 18 were doing the same thing. Tomorrow we will have an interclass debate

Caine's Arcade

Self directed learning - inspiring clip.

Today we watched a clip about an amazing boy named Caine. 9-year-old Caine Monroy spent his summer vacation building an elaborate DIY cardboard arcade inside his dad’s used auto parts store, and asked people to play. 

It is a wonderful story. http://cainesarcade.com/

After watching, we discussed the qualities that Caine possessed, what he achieved, what his motivators were and where the learning was.

Education of the Future

Continuing on with our inquiry into educational options. Today we used an info graphic to develop our thinking around the future of education. 

At the end of the session students had to share their views by posting links on TeachMeet (an on-line collaboration and communication tool)

Poetry Investigation.

Today we continued exploring a range of poems, starting with ‘Slowly The Fog by F.R. McCreary’ and then ‘Mist by Douglas Gibson’

Students discussed the style and language features of these poems.

We then headed to the library for  ‘Poetry Inquiry’ Student’s continued with the effective feedback and analysing approach to poetry using ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll.

I was so pleased with the range of approaches to this inquiry and enjoyed watching the class ‘shared doc’ completed before my eyes.

PMI - Self Directed Learning.

This afternoon students had to justify their ‘Learning Time’ from yesterday. Then they completed a PMI reflection and evaluation. I was extremely pleased with the in depth discussion, opinions and new ideas. They went on to discussing timetabling learning and personalising their learning.

Educational Options and Online Learning Inquiry.

Today we started our Term 4 inquiry ‘Educational Options and Online Learning'. 
For the immersion starter, students had the following task / challenge.

What an interesting afternoon. Students were engaged and focused on such a wide range of pursuits. Tomorrow we will reflect and evaluate.

Maths - Geometry Introduction - Sonobe Unit

The Sonobe Unit is the base of modular origami. You can make a wide variety of geometrical shapes just by putting these little Sonobe units together. Today we explored a range of mathematical concepts through the creation of 3D geometric shapes using The Sonobe Unit

To assist this lesson students used a demo website and youtube. (This approach links to our current Inquiry on Educational Options and Online Learning.

Campaigning Inquiry Conclusion.

Last term’s inquiry was all about campaigning. Now that we have a good understanding of what a campaign is and what makes up a campaign we are now looking at our next steps and conclusion action.

The  challenge was to choose a charity and create a campaign  to persuade Mr Eames and the rest of the class why Room 19 should support this charity. There has been a lot of research, debate, questioning and justifying.

This morning we gave our final presentations and debated the actions and organisations.  The class then had to make some decisions. Mr Eames stepped back so that the class had the opportunity to develop a consensus.

Joy Cowley Visit

Joy Cowley is one of New Zealand's most prolific and successful writers of children's books, she has written more than 600 titles for all ages.

Today we were extremely lucky to have Joy visit Raroa. She talked about her books and about the joys of writing, she answered questions and told us some wonderful stories about herself and the stories behind the stories. She also provided some wonderful writing advice.

Literacy - Poetry Exploration and Inquiry.

Today we started our poetry inquiry with a bit of exploration into our experiences with poetry. Using a design thinking approach students discussed their experiences of Poetry. Students were then encouraged to come up with innovative ideas of ways in which we could approach this poetry inquiry.

We also explored a poem By William Wordsworth - The Daffodils

The purpose was to highlight the importance of gaining full understanding of a poem before making judgments .  Below is a ‘Gami’ that Kate and Niamh made about the poem.

We also took a snapshot of how much we enjoy poetry based on our personal experience. One of the goals will be to shift the result by the end of this poetry inquiry.

Welcome back to Term 4

It is amazing to think that Term Four is upon us and 2013 is already drawing to an end. With the continued effort, enthusiasm and positive drive by the students in Room 19 we are all looking forward to celebrating a hugely successful year.  It has been a wonderful start to the term with students arriving refreshed and energised, with smiles on their faces. What a great class!

Capture the Moment - Art

Using paint we are learning to:

Create tones of colour using a selected colour and white

Colour blending

Develop a shading effect

Develop painting techniques focusing on brightness of colour

Create a contrasting image

Capture a moment in time