Thursday, August 1, 2019

 Term 3 in Whanau Koru

We warmly welcome you back to news about the learning taking place across our Year 0 and Year 1 classes.

Please keep bringing in recyclable materials that we can use in Play- we really appreciate the supplies. If you have flour or cornflour or similar consumables that may be past their use by date or had a few visiting moths, please don't throw them out! We can use them too.

We have had such beautiful weather returning to school and this has encouraged lots of outdoor play during the day. Every morning messy play, painting, playdough, construction with boxes, imaginative play and carpentry is being investigated on the deck and paths outside the classrooms.

We have our fabulous ARTz Festival in Week 7 of this term. I'm sure all classes would appreciate parent help over these three days, so look out for emails from your child's teacher.


Inquiry in all our classes is continuing- don't forget to have a look at the Classroom Learning Journal which documents the class Inquiry.







 Some messages from the team:

Room 23 got up and running in Term 2 and a lovely Inquiry into flying developed. We read our Journal on the first day back this term to see if we had answered our questions or whether we were still wondering about flying. It turned out we had not really explored "how do asteroids fly? and "do stars fly?".This led to a bit of a debate about whether they were flying, floated or had "magnets to hold them up". This quickly led to questions about the moon- so an expedition to the moon is planned! The plan is to try and find Rona, from the Maori myth "Rona and the Moon" or the white kiwi from "Kiwi and the Moon" by Gavin Bishop, stories which have captured the children's imaginations.
Adrienne


INQUIRY in Room 22
The winter season has given the children lots to observe around the school. However we are eagerly waiting for the tuis to return. In the meantime we have had some questions about whether birds have bones and our learning journey is now heading towards “skeletons” until we make our way back to the resident blackbirds and tuis. If you have any skeletons or bones at home we would love them for our Inquiry table.

MATHS
In maths we have been investigating the numbers that occur when different numbers of children are under a blanket. For example two children means there will be 4 feet. This kind of open ended activity encourages children to apply many processes. Some children will skip count to get the result, some will count every foot, some will add two plus two. This means, in one session we can cover addition, multiplication and  sequential counting etc.  Children also get the opportunity to explain and give reasons for their thinking and to share their different ways of solving. They also get to ask “What if” questions, for example a child asked “What if it was lungs?” I asked “What if it was fingers?”, which led to working with  tens. It important that children get to contribute in this way, so that maths is a non-threatening conversation and not a set of methodical instructions.

I am looking forward to seeing all the growth that happens for our wonderful tamariki this term.
Suzanne


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