Class library

Everyone finds their own choice of book and location when we have Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) after morning tea.  Sometimes, unfortunately, it is not particularly silent or sustained, but everyone enjoys it, and we are getting better at it!  Sustained reading is one of our level 2 goals in Reading.

Reading our swimming stories

When they were finished, we read our illustrated swimming story and then shared them with other people in the class.  It was interesting to read what other people had read and give them feedback.  You could hear plenty of compliments when people were recounting what they liked about someone's writing.  This is the start of what we call,  peer assessment.

Kate shared her story with the class and we displayed it on the Writing Wall to remind us what we need to do to be successful writers.  We call this Success Criteria. 

Kate used her senses to describe the swimming sports: her plan showed what she could see, hear and feel; she used her plan to group her ideas together into paragraphs; she wrote compound sentences using 'because' to explain why; she added interesting information which made it more exciting for the reader; she used alliteration (using words that start with the same sound) to give her title and lead sentences a little bit of pep.  Thank you for sharing your writing with us, Kate.

Swimming stories

After the swimming sports, we wrote about the day using our senses: what we could see, hear and feel.  It was interesting to see how many different things we experienced.

When we had finished, we illustrated our story with a picture of ourselves in the pool.  We learned how to blend blue and white paint to make lifelike water for the background, and then drew ourselves  in racing mode using pastels.

Here are a couple of our illustrated stories, but you can read them all on the Writing page.

Middle School Swimming Sports

This is the first year that we have had swimming sports instead of Splish Splash Day.  Everyone competed in two races, either competitive or novelty.  Some people also swam again competitively in the finals or the class relay.  We all had a chance to cheer on other swimmers and 'soak' (get it?) in the carnival atmosphere.

There were three novelty races to choose from: the wheelbarrow raced with a noodle, the dolphin push with a ball or the flitter flutter with a flutter board and a cup of water.

Under starter orders . . .

Swimmers powering through a competitive race.

In the dolphin push you could only use your head to control the ball, in much the same way as a real dolphin.

In the flitter flutter, you had to keep water in the cup on a flutter board down the whole length of the pool.

Spectators had to be quiet for the start to each race, but then could cheer on the swimmers as loudly as they could.

In the wheelbarrow race, you worked with a buddy.  One person pulled the other along using a noodle around their waist while their buddy kicked.  At the end of the pool, you swapped places.  Great collaborative work here.

Chelsea won a certificate for being the second fastest girl in the competitive finals.

About Me Maths

In Maths, we are learning how to measure in lots of different ways, and find out about each other at the same time.  We used rulers and tape measures to measure parts of our bodies in centimetres and bathroom scales to measure our weight in kilograms.  We used the class calendar to help us convert our date of birth into numbers.  Some things we could count, like the number of people in our family and some things we had to look up online, like our postcode.

Here are a couple of our posters, but you can see them all on the Maths page.

About Me! by Andrew

About Me! by Rylee

Our Room 18 Garden

We cleared our garden outside Room 18 of weeds and dead flowers and dug in plenty of rich compost.  We planted some seeds in a seed tray recycled from a Subway sandwich carry tray.  We watered them carefully - not too little but not too much.  We will be able to watch the seedlings grow under the plastic cover and plant them when they are sturdy enough.  We will hopefully have canterbury bells and swan plants in our garden in a few months.

Our buddy class

Our buddy class is Room 29, and we hope to build up a close friendship with them over the school year.  On our first visit we were allocated a buddy and then had a Science session.  We showed out little buddies how many simple colours actually make up darker, more complex colours in felt pens.  Scientists call this chromography.

First, we drew a thick band of colour on a paper coffee filter.  Then we dipped the tip of the filter in water, and watched the water creep up the paper, breaking down the colours as it travelled.  This slow creep is called capillary action, it it slow but steady.

There are our coffee filters drying in the sun.

Everyone watched carefully.

Colouring together was a nice way to get to know our buddies.