Room 4 - Mount Biggs - Learning

Term 3 Gymnastics

Bike Education

Maori Legends
With our term focus on Maori, our class examined some Maori myths and retold them in their own words (to read them, click on the stories below).

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Battle of the mountains - Emily

Winter Sports Day

Food for thought

After our visit from the nutritionist and then visiting a Feilding supermarket, our class wrote some persuasive writing about the consequences of eating too much sugar and the sugar in our food (you can read then by clicking on the writing below).
A recent visit to the local supermarket saw room 4 students learning to make healthy choices when shopping for food and drink by checking the amount of salt and sugar content per 100g.

We also learned how to check the amount of sugar in children's drinks. Only water and milk pass.

With breakfast cereals, only weetbix and oats are healthy choices.




Social Studies-our main topic this term will be centred around our Maori culture and how important it is to our identity as New Zealander's in the world. This will include examining Maori traditions and tikanga, such as Maori legends, dance, wiatas, language, protocols etc. Anyone interested in helping out please let me know.




Term 2
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With term 2 underway we are well into our learning in Room 4. You'll also notice some changes to the classroom and the way the children are learning as we move towards a modern learning environment approach to our learning. Below, are some examples of what we are working on this term.

Reading
Our focus this term is on comprehension strategies. Good readers are active thinkers during reading and regularly check their understanding through using things like predicting what will happen in a story; asking 'I wonder' questions before, during and after reading; and making connections between different parts of the story. We are also focusing on word power - extending the children's vocabulary including improving dictionary skills.






Writing
The focus of our writing is on developing the following:

  • Descriptive writing: using 'wow' words to form 'wow' sentences to grab the reader's attention. To do this we are learning to use more adjectives, active verbs, adverbs and precise nouns.
  • Personal voice: encouraging the children to write about their thoughts and feelings
  • Time conjunctions: learning to write using words such as after, afterwards, since, while, when, as, until and next to replace the overused 'then'
  • Report writing: writing for a different purpose to descriptive writing
  • We are also learning to use the hamburger model of introduction, body and ending to help structure our writing (apart from poetry). 




Numeracy
This term we are introducing a modern learning environment approach to maths where students have more individual choices about how they learn. For example, currently we are learning about addition/subtraction strategies before moving on to multiplication/division strategies next. Children know from their assessment data what strategies they need to learn (sometimes this is new learning, other times it is revision). The children can choose to learn in a number of ways: from teacher workshops, buddy teaching or online tutorials. To deepen their learning they can also create their own video tutorials on the iPads where they demonstrate their understanding of the use of a particular strategy. Once they think they’ve mastered a strategy, they are tested by two of their peers followed by the teacher. This is the evidence they need to show they have successfully completed a piece of work before moving on to the next strategy.
Science
This term our big picture focus is on environmental issues with the title of our topic being “Our environment – should we care”? (If you're not sure, check out the following video by Severn Suzuki in 1992 when she was 12 years old
https://youtu.be/oJJGuIZVfLM

This involves:
  • Finding out about global warming including learning about the water cycle, the greenhouse effect, carbon and what a carbon footprint is.
  • Learning about endangered species (especially in New Zealand), the effects of pollution, habitat loss due to natural resources being under stress from over-population, and issues of clean water.
  • Monitoring our waste including learning about worm farms and making one for home.
  • Learning about New Zealand plants and trees and identifying species we can plant both at home and native areas at Mount Biggs.
  • Developing the Nature of Science (skills and attitudes) that cover encouraging curiosity about the above; observational skills, measuring accurately, asking good ‘I wonder’ questions (similar to reading) and learning to investigate scientifically.
  • Developing science vocabulary.
You can support your child’s learning at home by encouraging them to check out the excellent NASA website on climate change especially for kids http://climatekids.nasa.gov/


Personal voice in writing about spiders










Developing science skills and attitudes

Encouraging  curiosity