Inquiry Learning/Working!

The children are finally focusing on their own inquiry. All the skills have been modeled and now they are inquiring into their own question.  Room 20 have got off to a flyer and they have produced some awesome work so far.  They have to find research about their question and then highlight key information. After they have completed researching using a couple of sources they then write a first draft of their article about the question.

Spelling - Silent k and g

Spellings - silent k and g... at AnswerGarden.ch.

Inquiry Learning - Writing a factual description

We are now focusing on themes around World War One like animals, women and weapons, and creating questions to inquire into.  As a class, we are looking into the trenches and particularly Trench Foot. Mr Bailey modeled how we would look at two resources and identify the key facts and write a factual description about it in our own words. The criteria for the lesson was based around the structure of the article such as the introduction defining what Trench Foot is and the conclusion including a personal comment. This is the first step in a long but rewarding process. We now have send Mr Bailey a Google Document with our questions and research from two sources like a book, video or website.

Inquiry Learning

There are so many amazing resources about World War One that we have started to share them.  Jack brought in a fantastic book and in pairs we took sections of the book to read. We identified key words and summarized what each section was about, and then shared with the rest of the class with a thirty second speech. It had some brilliant chapters on bombardment, gas attack, war in the air and espionage.

Mathematics - the change.

Here is a good example of what concepts children need to understand to complete one of the tasks we had this week. It was met with mixed results because if the children have any gaps i.e. they do not understand one of those concepts listed under the 'We are learning to...' they cannot complete the task. Time zones was the tricky one and we had many interesting discussions! Many overseas relatives will be thanking me as the phone calls at two in the morning should be avoided now!  Also please note the emphasis on vocabulary, this is becoming a crucial skill for reading.  More on that later!

Measurement Problem Solving

The transition from Year 6 to Year 7 has made mathematics a lot more challenging.  Our strand topic this term is measurement and we are currently looking at time which includes reading digital and analogue clocks, stopwatches, timetables and charts. It has been very challenging because many of the activities combine everything together, more to follow on that! The children gained much delight from the fact that Mr Bailey could not find an efficient strategy to answer a question! :)

Triathlon

Here are some photos of Room 20 winners.  Congratulation to everyone who were fantastic on the day and it was so awesome to see everyone having a go with a difficult challenge. Big thank you to all the parents who were magnificent in directing lots of traffic!

Up-dated Unicycling timetable

John has kindly offered to do an extra session on Wednesday 26th March so Group 2 will have all three sessions as promised.

Walk/Run for Life

Reading Homework

https://www.dogonews.com/2014/3/12/new-york-artists-spend-ten-days-performing-on-a-giant-hamster-wheel

Here is our reading homework for this week. The focus is on vocabulary and make sure you write down in your diary which words you find difficult.

Year 7 Camp Trailers

Room 19 and 20 performed superbly today for assembly.  Every child had a part to play and it was amazing to see such a diverse range of skills and knowledge on display. The children used Prezi, Keynote, Powerpoint, Present on Google Apps and iMovie for films and trailers. Brayden created some movie trailers as an advert for our assembly and it took him awhile to create the first one. His second trailer took hardly anytime at all as he used Picasa for the photos and dropped them in. I am sure you will agree, they are fantastic. Well done Brayden!

Year Seven Assembly - Working Collaboratively

The children have been split into groups to prepare a 1-2 min presentation on their chosen area at camp.  Lucas and his team choose the flying fox and are creating a Prezi which is a presentation tool with a difference. As you present, the tool takes you on a journey by zooming in and out, its very effective. What is even better, it is a Google App which means we can collaborate. Lucas asked if I could give him a video from the GoPro and shared his Prezi with me. I added the video onto his presentation and Lucas did the rest. Awesome.

First attempt with Piktochart

Well done Natalie, what a fantastic first effort! She has a great combination of text and graphics, particularly the 'vs' part of the infographic. The quote under the title is inspired too. What do you think Natalie could do next?

Science and Tech

The children are loving the Tech and Science lessons. The lessons include 'hands on' activities and they get to wear cool clothes and look very important! Would you want to see Dr Flight?

Collaborating on Google Docs

We are currently preparing for our Year Seven assembly about our awesome experience at camp. The girls are currently working on their script using Google Docs. The amazing thing is, they are all working on the same document. Technology is wonderful when it is purposeful and it actually helps get the job done. Also, it is wonderful to see the children collaborating and working together so effectively.

Mural.ly - helping us share with our Inquiry

To help us with our Inquiry into the First World War we are sharing websites, photos, videos and articles that we think are useful for others.  Working with others is an important competency that we are learning about in Year Seven and the fantastic thing about Mural.ly is that we can all work on the same 'canvas'. Mr Bailey has also placed an example of the work expected by the museum to remind us of what we need to do.  It has been very popular so far, even Mr Young has joined our Mural!

Presenting information in a visual way with Piktochart

Piktochart

Apologises everyone, Visual.ly was being difficult so we have had a careful look at this web tool instead and it works a lot better! 

For our inquiry we are currently inquiring into presenting information in a visual way.  We found out about infographics and how much they are currently used in media such as websites, newspaper and more importantly in museums!

Room 20 have found an online tool called Piktochart and we are going to try and present some information about what sparked off the First World War. We will show some of our attempts when they are ready.

Camp Day Four

Camp Day Three

Reading Homework

Camp Day Two

Year Seven Camp Day One