Production

A reminder parents that our performance of Windust is on this Tuesday.

There is a matinee performance and an evening performance.

Tickets are available from the library for $3 each.

We'd love to see you there!! So please get in nice and quick for your tickets!!

Costumes

A reminder that all students in Room 1 need to have their Production costumes to school by Friday morning at the very latest!!!

 

Any old clothing (parents think little houe on the praire) is suitable.

Year 6's with speaking parts, please bring clothes appropriate to your role.

 

Many Thanks

Quick camp reminder

A quick reminder for camp:

- Please read you equipment checklist carefully

- Have an early night tonight and get lots of sleep it's going to be a full on next few days for both students, parents and teachers

 

- Remember who you are and who you are representing. This applies to both attitude and behaviour.

- Come to camp with an open mind. Each and everyone of you will be challenged in some way at some stage during the week. Be prepared and ready to accept these challenges and shine.

 Looking forward to a wonderfully challenging and fun week.

Mr Baylis

Camp!!

Just a reminder to all our visitors that we will be at camp for next week.

It's at Vertical Horizons out the back of Inglewood and should be a challenging yet extremely rewarding experience for all involved.

In terms of our quadblogging buddies, it means we will be having a weeks hiatus sorry, however will be back into it the week after. 

Mr Baylis

Song Meanings

With our production fast approaching, we were looking at the songs we are singing.

We discussed the fact that every song has a message and meaning that the writer wants to portray.

We looked at some of our production songs and discussed what meanings they portrayed.

A task for Room 1 is to choose a song you like (please make sure it is an appropriate one) find the lyrics, read them and interpret the meaning of the song.

Post a comment below with the meanings.

Rock climbing

We were really lucky here at school to have the rock climbing wall visit. 

The reason for the visit believe it or not was to teach us about road safety. I wonder how the 2 activities can be linked?? 

We had a lot of fun and Jacqui even challenged Mr Baylis to a race up the wall (a comprehensive victory to Mr Baylis!!) 

Here's some photos of our climb

Celebrating achievements

We had a discussion in class about a blog Mr Baylis read.

The blog author was writing about his young boy who zipped his jacket up for the first time. The class laughed when told this as how could such a simple act be such an achievement?

We then discussed about achievement. Is achievement always about being the best? Does achieving only relate to big events?

Mr Baylis then challenged us to think about a small achievement we have had during the past week. Having a go at the rides on the A&P show, making the bed for the first time, getting to school on time for the first time this term were some of the achievements we were proud of.

We realised that it's important to celebrate all achievement no matter how small.

What have you achieved this past week?? Leave us a comment below, we'd love to hear from you!!

Brookburn Primary

A reminder, we have wonderful quadblogging buddies from England!!

Please jump on their blog and post a comment by clicking on the link below

http://6b2011.brookburnprimary.net/

100 word challenge - Finally!!!

We have been having a great time experimenting with 100 word challenge concept here in Room 1. The added challenge of only having 100 words has been a frustrating yet interesting one for the students as they have had to become alot more creative with their work. Here is our first attempt using the picture as our prompt. Click on the picture to see our work : )

p.s. this challenge was set the week after Halloween, it may be a reason for some of the more interesting interpretations of the picture.

Finally a blog update!!!!!!

First of all a quick apology for it taking so long to update our blog - things have been flat out and it's only going to get busier!!!

Here's a quick recap of what's been happening and where we are at:

- We had a very successful school athletics day. The students in Room 1 represented our class and themselves with pride and achieved some wonderful results!!

- Dixon Banner athletics was last Wednesday with a great effort from Turuturu once again. We missed out on the banner by a millisecond and look forward to winning it next year.

- Our production practises are now in full swing. We have teamed up with Room 10 and continue to create our class dance as our contribution.

- We have started looking at oil production and the processes involved in finding, drilling, retrieving, and separating oil water and dirt.

And here's what we have to look forward to:

- Rock climbing tomorrow (22/11) here at school

- Dixon Banner High Jump, 11.00am here at school

- Camp at Vertical Horizons 28/11 - 2/12

- Our production performances 13/12

- Year 6 leaver's dinner

- End of year prizegiving

So as you can see busy and exciting time here at school. I will make a better effort to keep our blog updated to keep everyone informed :-)

Mr Baylis

100 word challenge

I was reading this post on a blog by Learning Hub 3 @ Stonefields School.

http://learninghub3.blogspot.com/2011/11/keen-to-join-100-word-challenge.html

and after some further investigation found Room 5 Hampton Hill School doing the same thing.

http://room5hhs2011.blogspot.com/2011/10/100-word-challenge_17.html

The challenge is this, to write a creative and descriptive piece of writing using only 100 words. 

As we are always up for a challenge in Room 1 our writing for one week will be based on this idea and using the following prompt 

(source http://writingprompts.tumblr.com/post/11306764312/271)

We will endeavour to get published writing on here as soon as they are completed.

If you are checking out the examples from the above classes, make sure you leave them a comment with your name and where you're from : )

What's Your Number?

Here you are Room 1 as promised i have added this website to our Blog page.

For those that can't remember or who are not sure, this neat website gives you a unique number based on the total world population.

Click on the picture and find your own unique number.

Oil

I set the students of Room 1 the task of explaining how Crude Oil and Natural Gas is made using their own terms.

I thought this would be a rather easy task for the class, however it has generated alot of interesting further questions that need to be answered.

Here's our Wallwisher with our questions:

If you have any answers for us please let us know : )

Questioning Skills

As part of our ongoing focus on developing our questioning skills we decided to look at the following article:

 http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/5870865/Meet-the-worlds-most-pierced-man

We were only shown the pictures and then had 3 questions to find out as much information as possible.

Here's what we came up with,

 Group 1

• What is the reason why you got your piercings?
• Why did you want to have so many piercings?
• Did you want the piercings and why?

 Group 2

• Why did you want to make yourself the most pierced man?
• When did you do it?
• How long did it take?

 Group 3

• Why did you get lots of percings and what made you do it ?
• Which part of your body did you first get pierced and why ?
• Did  you get them all done in one day?

 Group 4

• Why did you decide to have so many piercings?
• How did you get so many piercings?
• How did the world find out about you?

 Group 5

• What was your insperation to do all of those pearsing?
• How many types of pearsing do you have?
• What was your first pearsing and why?

 Group 6

• Why did you get all those piercings?
• How did you aford all those piercings?
• When did you plan to get all those piercings?

 Group 7

• Do the piercings represent anything?
• What encouraged you to do this?
• How did your family react to this?

 If you had 3 questions to ask him what would you ask? Share these with us by commenting below.

Term 4 Unit

For our class unit this term we ae looking at the oil and gas industry and how it impacts Taranaki.

To help us think about how things are done, Mr Baylis has found an experiment/demonstration that we can do in class.

For it to happen though, can you please bring along any shoe boxes or aquariaum pebbles that you might have at home.

Many Thanks

World Cup Success!!

It's taken 24 years and the All Blacks are finally Rugby World Cup Champions yet again!!

We will be discussing tomorrow what it means to be champions and what things the All Blacks did to become victorious. We'll then see if we can achieve some of these things during the term.

Out of curiosity for anyone reading our blog, what do you think the All Blacks did to become so successful??
Leave us a comment with your ideas : )

Black Out

Along with the rest of the country, I will be cheering on the mighty All Blacks this Sunday.

As a way of showing support i have decided to black out our blog.

GO THE ALL BLACKS!!!

Amazing Race

Was visiting Mrs Briesman and Room 5's blog at Hampton Hill School.

On their blog they has this game and it was soo much fun i thought i'd share it on ours. Just be careful it can get slightly addictive : )

Enjoy!!

The Traveler IQ challenge ranks geographic knowledge of cities such as: Myrtle Beach, Tumon or Mississauga by comparing results against 7,590,508 other travelers. Brought to you by TravelPod, a TripAdvisor Media Network member

Black Out Day

For our last day of term, Room 1 thought we'd follow many others and have our own Black Out Day to support the mighty All Blacks.

We all came dressed in black, and had a fun time learning and practising different rugby skills - some of us did so well I think Graham Henry will be ringing them shortly as injury cover!!

It seemed to work as the All Blacks managed to defeat Argentina, so to give them even more encouragement for the semifinals here are the photos from our day.

GO THE ALL BLACKS AND BEST OF LUCK FOR YOUR GAME THIS SUNDAY!!!

Current Events

Today we discussed the Tsunami protector product that has been invented in Japan.

We discussed the good points and the problems with it. Mr Baylis then asked the class if they could create something better what would it be?

Here are our suggestions on improving this idea:

I think for the people that are concerned that a Tsunami could happen any time they should have a tent that is made out of the stuff tat the balls are made out of so they can float .by Mason

I think that in there safety balls they should have seats and seat belts so they can store food, water, batteries, first aid kits and anything else you need to survive with. I think the windows should be made out of strong glass or plastic so they don't break if any sharp or heavy objects come fling into the window and smashing it causing water to flood in drowning everyone inside they should also have a break away button or cord so they can have an easy escape if something does break. By Paige


I think the safety balls they should put oxygen masks inside it so they know that it is alright to breathe and put protection pads on the poll and seats.From Nicholas


I think they could have pull out draws under the seats the store food or drinks and anything that you might need. By Tessa


The safety balls are a great idea but they might have to add a few improvements like side padding to protect the people inside, a space to put clothes, food, etc,. A room to put the ball in because if there is another earthquake the debris will cover the safety ball so you will need a solid room to put it in. Also maybe make it a bit bigger so you can sleep in it because you don't now how long you'll be in it for and some room for chairs so you don't have to crouch all the time your in it. Also  belts maybe so you don't bang around.
But the only problem is how will you go toilet? Nathan=)


I think the safety balls are alright  they will keep you safe in all but they should be more safe they could have seat belts and first aid kits and food and water. I also think  it should be see through so they can see if they are in trouble.  also how will you go to the toilet? it should be a bit bigger and have a cord so it is easy storage and you can get to it quick in an emergency. they  should have  an emergency exit.  i think they should have instead of a ball have everyday things like a car that does exactly the same as the safety ball. They should also build a bedroom that is strong and is easy to get to that does exactly the same as the safety balls.                                                               Jacqui!!!  

Buddy Learning

The bearings maths group are learning to solve calculation problems involving time.

The students were then asked to share their thinking with one another. I started listening to Marshall explain to Jaxson how he solved the problem and thought he did such a good job that I should record it.

Here it is. (It may be a little hard to hear)

Our experiment continues with our noise chart. I am still finding it quite valuable in terms of being conscious of overall noise levels.

Here's what some of the Room 1 students think:

I think that the chart is working because we follow it most of the time but sometimes it doesn't because when we do our handwriting we talk instead of whispering or being silent.Our chat is working really well.Shawna.

I think we are going OK because we sometimes follow the noise chart and we sometimes don't . our chart is going really well . Caitlyn


I think that its sort of working because some people are following it and some aren't.

FROM NIC

I think the chart is kind of working because some people are following it but some people aren't and if one person is not following it other people wont follow it either so its not really helping.
Nathan=)

I think the chart is working really well but some people don't follow it and Mr Baylis has to keep telling us what our noise level is supposed to do and i don't think he should have to do that, we are supposed to use it independently. i also think it is really good that it has got group noise levels on there.
Jacqui!!!

I think it is working well but there are a few people not following it because mr baylis has to tell us to be silent but other ways its fine
 mason=0

Our Assembly

Today was our performance assembly. I would like to say how very proud I was to be the teacher of Room 1 today. Everyone spoke clearly, performed well and did a great job!!

Here's some photos of us working with our buddy class to make it happen followed by a video of our final sasa performance.

Photos

Michael brought in these photos to share with the class.

They are clever so I thought I'd share them with you as well :)

Noise Experiment

We've just completed day 2 of our noise experiment. We discussed how we thought Day 1 went with most of the class quite pleased that they were able to follow the guidelines with little reminding.

I pointed out to them that as the teacher I noticed how the overall level of noise was more appropriate as everyone was more conscious of it.

Today was a really mixed up day with testing, assembly practise and other jobs that needed completing. What a great day to test the system!!

My personal opinion is that it's working even with a few hiccups along the way. I'll get some Room 1 students to share their opinions tomorrow.

School Assembly

Hi Parents/Caregivers

We have our assembly next Tuesday 4th October.

For our assembly can you please bring along as many floral clothes/towels/sheets or tablecloths as possible that the students can either wear or wrap around their waists. 

Can we please have them by Monday so that we can have them organised.

On Tuesday can your students please wear a black t-shirt and some black shorts or leggings to school.

Many Thanks

Mr Baylis

Here's an example

Our Noise Experiment

Mr Baylis worked into the wee small hours last night completing our noise level chart.

Our day is broken down into our main learning areas, and how long we will be approximately spending on each one.
We then decide as a class at the beginning of the day what we think our noise levels should be for the different parts of the day. We have a mixture of whole class and group activities and these are split into noise levels as well.

We will trial this next week and reflect on whether we think it has been helpful or not.

If you have any reccommendations/ideas please feel free to comment below and let us know.

(Our initial noise chart)

Noisy Classrooms

I was looking at Miss White and Room 2's blog page the other day

http://turuturuschoolroom2.blogspot.com/

saw their discussion about Noisy Classrooms and was so inspired i decided to try it out with Room 1.

Here's the article:

I then asked the students in Room 1 what their thoughts were. This generated great debate as approximately half of the class enjoyed working with noise while half didn't.

The question was then asked, 'How do we meet the needs of every student in the class in terms of noise level?'

Here are our initial thoughts:

We then took one of these, a noise chart, and explored ways of creating a chart that could assist with this.

Here are our drafts:






We have decided to combine bits of each plan to create 1 noise level chart for the class. It will be created soon and we will trial it for 2 weeks. We'll keep you updated with how it's going.

A big thankyou to Miss White and Room 2 for showing me their wonderful ideas and for inspiring our own.

Brain Skills

Wednesday mornings we are now looking at our Brain, the potential power it has, and ways to help us switch it on.

As an introduction we looked at a video that was emailed to Mr Baylis. Follow the instructions on the video and see if you are as surprised as what we were!!

If you have any brain skills ideas please feel free to let us know!!

Questioning Skills

Here in Room 1 we are continuing to try and develop ourselves as better questioners. We are using Bloom's Taxonomy to help us think of broader questions.

Here is a link to help: http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/researchskills/dalton.htm

Today we were given a photo of a building to look at from this website:

http://villageofjoy.com/50-strange-buildings-of-the-world/

We were then given the following challenge. If we had 3 questions to find out as much information about the building as possible what would they be?

We thought we'd asked some good in-depth questions until we compared them as a class.

Here's the photo and what we found

 

If you have any suggestions of deeper questions we could ask please feel free to comment and let us know.

Sushi Reports

WALT Research and create an informational report.

After the fun we had making Sushi, Mr Baylis told us that we were to write a report on it. We wrote down questions about what we thought would be useful information, and researched the answers.

We then used the following template as a guide to writing our report:

Here are our final presentations: (If you click on the picture it will take you to them)

Quadblogging

Mr Baylis was visiting our friends from Room 14 at Hamilton East School and saw that they were joining a project called Quadblogging.

Here's a video explaining what Quadblogging is:

Our Quadblogging buddy classes are:

http://6b2011.brookburnprimary.net/


http://y6jh2011.stjohnsrc.net/

http://harriers.primaryblogger.co.uk/


Check them out leave a comment and share some of your experiences : )


Also thankyou to Room 14 Hamilton East School for introducing us to this wonderful opportunity!!

One of our classmates, Blair, is currently having a wonderful holiday in Great Britain.

As we're currently studying cultures and as I know he will be reading our blog : ), I'd like Blair or anyone else with knowledge of the Great British culture to please leave a comment below and tell us about it.

Mr Baylis

Current Events

Our focus for Current Events at the moment is to form and justify an opinion about a contentious topic.

Our topic for today is: Should schools still have a library?

We read this article from the website stuff:

Check out our thoughts on our wallwisher.

What are your thoughts? Feel free to let us know : )

Japanese Culture

Today we made Sushi as part of our study of Japanese Culture.

Check out how it went:

This website is another really good way to explore Japanese Culture. Click on the picture and enjoy the site.

Our next stop on our trip round the rugby world cup is Japan. We are going to pretend that we are hosting some Japanese rugby supporters and they become homesick. They still want to learn about New Zealand culture, however, we will need to include aspects of Japanese culture into their stay to make them feel at home.


To get us thinking about Japan i'll ask a question:


Japan has a sort of nickname (like how New Zealand is the land of the long white cloud)


What is this nickname and why do they use it?


Post your answer below : )

Current Events

Today for current events we were focusing on forming and justifying our own opinions.

We discussed the fact the Hawera has decided to unofficially 'adopt' the American Rugby team during their stay for the Rugby World Cup.

The question was then asked: Should Hawera 'adopt' the American Rugby team.

This created a neat discussion amongst the students with the overall opinions split roughly 50/50. Check out what we have to say below.

What are your thoughts? Post a comment and let us know!!

Round the world challenge

We are working our way through the novel 'Round The World In 80 Days' and are thoroughly enjoying our trip with Phileas Fogg, Jean Passepatout, and Detective Fix.

Mr Baylis has set a challenge task for Room 1. Design your own trip around the world in 80 days.
The criteria are as follows:
- Each continent (except Antarctica) needs to be visited.
- The trip is to be no more than 80 days.
- The trip is to start and finish in Auckland.
- At least 2 modes of transport are to be used.
- The trip is to cost no more than $20,000.

Here are a couple of websites to help you:


http://www.rtwpricetag.com/round-the-world-trip-budget-cost-calculator.php


http://distancecalculator.globefeed.com/Country_Distance_Calculator.asp

We'll keep you posted with how we are going and what our finished itineraries are.

Searching the Internet effectively

I was shown this really cool video about searching the internet and as research skills are a current focus in Room 1 I thought I'd share it with you : )

A big thank you to Mrs Gurney from Coley Street School for showing me this!!

Cool Websites

Here are some neat websites for you to check out. To try them just click on the picture.

Gymnasium for Brain.

Lots of fun activities to challenge and test you brain power (the speed maths section is particularly good)

Snappywords.

A really cool online dictionary.

Enjoy : )

Homework Task

Your homework task this week Room 1 is to create a poster about your chosen New Zealand province.
Here are the provinces again to help you:

Here are the key facts you wanted to find out:
- What are they proud of?
- Special landmarks?
- Why do people live there?
- What are they famous for?
- What famous people have come from there?
- Tourist Attractions
- Land Features
- What makes them different?

After Nathans question about provincial colours I have also added this picture to help as well.

I look forward to seeing these posters in a weeks time : )

Mr Baylis

Website Ideas

I'm really impressed with the comments being made on our blog!! Thankyou for contributing and making our blog interactive.

I'm going to set another challenge for you. I'm looking to add more website links for games and activities to help assist with the learning in our classroom. To help i've come up with some headings: Maths, Literacy, Thinking.

If you have a wonderful website that fits under one of the headings, or you have a website that you find fun please comment below tell me the website and how it helps with our learning.

Mr Baylis

Samoan Sasa

\

Our Samoan Sasa is finally finished!!

The actions we decided to use describe us as a class and the culture we have in our room.

A big thank you to Mrs Coombes who helped and guided Mr Baylis with this.

Enjoy : )

Wales

The next country on our trip around the rugby world cup is wales.

There are some similarities between New Zealand and Wales.
What do you think they are? Post your ideas below.

Samoan Siapo

YAY it's finally finished!! Here's a picture of our completed class siapo and a description of how we made it and what it means.

First we got an A4 piece of paper.
Then we chose our design and copied it in pencil. I chose the fishing net because i like going fishing.    
Next we coloured in the black bits with pencil.
When we had finished that we got black paint and went over the pencil lines with the black paint.
Next Mr. Baylis got some hot water and put some normal tea bags in the water.
Then we got the tea bags and dabbed it on the paper until the paper was all covered with tea.
Then we let them dry and taped them all together. 
 When we had finished we had a big siapo.

Round the World in 80 days

The book Mr Baylis has been waiting for has finally arrived!!
Room 1 are joining Phineas Fogg and Jean Passepartout on their trip roun the world in 80 days.

This has got us thinking, if you were to travel around the world in 80 days what route would you travel?


Use the map as a guide and comment below : )