Well, the day has at last arrived for our very first class performance to show just what we’ve learned in our 10 weeks of learning to play musical instruments! Our audience consisted of 9 junior primary classes, staff, and some parents. We were all quite nervous - at least I was, so I’m sure that the students were What can I say? My fabulous students rose to the occasion and did a great job of performing the pieces learned over the past 10 weeks. The junior primary students enjoyed it and I think staff were most impressed at the progress we’ve all made. Well done to all the students in LA2-6 - you made me very proud today!! Watch this space for an update and a podcast of the performance.
Yesterday we sadly had to say goodbye (or au revoir) to our student teacher, Sam. Sam has been working with us for the last 4 weeks and we’ve enjoyed having him in our class. All of the students in LA 2-6 contributed to a shared lunch/farewell party &, even better, managed to keep it a secret from Sam. Well done everyone! A big thank you to Aaron, Darcy, Ivana, Iva & Lisa who did a fantastic job helping clean up the kitchen.
Hopefully Sam will come back to visit when he’s not too engrossed in his uni studies.
Ivana has left us for 5 weeks as she, and her family, travel to Europe to visit family and do some sightseeing.We all wish her a wonderful trip & look forward to her sharing her adventures with us in Week 10.
It would be very remiss of me not to thank all of you in LA 2-6 for making my birthday yesterday a very enjoyable day. It was lovely to spend the day with you all and I even enjoyed your singing
The SRC at our school has made a commitment to participate in Operation Christmas Child to help disadvantaged children in South East Asia & the Pacific to share in the joy of receiving gifts and know that othres around the world care about them. We aim to fill as many shoeboxes as we can with items from the five categories for children of varying ages. All students in our room have been allocated a group which has chosen an age group and gender to enable them to fill their boxes with appropriate items. We’ve made a start with our collection, and a big thank you to Alanah who has started the ball rolling with her donations.
Someone will have to help me with more creative titles for these posts!
Although I was unable to be there the word is that everyone played really well during today’s music lesson. Next week will be the final rehearsal before we perform for the Junior Primary classes and parents. I’m looking forward to it as it’s a great opportunity for you all to shine and show how hard you’ve been working, and the progress that you’ve made. And thank you, Sam, for the offer, but I don’t think I’ll steal the limelight with a saxophone solo!
This week I’ll be sending a letter home to parents asking them to work with their child on a persuasive writing task. Students will then need to write a letter to their parents trying to persuade them to allow them to do/have something that has been denied. Hopefully the authenticity of the task will promote some powerful persuasive writing!
This will be Ivana’s last week at school before she heads off for an exciting trip to Europe. Hopefully she’ll post about her experiences on her return. Sadly it is also Sam’s last week working with us. I’ve certainly enjoyed having Sam working in our classroom and we wish him well with the rest of his studies. Maybe he’ll come back and visit us again.
Two weeks gone already! This term we’re welcoming Sam, a student teacher, who will be working with our class for the first 4 weeks of term. Sam has already got to know the students and it feels as though he has always been here!
We have started to have a look at the history of the Olympic Games and some of the controversies at the Olympics. We will also be looking at the human rights issues associated with the Olympic Games.
In science we’ve calculated our carbon footprints - some students have much bigger than others! We’re now looking at the way we use energy and ways in which we could reduce our energy use.
In maths we’ve been studying graphs. We’ve collected data on our skipping sessions and then put this into a graph and made comparisons between different students’ graphs.
Word study this week is focussing on double consonants. See the attached list and the word study contracts. The lifestyle homework for the next 2 weeks is also here. I was disappointed this week with the number of students who had not completed their lifestyle homework, and I’m looking forward to a better result in Week 4.
Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a good holiday. This term we’ll be continuing with our instrumental music lessons. I was so amazed with you all today, especially after a 2 week break. We’ll definitely be able to perform at an assembly this term.
Here are the word study list, word study contract & lifestyle homework contracts.
Today I presented my very first workshop at the CEGSA conference. I talked about our class blog and how it has evolved & then helped teachers to set up their own. The other teachers at the workshop were very kind and very patient with the technical problems we had at the start. Thanks to Graham Wegner who lent me his tablet PC we overcame the difficulties and the workshop went well. As promised I am posting the PowerPoint I used at the workshop as it has some links that we didn’t get to. We ran out of time - surely it wasn’t because I talked too much!
I’ve been playing again! I found this site for making cute avatars called weemees, so I thought I’d have a bit of a play. What do you think? Appropriate I thought. Anyway, you could make one for yourself and use it for our blog, instead of using the same one as you use on Mathletics.
During Term 2 everyone has been working hard on researching natural disasters. The students had to write an information report on a natural disaster and also complete 6 tasks based on Bloom’s taxonomy. Here are some examples of their work:
I’ve just come across this very simple video, from Rachel Boyd, a teacher in New Zealand, illustrating why our students should blog. I think it sums it up beautifully!
What can I say? My fabulous students rose to the occasion and did a great job of performing the pieces learned over the past 10 weeks. The junior primary students enjoyed it and I think staff were most impressed at the progress we’ve all made. Well done to all the students in LA2-6 - you made me very proud today!! Watch this space for an update and a podcast of the performance.
