Student-Led-Conferences

Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow April 1st for our Student-Led-Conferences where you can share in your child's learning.

Guest Speakers and Mystery Reader!

Procedures, Exhibition & Mystery Reader

This week we spent a lot of time looking at different procedures and what makes a procedure effective or ineffective. Mr Jon modelled to the class how to make a cup of tea. We first talked about the materials that you would need in order to make the tea. Then we watched the procedure and talked about each step. It is a very simple activity that was easy for the students to observe and note the various steps.

Next, in pairs the students had to put the pictures of Mr Jon making a cup of tea into the correct order and write the instructions to go with each step. They did a great job!

We also discussed the other procedures that we have done. Skype call, making playdough, making a book and calling our parents. In pairs again we drew and wrote the steps of one of these procedures.

We also brainstormed before this all the materials we needed for each activity and the "bossy" words that we might have used during the activity.

On Wednesday morning we were so lucky to be invited by our Grade 5 buddies to their rehearsal of their PYPX exhibition. It was amazing and if any of you went on Wednesday night or Thursday morning you will know what I'm talking about! The Grade ones were so proud of their buddies as they have watched and followed the process over the past 6 or so weeks. The amazing amount of time, effort and work that has gone into producing such outstanding learning is just fantastic! We in Grade One were so lucky to have shared the learning journey with our buddies :-)

Mystery Reader

A very big THANK YOU to Erin Fellows (Anna's Mum) for once again being our awesome mystery reader. We are so grateful for your time and fantastic stories :-) All the children were delighted to have someone new in the class to read a story and they absolutely loved both stories. They were so quiet and attentive!

The first book Erin read - "But excuse me that is my book" written by Lauren Child. We are all huge fans in our class of Charlie and Lola so any story from them always gets a laugh. In this book Charlie and Lola are off to the library. Lola has become obsessed with Beetles, Bugs, and Butterflies, the best book in the whole world. It’s funny, it has pictures, and it is "very great and extremely very interesting." It’s the only book she wants to take out of the library. But when she finds out it has been taken out by someone else Charlie has to try all sorts of ways to get Lola to look at other books.

The second book that Erin read - "Down the back of the chair" written by (one of my favourite NZ authors) Margaret Mahy. Dad loses his car keys, so his daughter Mary thinks that they have ended up down the back of the chair so Dad begins to search. But they find all sorts of interesting objects are living down the back of the chair! It is a fantastic story that has the children using their imagination and joining in on the poem - Down the back of the chair!

If you would like to be a mystery reader it's not too late!! 

Sign up for Mystery reader

Thanks everyone and have a great weekend!

Student-led-conferences

Next Friday April 1st there is no school. We will have our Student-Led-Conferences. You will have all received a time when you can come with your child to share in their learning. I have also added a list here for you to check.

Wacky Day and Buddies

What a great way to start Friday with some vey wacky students! We had shoes and socks on hands, clothes inside out and back to front, crazy hair and we even had underpants on the outside of our clothes and even on our heads!!

Check us out:

Procedural Writing and Reflections

After our trip to the Post office we got into pairs and wrote the steps we took to post out letter. We had a discussion about what we had to do to get our letter ready to put in the mail box. Would you believe our letters arrived the very next day!! It was a very big surprise ;-)

We also reflected on our trip and brain stormed all the things we saw when we were at the Post Office. We also talked about all the things we wondered about. 

"How do they sort all the mail and make sure it goes to the right place?"

"Why do we post our letters into a box?"

"How can they find packages when people come in and ask for them?"

"Why do they have so many PO Boxes?"

"How do you make an international call on the phones?"

These were some of the many wonderings Grade One had during our trip. I am so impressed at how the were reflecting and sharing their knowledge with each other.

Following a procedure

On Thursday we had a great afternoon rotating around 4 different activities. At each activity we had to read and follow a procedure to complete a task. It soon became clear to the students that if you didn't follow the steps in order and do each step correctly things started to go wrong and it became frustrating when you couldn't compete a task!

Making a phone call:

The children were absolutely delighted to speak with many of their Mums and Dads on the telephone. I think you will see from the photos some very happy faces :-)

Making Playdough:

This was hilarious! Very messy and loads of fun. 

Friday afternoon we hung out with our buddies. This week we were sending emails to each other. Our buddies helped us to log on and we got to read our messages, then send a message back to our buddy. We also sent some messages to other friends in the class.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Our Trip to the Post Office!

We had a good look around at the Post Office yesterday. We saw lots of interesting things and even got to post our own letters. We have all made an estimation about how long we think the letters we posted will take to be sent back to us here at school. 

Our estimations: 

1 day = 1 person

2 days = 7 people

5 days = 3 people

over 1 week = 5 people

over 2 weeks = 2 people

It will be very interesting to see when our letters arrive and if they all arrive on the same day or at different times. Also we have our fingers crossed that we followed the procedure correctly and that they will all arrive at school. 

Some of the interesting this we saw at the post office were the huge rooms full of packages and letters, the post boxes, stamps, international telephones, mail boxes, motorbikes for package delivery and the system for weighing a parcel and wrapping it up with tape!

There are lots of photos, take a look.

Wacky Friday Reminder!

Friday 18th March is STUDENT COUNCIL ~ WACKY FRIDAY

 You may have heard your child mention Wacky Day. This is a day that has been developed and promoted by the ES Student Council. It will be this Friday the 18th March.

What is Wacky Day? Students should come dressed in wacky outfits (wear clothes backwards etc), wear their hair crazy etc.

If your child doesn't have an ideas of what they would like to wear have a look at these links:

Wacky Outfits

Wacky Hair

Wacky Hat

This is optional. If your child does not feel comfortable dressing in a 'wacky way' that is absolutely ok.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Field Trip

On Wednesday we are off to the post office! We are very excited to be able to get a tour and see how the post is organised. We are leaving school at 10:00 am and returning at 11:30 am in time for lunch. Students only need to take a water bottle with them.

Thank you to all the parents for signing the permission forms and if you have not yet please do so before Wednesday as we are not able to take your child on the trip if we have no permission form returned.

I know there will be lots of photos to share with you after the trip :-)

Another busy week!

We love reading in our class and I always enjoy sitting with the children listening to them explain a funny part of the story or something they have learnt from a book or anything of interest that they want to share. It shows me that they are enjoying what they are reading and most importantly that they are understanding what they are reading!

This week we took reading outside and also got creative.

Nak and Raymond read a book about size and shape. The decided to go outside and draw their bodies and their shadows to see if they were the same size and shape.

Janora, Quinn, Ahmed, Floyd and Irrham read a book about how we communicate with our friends. They were all really interested in the tin can phones. We decided to makes some ourselves, they really worked :-)

During this unit of inquiry - How we organise ourselves - we are learning about procedures and what they are. We looked at various types of writing to see if we could recognise what procedural writing looks like. We had to arrange the pieces of writing into two categories - procedure and not a procedure.

We knew that a piece of procedural writing should be telling us how to do something. It should have instructions and tell us step by step what to do. The students did a really good job at organising the different pieces of writing.

We also had a turn at writing a procedure. A few weeks ago our buddies showed us how to make a book out of two pieces of paper. In partners the students had to try to recall those steps and make another book together. Once the book was completed they had to write down the steps they took to make the book. 




This week our Grade 5 buddies shared with us their PYP exhibition process journals and they were amazing! They have all worked so hard and it was great to see how enthusiastic both Grade One and Grade Five were sharing their learning journey. We can't wait for the exhibition!!

Communication!

We have been inquiring into communication and all the different ways that we can communicate with other people. We have been learning and teaching each other about the different ways we talk to family locally and globally. Mr Jon has been introducing us to lots of vocabulary related to how we communicate.

We also tried out a few games where we had to communicate with each other in different ways. 

Chinese whispers - where we had to send a secret message around the circle and see if it was correct at the end after being passed from person to person.

Pictionary - without talking each student had an object that they had to draw and get everyone else to guess what it was.

Barrier - Students sit back to back with a partner. One gives instructions and the other has to follow.

Swimming Is Back!

Grade One KD were delighted this morning to hear that we would definitely be back in the swimming pool today! Check out these happy faces.