#travellingtale completed!

Delighted to share with everyone our completed Travelling Tale - 'Avocado Babies'. During our assembly on Friday we shared the process of creating our part of the tale. Please check our journey and finished product.

and finally the completed tale :-)

We can't wait to join another tale in the new year! Well done to Grade One for such awesome ideas and creative thinking.

Following a Procedure!

On Monday morning we had a great time 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. It became frustrating when you couldn't complete 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.

Skype:

Mr Jon had the children show him the procedure of how to make a call on Skype.  It was clear that a lot of the children had used it before to chat to family and friends who live in a different country.

We also welcomed another new friend to our class on Monday. A very warm welcome to Thai Hak, we are very happy to have you in our class :-)

ISPP's Got Talent and much more....

A very big thank you to Manuela (Noel's Mum) for coming in on Wednesday to be our mystery reader. She read us a hilarious book about a Dinosaur who ate up all of Christmas! The children really enjoyed the story as did I and we had a good laugh about what happens to you when you eat too much :-)

We also helped our very good friend Oan celebrate his seventh birthday on Wednesday. A very happy birthday to you Oan and thanks so much for the delicious doughnuts and fruit :-)

We had some very brave 'Risk Takers' from both our class and Ms Rachelle's class, who on Thursday afternoon took part in 'ISPP's got Talent'! They worked very hard practicing during the up and coming weeks and showed off some fantastic acting! We are all very proud of you Shae, Magalie, Pong Pong, Jennita, Somphoas, Molly and Maële.

It was so lovely to see many of you at the 'Spotlight on the Arts' hosted by Ms Leigh and Ms Dana on Thursday night. It is always so great to see the children taking the lead and sharing with their parents and extended family their learning. It was also a very eye opening time for me as both a teacher and parent to see what has been happening in the Art and Music classes :-) Thanks to everyone who managed to come.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Communities are up and running!

Grade Ones have been introduced this week to our 'Community' boards. This is showing them yet another way of how we can communicate with others. After surveying all the children to see what was popular with them and where their interests lie, we have come up with eight different communities for the children to be involved in. They will be treating these boards like an online forum where they can browse, lurk, comment and ask questions.

The communities are : 

PokePals - Pokemon 

Master Crafters - Minecraft

Sports for kids

Eh! Oh! Lego!

Toy Stories

The World of Kittens

Cold Blooded or Not?

Hot Dog!

The children had the opportunity to go to our piazza to see which community they were signed up to and what was posted on the boards. Then we went back to the class to brainstorm together what we will do next. They had fantastic ideas!

We saw that the boards had pictures, information, questions and likes. The class knew that they wanted to write things on the board, but how were they going to do that? Mr Jon introduced us to the idea of making comments and we discussed what this might look like. With great enthusiasm the students were off post it notes in hand and the commenting began. I can't wait to see how this will progress.

Inquiring Minds!

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

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 to guess what it is.

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

Following a Procedure

After making our milkshakes, as a class, we wrote down the step by step instructions of what we had to do to make this procedure an effective one. We looked at the photos of the students making the milkshakes and enjoying them :-) All the students managed to put all the photos in the correct order and write down the steps. Great effort!

Next up Mr Jon showed us how to make a lovely cup of tea. Together we talked about each step he had to do to make a delicious cup of tea. We watched as he showed us the steps and then with a partner we wrote down on a white board each step. After this each child had a set of photos for that procedure and they had to put it in the correct order and write the instructions for making a cup of tea.

These procedures will be posted under your child's individual page here on the blog very soon.

#travellingtales

We recorded our part of the story and it looks and sounds fantastic. We can't wait to see what is going to happen and where the school in New Zealand will take this. Waiting in anticipation!

We had fun playing with walkie talkies this week. A big thank you to Maële who shared her own ones from home. We had such fun. Check out our video. 

Buddies

We finally got to fly out kites and paper planes that we made with our buddies a few weeks back. It was a perfect morning with lots of wind. We had a blast!

Have a great weekend everyone!