Grade 10 and Mystery Reader!

Grade 10 Show

On Tuesday morning we were invited to watch a show that the Grade 10 students had created for the Grade One students. Having come and interviewed us at the beginning of the year we were very excited to see what they had created. The show had it all - adventure, magic, evil, a witch, wands for everyone and even audience participation! Congratulations to the Grade 10 students!

Mystery Reader

The students rushed back to class after the lunch bell went on Wednesday, in anticipation to see who our mystery reader was. Once we were all in class we heard a loud knock at the door and so Emma went to see who it was. To her surprise and delight there stood her dad. Earlier in the day the students were having a discussion about who they thought it might be and Emma was very adamant it definitely wouldn't be her mum or dad! Well it certainly was a surprise then :-)

A very big thank you to Simon Underhill (Emma's Dad) for coming in to be our second mystery reader! We are very grateful to you for taking time out of your day to read to us :-) Simon read us two stories that had the students thoroughly engaged and at one stage decided to take over one of the characters and help read the story!

If you or any of your family or friends are visiting and would like to come in and be our mystery guest, please do sign up. The children thoroughly enjoy having different people come in and share stories and activities with them.

Mystery Guest - Sign Up

Writing A Procedure, Guest Speaker & Buddies

During this unit of inquiry - How we organise ourselves - we have been 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 discussed the different procedures we have in and around school. We had a big discussion about procedures having a system and steps to it. We could recognise many things in our everyday life that are procedures and even when we try to cook something we need to follow a procedure. 

We had a turn at writing a procedure. Mr Jon showed us how to make a lovely cup of tea. First we talked about each step he would have to do to make it. Then we watched as he showed us the steps. Next we had a set of photos for that procedure that had to be put into the correct order. Finally we wrote the instructions for making a cup of tea.

Captain Mike

On Thursday Mr Brown came over from the secondary school to share with us his knowledge of sailing and how he has to be mindful of the weather to safely travel on the sea in a boat. We had so many questions and thoroughly enjoyed listening to the answers.

Buddies

Also on Thursday our buddies came to hang out and help us with measuring using standard and non-standard units. We had a lot of fun measuring various things and were challenged to find out if some theories were true or false.

- Is your arm span the same as your height?

- Is your forearm the same size as your foot?

- Is the circumference of your neck the same as your waist?

- Is you pointer and thumb the length of your nose?

Ask your child to show you what we did. It was a lot of fun!

How's The Weather?

We brainstormed and reflected on all the things we have learnt about weather and the effects it has on people. We also talked about what we would wear and the different activities we would do during various seasons. In groups we picked an extreme weather and wrote all of our ideas down! Extreme weather conditions seem to be very popular this year :-)

We spent time weather watching and predicting what the weather will be like. We checked out yahoo weather app and talked about what the weather conditions are. We asked ourselves: what would we like to do in this kind of weather? What do we need to look out for? What kind of clothing do we need to wear?

We created a piece of art where we expressed how we feel about rain. We also wrote poems about rain and how it sounds, feels, smells and looks like. We posted these on Seesaw for you all to see and hear.

We have been finishing off all of our research and inquiries into weather. Everyone had a good think about one type of weather they were really interested in finding out more information about. Tornadoes and blizzards were very popular! The children grouped themselves with others who were interested in the same weather condition and each came up with three questions. The questions had to help guide their inquiry so we chose to start our questions using the 5 Ws and H - Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. They came up with excellent questions and have been finding out some really interesting information. Next week we will have lots to share with you about the effects this chosen weather has on people and what the students have designed to protect themselves! This will be where the creative imaginations can take over.

We have also been very creative this week by planning a day according to the weather. From choosing a weather type and mapping out: What to wear, what it looks like, what activities can you do, what effects this weather has on people, what we need and where can you go in this weather. It showed me that the children had made lots of connections during this unit and were full of fantastic ideas when planning out their day. More to come next week as we enter the final week of this Unit of Inquiry.

Making Connections!

Last week I asked the children and parents to bring to school or send in some pictures of them in different types of weather. Thanks so much to everyone who sent in their pictures. We had a show and share session where the children who had pictures were the experts and had small groups rotating around the class getting to see all the pictures and ask questions from our experts. There were lots of interesting questions and some great discussions about the clothes they were wearing and the activities they do in different types of weather.

After all of our research outside last week we decided to consolidate our learning by creating clouds to help us remember which is which. We all wondered if clouds would really feel like this - cotton wool? But then we remember our research and we knew that clouds are made up of tiny water droplets and are actually very heavy. Look out for our explanations coming soon on Seesaw.

Our class photo went great today! We all made sure we had our smiles at school :-) 

Here is a sneak peek at us.

What a great class I have :-)

Exploring our Environment!

This week has been fantastic for the students to experience a number of different types of weather. We got to spend a lot of time outside enjoying our environment and seeing what happens when the weather changes and if it has any affect on us.

On Wednesday we talked a lot about the elements of weather. We went outside and just lay down for a bit to look at the sky and see what was happening. We talked a lot about the clouds and had a lot of wonderings. So we went back to the class to check out some information about what we saw and what the different clouds tell us about the weather.

We found out that there were lots of different types clouds with very tricky names! But we learnt a lot about four types of clouds - Cumulus & Cumulonimbus, stratus and cirrus. We had fun weather watching and throughout the day many of the children told me that they saw one or two of these types of clouds during snack time, lunch or just looking out the window during class time.

This video off Youtube was also very helpful:

In small groups we looked at a lot of weather vocabulary. We wanted to find out what we know and what we need to find out. We had to recognise and read weather words, spell them and draw what they mean. We had some fantastic questions and discussions during this group time and some very knowledgeable students who shared information.

Wonder Walk

We went on a wonder walk around the school. Our goal was to find out about our new Unit of Inquiry. We were investigating weather and how it affects people. It was very stormy weather so we got to see and feel lots while outside. Would you believe we even felt cold! Our goals:

We are thinking like scientists. We are learning to observe. We are looking for changes in the weather.

We posted our finding to Seesaw

Have a great weekend everyone!

Mystery Reader & Milkshake Moustaches!

We were very excited to have our very first mystery reader today! This morning the children had a chance to try and guess who they thought it might be and came back from lunch very quickly so they didn't miss the surprise. 

A very big THANK YOU to Justin Stokes (Timo's Dad) for coming in today to be our very first mystery reader. It was an absolute delight to see Timo's face light up when he realised his dad was our mystery guest. We were even treated to not one but two fantastic books, one of which Timo helped read! The children were such great listeners and thoroughly enjoyed having a visitor reading to them.

The children are very proud when they have a parent, relative or friend come in to read. Please don't miss out on the chance to share a story or a fun activity with our class. 

Follow this link to sign up:

Mystery Reader - sign up

Milkshake Moustaches

We have had such fun today making milkshakes!!

We had a question yesterday morning on our board asking - What is your favourite flavour? The children could choose between chocolate, vanilla or strawberry. So the groups were made - 8 chocolate, 5 vanilla and 5 strawberry.

The children were given a blender, plastic cups, ice cream, and milk.  In their group they had to discuss how they were going to make the milkshakes with these items. The teacher gave no instructions but was the helper that the children could choose to give directions too.  

Vanilla went first:

They decided to each have a turn at putting a scoop of ice cream in the blender, followed by each filling half a cup of milk and putting it in. We blended it together and had a taste test. The verdict was - huge smiles! 

Next was strawberry:
They spent a little time talking about what steps they would take to make the milkshake because they were so eager to taste test. Using what we had learned about procedures they decided who was going to scoop the ice cream, pour the milk and operate the blender. They decided each person in the group got to add a scoop of ice cream, that meant 5 scoops!! Very clever thinking :-) Then added the milk, turned on the blender and after the taste test the verdict was - lots of milkshake moustaches!

Finally it was chocolate:
This proved to be the most popular and since we had 8 people  They each had a turn at putting a scoop of ice cream in the blender, followed by each putting in a splash of milk. All into the blender and after the taste test the verdict was - huge smiles!

Once each group had finished we sat together on the mat and reflected on how the groups worked together. We had previously talked about what was an effective procedure and what was an ineffective procedure. We reflected on how we went about the process and decided that next time we would make it a little different.

We talked about what they thought worked well and what they would do differently next time. They all agreed that if you don't work together, listen to each other and follow the steps of a procedure correctly then things can go wrong! We had a lot of fun making them and clearly we followed the steps carefully since each group had a milkshake as an end result!

Here are our new and improved instructions for making a milkshake.

#TravellingTale Completed!

Delighted to share with everyone our completed Travelling Tale -

 'The Talking fridge'

Please check out our journey on our blog posts. 

Here is the final product!

We can't wait to join another tale toward the end of the year! Well done to Grade One for such awesome ideas and creative thinking!

Weather, Tales & Buddies

We have been very busy this week tuning into our new Unit of Inquiry 'Weather' - We have been learning about the weather and checking each day what Phnom Penh looks like on Yahoo Weather. We worked in groups and each group had various elements of weather to explore and look at. We also explored seasons, weather instruments, vocabulary, condensation/humidity and measuring rain! Which there has been a lot of!!

We also spent a lot of time looking at the different words we use when explaining or talking about the weather. We had help from Mr Jon who visited our class to help us do lots of language activities to get us thinking about the correct terminology. We had fun learning lot of new words!

Buddies

Our buddies came to share with us the stories that they had written. They were fantastic! All the grade one students enjoy listening to the very informative books. Thanks buddies :-) 

#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 how the school in America will finish it. Waiting in anticipation!