One more sleep before CAMP.  We are all going to have such a cool time!  Make sure you get a good sleep tonight.

There were so many questions about your blogs I can’t possibly answer them tonight.  ( I have to get a good night sleep too!)  I will book the Learning Centre next week to run some tutorials on the basics.  You can also help each other!  Don’t panic because it is a learning curve and you will get there if you persist. 

 SEE YOU TOMORROW BRIGHT AND EARLY.  DON”Y FORGET YOUR SMILE AND SENSE OF HUMOUR!

(….and no April Fools’ tricks please!)

Check the blogroll to see if I have created a blog for you.  Email me on the gmail address to get your username.  Have Fun:-)

I am really excited about your new blogs.  Remember that you are the ‘administrator’ of your own blog BUT that I can administer them too.  I don’t expect to ever have to intervene with any of your blogs.  I know you are all very responsible Internet users and will always abide by the Internet safety rules of the school.  This means only putting material on your site that is suitable for a school blog.  If you are not sure, check with a parent or talk to me at school.  We don’t wan to risk losing the privilege of having a school blog by posting inappropriate material.  Remember, your blog is an opportunity for you to get feedback from your peers, friends, family and teachers.   Have fun being creative and sharing ideas.  If you feel stuck managing your blog, don’t worry, there is plenty of help available.  It has been a huge learning curve for me, so you can certainly do it.   

NEWSFLASH

I have been working on the site to get more  blogs up and running.  There must be a problem because it won’t let me set up any new ones at the moment.  William I have deleted yours as I couldn’t work out what the problem was.  I will try again later today or over the weekend.   For those of you who already have a blog it should not be a problem.   If you see a new link to a blog it should be working.  You can email me at year62008@gmail.com and I will email back your password and user names.  We just have to be patient.  Technology doesn’t always work the way we want it to.

Check later today or tomorrow.    I will leave a message when I have news.  It may just be that there is a glitch on the site and it will fix itself. 

Camp

Have a good weekend and get plenty of sleep before camp!  Don’t forget to start getting your packing organised.   You might need to get some clothes washed.  Don’t leave it all up to Mum and Dad!  Surprise them and take some responsibility.  

If you are feeling a bit nervous about camp - that’s normal.  I get nervous every time.  Just imagine being Mum to 52 children!  I can guarantee that you will have a fabulous time.  You will be so busy that you won’t even have time to get homesick.  Believe me!  I have been to camp many times now.  We’ll have heaps of fun.

See you  Monday.

Well done to Ben for getting started on his blog!  Looks really cool Ben and I can’t wait to see how it all develops.

I am reading up on how to make a podcast.  It would be great to have a regular podcast from Room 12 - What do you all think?  I will need some help to get it set up.

Swimming sports was a great success and we all had a lot of fun.  Congratulations Room 12 we won the class relay!

Here are some photos I took  at the swimming sports on Thursday.

It is almost Easter.  I hope the Easter Bunny comes to visit you and that you have lots of fun over the holiday break.

 We need to start thinking about the responsibilities of keeping a mouse.  This will involve working out a budget for buying everything we need!  Remember we will have ongoing costs for food and bedding.  

What could you bring for the cake stall?  Will you be able to help sell on the day?  Where do you think would be the best place for the cake stall?   There’s lots of things to think about.

 Here’s a video clip I found about how to look after mice.

We have had the OK to go ahead and raise money for our mouse and cage.  We’ll talk today about a time for the cake stall. 

Parent teacher meetings

It was great to meet all your parents last night.  I think your parents were pretty impressed with your goals and progress so far.  Many of your parents asked about the PAT results.  I will post a note here on the blog when they arrive and are available.

Here’s another maths game to try.  The example is quite easy - but you can adapt the idea to make it more challenging.

Our sketches - Everyone but James and Harry!  I will add them once they are scanned. 

Create Your Own
This will be a very short week as we close early tomorrow (1 pm) for parent interviews, swimming sports on Thursday and Friday school is closed for Easter.    Six more sleeps until the Easter Bunny comes - well that’s if he visits your house on Easter Sunday.

This week we will aim to finish our crayon batik, book reviews, scripts for Crazy Talk and drafts of our Myst III writing. 

In maths we are continuing with Number - addition and subtraction.  We will be exploring mental strategies for subtraction. 

Swimming sports is always lots of fun.  We will be travelling by bus to Mt Roskill - leaving school at 10.30.  We should be back at school before 2.00 pm.  Make sure you bring plenty to drink and eat.

The manikin created a lot of interest today.  We will have some time to look at it again later this week. 

Homework

Because it is a short week,  swimming sports on Thursday and finishing early for parent teacher meetings tomorrow, I have decided your homework this week will just be the regular activities - reading, spelling and basic facts.  

Here is a cool little activity you can do at home to help you practise your basic facts.  Have a go!

I have spoken to Sheryl about having a cake stall to raise money for a class pet.  She will check with the Board of Trustees first and let us know if that is OK.  Provided everything is OK with the Board, I think we will have the cake stall after Easter.  That will give us enough time to market the stall to parents and students.  I will keep my eye out for a suitable cage for the mouse!

Monday - How our body works using a manikin from Green Bay High School.

I have been able to borrow a plastic manikin which has all the major organs.  It can be taken apart and put back together - so it is very easy to see how the parts of our body fit so neatly together.  It is a very expensive piece of equipment, so we will need to take great care with it.

Homework

Because Friday is such a busy day for us with our music lesson, choir orchestra etc, I will check homework and spelling on Mondays from now on.  This does not mean that you are expected to do homework over the weekend.  Everything will stay the same, but we will share our findings on a Monday.  It would make sense to bring your homework book to school on Friday, as usual, so it is there  for Monday.

I will post the homework for next week soon.

Myst III

We had great fun starting the game Myst III this week and using it to inspire our writing.   Playing Myst III requires a great deal of thinking and learning to progress.  For a start there is reading - all those journals!  Some of the writing is quite poetic and requires you to really think about the deeper meaning - inference.  Some of the writing is quite informative and requires you remember instructions and diagrammes.  In addition there is all the learning around having to work cooperatively as a group and negotiate with each other about our next moves. 

We have had a great start to the actual writing too. I will post a couple of video clips later this weekend of students sharing their first few sentences.

Have a great weekend!  

Today we had our first writing lesson using Myst III for inspiration.  Myst III is a computer game that takes you into a virtual world.  It requires reading and observations in order to progress.  The player discovers a series of journals that open to reveal clues, information and diagrammes on how to proceed.  It is mysterious and strange with captivating graphics and music. 

To start the lesson, we shared the learning intentions and read models of other children’s work.    (Check out last year’s blog to see what some of last year’s students wrote. ) We then deconstructed the models and used our prior knowledge to identify the language features used by the authors.  We started to play the game!!  Here is a video clip of part of our lesson.  Click on the big triangle to watch it.  The next step in the process is to start the writing!  We’ll start that tomorrow.

myst-3-the-movie.wmv

Here is a video clip of Tim Rylands, a teacher in the UK also using Myst III for writing.  He talks about the success the children had, especially the boys!  I know we can produce writing that is equally brilliant.