A fun day in the sun!

Today, Friday 5th July, Room 5 used the netball courts as our classroom and the asphalt as our paper! It was Crazy Hair Day (and Mufti day), so we made it Crazy Class Day too! We did all of our work, from Maths to Reading on the asphalt. Here are some photos:

 We have been reading the New Zealand novel 'The Halfmen of O' by Maurice Gee as a class, so we created timelines to show all of the events that have happened in the story so far.

We had to think back a long time to remember what happened at the beginning of the book, because we started reading it at the beginning of the term! Eight weeks of exciting adventures in the land of O was a bit hard to remember, but we worked as a team and got all of the main plot points down.

Once we had finished writing down everything that had happened in the book so far, we had to write what we thought the ending would be. We have got two chapters left, so we had to use our prediction skills to figure out what the most likely ending would be. We are finishing the book next week, so we will be able to check if our predictions were accurate or not very soon!

 We then spent some time decorating our timelines with pictures from the book. The most important symbol in the book is Susan's birthmark, which looks like a ying-yang sign, except it is different colours. 

We had a wonderful day in our outdoor classroom. We learnt a lot and we made the courts look interesting and colourful. The only problem is that if it rains over the weekend, all of our work is gone! At least we got photos to remember it by :).

What do you think of our day of outdoor learning? Do you think it sounds fun?

We had a lot of fun - maybe you should try it!

Self Directed Learning

In Room 5, we are learning to manage our own timetables. This is called Self Directed Learning (SDL). Today, we reflected as a class about how our SDL is going. Here is our reflection:

What?

We use SDL to help our learning by planning our own week and managing our own time.  We learn to focus on our work and help us to prepare for the rest of our education.

So What?

We learnt that you have to manage your time really carefully or you will not be learning all of the things you are expected to each week.

We learnt to keep an eye on the clock, so that we get tasks completed on time.If we don’t finish each task on time, we end up getting further and further behind.

We have learnt to look at how long each timeslot is and to put the more complicated tasks in the longer time slots and the easier tasks in the shorter time slots. We have decided to put the more complicated tasks first thing in the morning, as that is when our brain is the most alert. Things that don’t require a lot of thinking (like art and handwriting) are best left to the afternoon slots.

We are in more control of our learning. We decide when is the best time to learn each subject and we can often decide how we would like to present our learning.

Now What?

If we don’t finish the work that we had timetabled for the day, we could take it home to finish. This way, we don’t end up with hours of finishing at the end of the week, but just a small amount every evening.

We need to be more self-controlled and not get distracted as easily. We are learning to make good choices about who to sit with. Sometimes our best friends are not our best learning partners.

If we have extra time slots, we should use them to finish work or make sure any work is the best that it can be. We want to continue to learn and doing the bare minimum is not enough. Don’t waste any time slots - they are all valuable learning times!

We need to stay focussed on the task we are doing and use our timetable all the time to make sure we are doing exactly what we are scheduled to do.

We will ask people to help us when we don’t understand. We need to learn to ask specific questions so that people understand what we need to know. Try not to interrupt people if they are in the middle of a difficult task and try not to always ask the same people. Make sure you have really thought about the problem before you ask for help. It should be your last option, not your first. Find 3 peers who might know the answer, or who are working on the same task as you before asking an adult.

So, what do you think? Are there any questions that you think we should have asked ourselves? What do you think about SDL? Do you have any questions for us? Leave us a comment about our learning and we will try to answer all your questions!

Homemade paper by Karen L and Claire

This week Room 5 made paper out of old paper that's been used into new paper.

Here is how we made it:

Resources:

Old paper that's been used

Hot water

Paper recycling kit

Dye

Art shirt/old shirt

Rubber gloves/plastic gloves

Cello tape

Glitter (if wanted)

Cloth

Method:

1.Rip up paper

2.Put the ripped up paper into the hot water

3.Soak it over night in the hot water
4.Put the dye, mulch in to the tray in the recycling paper kit
5.Get the gloves and put them on with the cello tape

6.Choose which shape you want to make the paper with from the recycling kit

7.Take the shape you want and put the sieve under it
8.Then put it in the tray containing the mulch and dye
9.Leave it in the tray until it has been covered in mulch and dye
10.Clear away the mulch from the edges of the shape
11.Put the cloth on to the shape and sieve then squeeze it hard with your hands
12.Take the sieve and the shape off carefully be careful not to damage the shape of the mulch

13.Then put the other cloth on the other side

14.Take the squeezer from the recycling kit and put the cloth and mulch on to the squeezer
15.Put the lid on the bottom part of the squeezer and screw the bolts on

16.Then squeeze the squeezer until there is no dye coming out

17.Unscrew the bolts and lift up the lid
18.Let it dry over night


Room 5 enjoyed making paper, the colours room 5 chose were violet, blue and red.
We made to pieces each one for Mother's Day and one for the parent helper who helped us on Maritime Museum.

Our Audience

It is quite cool on blogger.com that you can see where your audience comes from. While most of our views are from New Zealand (as you would expect...), we also have had views from some very interesting places as well. Here are the percentage of viewers from each country:

NZ - 75.7%
Russia - 12%
Germany - 7%
USA - 3.4%
China - 0.8%
South Korea - 0.6%
Brazil - 0.2%

I wonder why the highest view count after New Zealand is Russia? 

Have a wonderful holiday! Remember that BYOD officially starts on the first Monday back and that our trip to the Maritime Museum is the second day back.

See you next term :D.

Miss Williams

The Change of Room 5

 The Change of Room 5

In Room 5 we have moved all our furniture around. First we talked about were things should go and we came up with this:  

We had a fun time moving the furniture. We put the Teacher's desk in the middle, so that she could see everyone and conference with people more easily. We created the different subject areas to help our learning by working collaboratively with people who are working on the same subject as we are. The tote trays are at the back of room to keep them out of the way, but so they are still easy to get to. We used the tote trays to create a little separate area where people can work on devices that need to be plugged in. We are proud of what we created and we think it will help our learning - we'll let you know!

I hope you like how we designed our room.

By Rose

The Change Of Room 5

 Room 5’s Amazing Classroom

On Wednesday 19 April, Miss Williams told us to pull all of the furniture to the front of the room. We were very confused, but we did it. She then told us that we were responsible for designing the layout of the room to help us with our learning. When we first found out that we were changing the classroom’s look, some people were so amazed.

After lunch we made a plan of where we wanted each space to be and how to set out the furniture.

Here’s a picture of what our plan looked like:

Then this is the end result. Do you like how our new classroom looks?

By Maddy

Welcome to Room 5!

Welcome to the Room 5 blog! This will be a place for us to share our learning with you and for you to catch up with what we are up to. We would love it if you could leave us comments about our work - what you like, what could be improved, and any questions that you have about what we are doing. We have lots of exciting things planned for our Year 5 year and we can't wait to share them with you!

Below is our class Treaty. We all discussed the kind of room we wanted to be a part of. Here is what we decided on:

We want Room 5 to be:

·   respectful of adults, peers, equipment and the environment.

·   students who take pride in their work, their presentation, their classroom and their school.

·   a class who gives anything a go, never gives up and always tries their hardest.

·   a self-motivated class who manage their time effectively, and show initiative and independence.

·   a caring and supportive class who work together to meet their goals.

We are looking forward to a great year!

Love,

The children of Room 5