Room 13's 2010 blog

Last Friday Theo from CSIRO came to our school and ran Robotics sessions for our upper primary classes. We had great fun and learned a bit about programming the robots. We had to problem solve to male our robot go in a straight line as some of them were curving. At the end of the session we had to program our robots to do a dance and then we had a dance competition. Some of the dances were pretty creative! Here are some photos of us at the Robotics workshop.

Robotics with CSIRO on PhotoPeach

So, here we are halfway through the year already! I can’t believe how quickly it has gone.

We have a pretty busy term ahead (how very unusual I hear you say!). This week we’ve welcomed Alice, our student from korea, who will be with us for the next five weeks. Erin & Trevy are doing a great job of helping her find her way around and get settled into class. Well done, and thank you, girls.

The Festival Choir is off to Magic Millions at Morphetville Racecourse for their fisrst public rehearsal. Good luck to everyone in the choir.

Our inquiry this term is a Humanities inquiry on cause and effect. We are looking at who was affected, and how, by the colonisation of Australia. Everyone has worked really hard on making a timeline of significant events in Australia’s history, and we are now investigating how Aboriginals lived before the First Fleet arrived.

We are also looking at the structure and features of persuasive texts. Great timing with the election coming up! I’ve asked students to see if they can identify any of the features we’ve talked about in any of the politicians’ speeches or writing. I’ll also be sending a letter home about a letter writing task, so keep an eye out for that.

We have our CSIRO Lab on Legs Robotics session on Friday. We always enjoy these hands-on sessions as they  are challenging, but also a lot of fun.

I have promised the class a celebratory party once our class blog has hit 5000 visitors. As you can see on our counter we are getting pretty close so I think there may be a celebration happening very soon!

My students have spent the last few lessons writing stories for their buddies (from a Year 1/2 class) using Storybird. They have really enjoyed using Storybird and have written some interesting stories for their buddies.

Storybird is full of rich and wonderful artwork and illustrations that you choose to build your story around. It can be used in a number of ways. I gave my students free rein to create a story they thought their buddy would enjoy, but you could be more specific and specify a particular genre, or use it to develop descriptive writing. I think it has great potential to get reluctant writers writing.

Here are some of the stories written by the students of Room 13.

The Leopard Who Wouldn't Eat Meat on Storybird

Lucy's day out! on Storybird

Marshmallow and the Aliens on Storybird

Mr Fluffy and his big carrot on Storybird

Every year the Year 6/7 students put on a dramatic extravaganza at a local hall. The plays they perform are amazing and the students do a fantastic job at the matinee and on the night. I’m so pleased to say that this year was no exception! The standard of the plays was amazing. We had about 2oo people in the audience and the atmosphere was wonderful.

The students from Room 13 put on a play called “Robin Good & her Merry Hoods”. We had a fair bit of editing to do as there were originally only 13 characters in the play and we have 29 students in our class. We all worked together to create new characters and extra dialogue. I have to say that we have some very talented & creative students in Room 13! We’ve all worked very hard over the last 8 weeks or so, but I’m sure that all of the students would tell you that it was worth it. Here are some of our photos of the matinee performance.

Free slideshow design made with Smilebox

Have a go at this 3D word cube. How many words can you get?

I’ve taken off the embedded game as the audio was driving some people crazy! But here is the link:

http://www.freeworldgroup.com/games6/gameindex/wordelicious.htm

A teacher colleague from Sydney shared this site via twitter. There are hundreds of games here covering many areas. We’re going to use some of the literacy (language arts) games this week, but you can try some of the others too. Let us know which you like the best and why.

On Monday a group of students from three different classes visited Minton Farm as part of our inquiry on the impact of introduced animals. Minton Farm is a rescue centre run by Bev Langley as a not-for-profit charity. Bev does an amazing job at Minton Farm rescuing and caring for thousands of animals who’ve been abandoned, injured, or lost. On our visit we saw blue tongued lizards who’d been attacked by cats and dogs, kangaroos who’d been rescued after their mothers had been killed, a three-legged brush-tailed possum, a half-blind brush-tailed possum, an emu who’d been found wandering the streets of a local town, and a wedge-tailed eagle whose mother had been shot by a farmer. We also saw an alpaca, goats, sheep & lambs, pigs, deer, chickens, geese, kookaburras, lorikeets, a corella, a wombat, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten something.

Bev is a fount of knowledge about rescuing animals and gave some great advice to the students about what to do if they find an injured bird or animal. She answered lots of questions with great passion and patience. She is a wonderful example of how people can make a difference if they care enough about something and are willing to persist against all odds.

If you have any sort of interest in animals I suggest you visit her website and her facebook page where you will find updates on the animals at the rescue centre as well as an amazing amount of information. I would encourage you all to support Bev in her efforts and  become a sponsor – a bargain at only $30 per year

We had a great afternoon at Minton Farm, and left there much more knowledgeable than when we arrived – if not just a little muddy!

Thanks to the the wonderful parents who helped transport us there – Mr Howell, Jenny, Elle, Gill, Heather, and Rae.

As I explained to you yesterday we’ve had some lovely comments on our blog from Mrs Chiavarini and her 5th grade class in Dover. I think it would be great if we could all visit some of her students’ blogs and leave them some comments. Maybe we could exchange some information with them about life in Australia, or the differences in our schools. They are finishing school for their summer holidays in a few weeks so we need to get a shuffle on and send them some comments quickly!

Here is their school in Chickering, Dover. Can you find out where in the US that is?

Just in case you need a little revision on data and graphing here is an activity to help you out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/maths/data/interpreting_data/play.shtml

I am very lucky to have a network of people who share great ideas and resources. Steph is one of the educators whose blog I regularly read as she finds and shares some great online resources and wonderful ideas for using them. I feel very honoured that Steph has nominated our class blog for the Follow Friday Award -  an award for blogs that you hold in high regard.

We now need to pass this honour on to other blogs that we think are definitely worth reading. The rules for the blogs nominated are:

1. Copy & display the picture of the award
2. Link back to the blog that nominated you
3. Nominate 10 different blogs yourself
4. Inform those that you nominate so that they can in turn nominate their favourite blogs and share these great blogs with others

I love blogs that share resources and ideas, but I also love blogs that share what’s happening in the class. These are my chosen blogs:

1. Mr Lamshed’s class
2. Mrs Lynch’s class
   
3. Blog Dogs
4. 2010 AllStars
5. Year 6 blog
6. Visual Arts at Taylors Lakes
7. The Ripple Effect
8. Mr B’s Box
9. Bits & Bobs
10. Primary Pete

I could have nominated more than these ten blogs. There are so many great ones out there.