Learning beyond expectations.

This week we have had a couple of students choose to do additional creative work, and it has been such a busy week with shows, assembly and fire men visiting as well.  Here are a few that got finished and are ready to share with others.

This is Kaye-Lani's.  She has spent 2 weeks getting this ready to share.  She got inspired to write her pepeha (which we had been discussing in class).  She brought it in to share with us and when we suggested that she record it on the ipad, she went away super excited, and created a stop motion.  She was super proud of herself.  We however said that this was by no means finished.  She then had to go back and research her Tongan pepaha so she could also include this.  This has been something Kaye-Lani has been very shy about within our class.  After the suggestion was made, she was still very apprehensive, so we tried to enlisted the help of her brothers ... In the end, we just rang home.  Kaye-Lani's mum was fantastic to chat to and within a few days Kaye-Lani bounced into school carrying her Tongan version of her Pepeha.  She shared it with us, and then added it to her Explain Everything.  She was very excited to share this today as part of our school assembly.

This is an amazing example of a student using writing to bridge not 2 languages but 3, not just English and Te Reo but also Tongan.  Seeing her now sharing her understanding of all 3 language in class as well as in this Explain Everything has been PRICELESS!!!  Well done Kaye-Lani and your family.  You guys ROCK.

This is Nicks, he is learning to use his imagination to create different stories, about a range of different things.  He has used Lego to create a scene, and has then been able to use some Lego ships and other creations to create a stop motion story.  When Nick had finished making the stop motion movie he then started learning how to record the oral story that goes with his stop motion movie. 

We can't wait to see the sequels Nick.

Reading Plays

Every now and again Mrs G brings her iPad in from home.  When she does we sometimes use an app called puppet pals.  This is a great way to record stories and plays, however we don't have it on our school iPads.  This week Mrs G came up with a way to replicate something like puppet pals on Explain Everything.  Here are a few examples.  

The First story was the play, The birthday cake that the Hovercrafts reading group had.  They broke into 2 groups to record the whole story.  Enjoy.

Part 1

By Honey & Nakita

Part 2

By Kaelan, Harvey & Rakai

Watch out for next weeks version of 'The Terrible Fright'.  It was one of the books that the Water skiers read during the week.  They really enjoyed starting to make this into a play as well, so WATCH THIS SPACE!

Great work everyone!

Week 9 Writing Challenge

Here is this weeks writing challenge.  Last week we revisited our OREO writing and how this helps us to argue our point of view on different topics.  This weeks writing challenge asks us to revisit this at home using the topic of fire alarms.

Please share your stories either in the comments section below, photograph your writing and email it to kariene@ohaeawaiprimary.co.nz or bring it into school to share.

Fire Story Publishing

This week we have been writing stories to help us think about fire and fire safety. One of our writing tasks this week meant that we would revisit OREO writing, with this weeks focus being that fire alarms are important.  We hope that this will help our blog readers to comment on week 9's writing challenge.

Enjoy.

Harvey

Nakita

Ross

Waiahi

Calla

Aiden

Sienna M

Nicole

Heidi

Lucus

Tahlia

Learning Through Play - In the garden

This week we did lots of things around gardening.  We hope you enjoy this explain everything that share some of the learning that we did while we were playing.  Remember to leave us comments as this helps us with our learning.

Escape plans from week 8 - Writing Challenge

Part of week 8's writing challenge had students talking at home and creating escape plans with their parents.  Here are some examples of escape plans that children shared.

Keep up the amazing writing guys it is fantastic to see.  This week we have enjoyed receiving your different and creative ideas about fire safety.

  

Felicity                               Sienna M

Khloe                                    Harvey

 Bailey worked with her mum and dad and came up with different versions with the same meeting place.  They had great fun thinking and talking together.

Kaelan used Pic Collage to share his ideas about his fire plan and safe meeting place.

Nakita created an Explain Everything about her escape plan.

Aiden even made a cool movie about his fire safety plan!

Week 8 Writing Challenge

This week we will revisit fire safety at school so this weeks writing challenge reflects this learning.  We welcome all our blog readers to comment on this post as we love receiving comments from parents, and others from all over NZ.  This challenge also has a second part that asks for you to take a photo of your escape plan and email it to kariene@ohaeawaiprimary.co.nz so we can add these to our blog.  Although we hope that none of us will ever need to use these escape plans, it is a very important part of being prepared, so we look forward to seeing them.

Plant Report Publishing

This week we broke into 2 groups for publishing.  One group published their work by hand to go up on our writing wall, and the other group published on explain everything, so we could share these examples and help us to reflect on our learning.

This weeks writing has focused lots on how we write reports, as a topic to focus on we looked mainly at plants and herbs.  The children really enjoyed going out each morning to gather herbs from our school garden.  On friday we painted some concrete blocks with the words Kawakawa on to support Team Awa's gardening as a thank you.

We talked about reports needing an introduction, followed by information specific to what it is the report is about, and then a conclusion.  Here are some of our finished publishing examples for you to enjoy and comment on.

Abby

Kaelan

Kaye-Lani

Liam

Nakita

Olivia

Ollie

Parani

Prayz

Riah

Looking forward to seeing your comments.

Play based learning - Week 6, Term 3

This week the Play based learning group has been focused on communication with phones and looking at how they have changed.  On friday as part of their play based learning activities they went to the LEGO room to create their own phones.

Maree our amazing TA has been working with them and when I mentioned that if she got photos I would get a child to convert it into a movie for us, and she said ... "I just find, I'm so busy, I don't get time to take photos"  which was a perfectly valid point ... SO ... instead of acknowledging defeat... and opting for status quo... We improvise and change what we do to make the things that are valuable even more valuable by documenting them, creating with them, and sharing them so we can reflect on our own learning, rewind our learning or help others with their learning.

PLAN B emerged.

This week we chose a year 2 student who was both confident with using an iPad, and confident at writing.  Her job was to make notes while in the Lego room with the play based learning group, and take lots of photos.  When they all came back to a breakout room by Team Maunga, it was her job to write alongside these writers and convert her notes into an explain everything or movie.

This had such potential to be motivating for all involved (including those students within the main class who wanted to be apart of it next time!).  Sienna M did a fantastic job of recording and creating around the learning this group were doing.  Well done everyone!

WAHOO... Lesson here for us all... Where there is a will, there is a way.