Congratulations Thomas, Pote and Mahdia!

Congratulations Thomas and Pote! A certificate for writing great research questions. Congratulations Mahdia! Netball Player of the Day. Well done to you all. 

Barrier Games

This week we used the barrier game strategy to help us create a collaborative story told through the eyes of the shoes in the image. An area of focus in LS2 is to ensure that our completed writing is correctly punctuated so that what we have written makes sense to our readers. My learners had 15 minutes collaborative planning time using the 5 senses to guide their thinking, then had a further 15 minutes to co-construct their text. This isn't as easy as it sounds as they had to 'create' their text sitting back to back with only their plan to prompt them. Each pair wrote sentence by sentence with one partner taking over after the other had added the full stop. It was really pleasing to see how much of this year's learning they have made strong connections to.

Exploring Poems: by Daniel

Today for reading we worked on a task about ballad poems. We watched this ballad poem about Charlotte Anne. She was a woman back in the 1870s who, unlike the other women wore trousers and boots instead of skirts or dresses. She also went into the forest to cut down trees for a living. 

Recalling our Times Tables at Speed

Recalling our times tables at speed is an important skill to master, and made even more fun with hands on games that make us think quickly in a race against the clock. Well done team! So many of you have made huge progress.

Synthesising in LS2

This term my  reading group have been looking at how they can take what they already know (prior knowledge), add to that new learning (new knowledge) and combine the two to develop a new understanding (synthesise). Today we used a variety of scaffolds to help us make connections to the text through the strategy of synthesising.

Speed Dating...

Last week I saw an idea shared by the innovative year 7/8 teachers at Stanhope Road School on social media so decided to try it out. The idea... learning through speed dating! During inquiry I split the group in two. One half found out facts about Chinese New Year and the other half researched facts about traditional Chinese food. We were looking to make connections as to how the Chinese communities across NZ sustain their culture. The photos below show our version of 'speed dating' in action. My learners really enjoyed this unique way to make connections. 

Author Visit: Kyle Mewburn

Today we had a visit from the author Kyle Mewburn. He captivated his audience by painting clear pictures with his words. In the afternoon a group of our LS2 learners took part in a writing workshop with him. Check back with our blog to have a look at what they learnt.

Prefix: Sub

Sajiha, Mishaan, Mya and Thomas were learning about the prefix 'sub'. Prefixes go on the front of words and have different meanings. Sub means under or below. For the word wall they wrote as many sub words that would make sense if you substituted the sub for under, and for the paragraph the had to write a nonsense paragraph using nine sub words.