Production

School is well underway with preparations for production at the end of the term. In room 10 we have chosen to use the theme of sport.

The students started the process by choosing six different sports that they feel are important in Pahiatua. The sports they chose were rugby, basketball, cricket, hockey, soccer and netball.

Then they completed brainstorms about the sports writing down all the words they could think of to do with each individual sport. These brainstorms were used to write the lyrics for our song. We are using the song Shake it Off by Taylor Swift, but adding our own lyrics.

Finally the children chose a sport and though up two different moves that could be used to represent them. This was a very interesting session and the students came up with some great moves. I then used these moves to create a routine to go with out song.

So far we have learned our whole dance and are finalising and perfecting it. We have also been working on learning the song as we will have to sing this too. Luckily we don't need to sing and dance at the same time and we have a local sound technician coming to visit the class next week to record their singing. On the night the students will have the music played for them and they just have to do their awesome dancing!

We're looking forward to it, only a week and a half to go. Check back at the end of term for photos and videos of the night.

SDL Dance

In week 6 we started running SDL in the afternoons for the middle syndicate students. SDL stands for Student Directed  Learning. The school's focus for the second half of the term is Art Attack, so in light of that I have been running dance classes in Room 10.

On YouTube I found a video posted by Saskia's Dance School, with young children performing a dance to Meghan Trainor's 'Better When I'm Dancing'.

I chose to use this video to learn the dance with my class and spent two weeks progressing through it. 

On Friday we performed the dance in assembly and the students dos a fantastic job. I was impressed by how committed and keen the students were. Some of the children even practiced at home finding the video on YouTube themselves.

 

Hover crafts

We were recently kindly gifted some excess CDs from a local choir. We decided to use these CDs as an inspiration to plan our take time activity for the week. After doing some research I discovered that we could use them to make hover crafts.

To start our construction the students had to decorate their CDs (purely for aesthetically reasons) and hammer a hole into a bottle cap.

These two parts were then hot glued together ready for hovering.

Attaching the balloon was the trickiest part and the students had to do this with a buddy. The students persevered though and the hover crafts were a great success. It would be interesting to use these hover crafts as a science experiment looking at the effect of different airflow.

Counting on

In maths we have been learning how to add numbers together through counting on.

At the end of the unit my class showed their newly developed skills using the app Explain Everything. This was a double focus lesson looking at their maths skills and also learning about using this app in a new way.

Collaborative Problem Solving

 

We are beginning to rethink how we implement our maths programmes at Pahiatua School. We are undertaking PD with Dinah Harvey later in the year and have begun some of the ground work in preparation for her arrival. At our last staff meeting we were shown a video about 'doing maths' a more collaborative, problem solving maths approach.

I thought that this seemed like a great way to get the students discussing their maths, learning and thinking so have attempted to implement some of the points from the video into my own practice. During week 6, I started each class with a 10 minute real life problem solving question which the students had to complete in groups.

I emphasised that they needed to talk with each other about their thinking and explain how they got the answer. The students have used these opportunities to deepen their maths understanding and to share their knowledge with each other. The groups are mixed abilities and provides an environment where students can learn from each other.

 

Choir

This week Kat and I have started a new choir in the middle syndicate. We're working on teaching the students a little bit of music theory and learning some songs too.
On Wednesday I introduced the students to crotchets, which they grasped quite quickly.

The first song we started to learn is Bare Necessities. I was surprised by how few students already know this song. I like that it will introduce the students to a little bit of jazz, which is a genre they may not have experienced much before.

We're Going to the Swimming Pool

For Taku Time last week I ran an activity where students got to rewrite a song with new lyrics. To make sure the students understood what the activity was I created a new song of my own which I sang for the syndicate.

They particularly enjoyed the first part of the new song - We're Going to the Swimming Pool (sung to the tune of One Call Away) and requested that we finish writing it.

So the teachers got their creative heads together and completed the song.



The students are in the middle of learning this song to perform at our next assembly. Unfortunately we started this project after swimming had finished so weren't able to fill the video with photos of the students acting out the lyrics.