Today is Good Friday, and it's nice to have made it to Easter and be enjoying the start of two weeks of holiday. At the start of this week I wasn't sure how I'd make it through to the end - with interviews every afternoon and a workshop to present on Wednesday. Fortunately, I'd built it up to be bigger in my mind, and as I approached things step by step, it was much more manageable. I'm now busy organising the clutter in my mind so that the steps are laid out for the next twelve weeks! But I'm racing ahead. Let's look at the fun for this week...
Dragon Art
Jonno organized a brilliant art activity for us - designing and decorating dragons with collage tails. Students used coloured oil pastels to colour the head and then alternated scaly strips in two colours for the body/tail. They looked really effective when they were finished. They represented a creative end to our unit on Rowan of Rin.
Cross Country Carnival
On Thursday, students in all grades did some running for our Cross Country Carnival on the school grounds. In Australian schools we have three major whole school sporting events each year: the swimming carnival, the athletics carnival and the cross country carnival. (Do these occur in other countries?)
At various quiet points throughout the carnival, one of the more experienced and enthusiastic teachers led students in high energy dances to keep them entertained.
I have been surprised this year to find how many students look for ways to avoid running in the cross country. Quite a few of my students experienced performance anxiety or complained of some form of illness. I wonder what can be done to prevent this occurrence next year. This year I ran the race with one of my ten year old girls. It was nice to share the experience together, and together we felt the sense of achievement at the end.
When I was a child, I had a hernia one year, and asthma another year. I think for myself, it was mostly an issue of laziness and an unwillingness to persist with a run for such a length of time. I didn't see the value in pushing through difficulties. This is something that I think I've learnt as an adult.
Never Give Up Attitude
This week we focused on the FRIENDS value: "Never Give Up Attitude". In Circle Time, groups created graphs about the difficult situations that students have had to face in life. The following lesson, students learnt about the story of Floppy Cat and considered situations in their own lives where they persisted through difficult circumstances. You can find out more about the story of Floppy Cat in the following videos.
Three-Way Interviews
As far as I was concerned, our three-way interviews were very successful. I was impressed to see how well students summed up their own capabilities and work habits. Most could explain how they were coping with the work and took ownership of their plans for next term. They shared any concerns they were having, and together we talked through solutions. I really like this form of interview as it represents a real team approach to learning and includes the subject of the discussion!
I even found that students were honest enough with their parents to own up to misbehaviour in class. It was much easier for me to have the student break the news, rather than having to 'dob' on them to their parents.
Assemblies and Visitors
Again this week we made good use of our school hall for assemblies and visitors. On Tuesday we had some players from the Western Bulldogs AFL team who came to talk to our students about their experiences with sport.
On Thursday we had a special FRIENDS assembly to acknowledge the work we have done on our FRIENDS values this term. Two students from each class received awards for following the FRIENDS values. We were also told that each class is going to be working on a name for each of the FRIENDS mascots.
After lunch on Thursday we had yet another assembly to find out the results of the cross country carnival and inform students who progressed to the next stage of competition.
Friday Fun will be taking a break until term starts up again. See you again next term!
Want more Friday Fun? Click here.
Showing posts with label Cross Country. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cross Country. Show all posts
Friday, April 10, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Friday Fun - 27/3/09
Fun this week:
Maths
After all the difficulties with teaching subtraction with trading last week, I couldn't simply move on and ignore it. It was eating away at me. I had to conquer it. So this week, rather than moving on to multiplication and division, I spent some more time on subtraction. I found some great videos on subtraction with regrouping and played these for the class.
We then used the rhyme "If there's more on the floor, then go next door" to help us solve a range of two digit subtraction questions. This also helped with explaining the more difficult subtractions from 2000 etc. The rhyme can be applied by the first neighbour saying "I'm sorry, I don't have any numbers to spare. Let's try next door" and so on. I think my students really enjoyed the idea of the numbers being characters and fitting into a story!
My new challenge is to help my students to look at the question first before flying into the written solution. Too many were using the written method to find the answer to 50 - 49 which I know they can do mentally!
We also touched a little on multiplication and division (as I didn't want to overlook it completely) by reviewing some one-digit multiplication and creating the "families" for those facts. For example, 5x7=35; 7x5=35; 35 divided by 7=5; 35 divided by 5=7. Again, my students loved this idea of the numbers being in families. I'll have to remember this as I teach them other concepts - they like to bring the numbers to life!
Spiders in Spider Webs
This relates to our Rowan of Rin unit, but we did it in our homeclasses, so I've decided to include it in Friday Fun. We listened again to the passage in chapter 6 of Rowan of Rin where the characters face thick spiderwebs covered in big, black spiders. We used white oil pastels on black paper to create a web background. We then created our own spiders from shiny black paper and stuck them on the background so that they stood on the page with bent legs. We made the web sparkle in some places using some silver glitter paint. They look really fantastic displayed in our classroom.
Jonno and I were chatting about how great they were and that chatting lead to more ideas and so we decided it would be good to teach the kids how to write a description about spiders and spider webs and then attach their writing under their artwork on the display. We brainstormed some good adjectives and then students created sentences using these words. I suggested that they try some alliteration and rhyme but use no more than three adjectives per sentence. The writing that resulted was really fantastic. One of my students then suggested that we type up these descriptions in our lab lesson rather than handwriting the final copy. Brilliant idea - and a brilliant opportunity to teach some simple word processing tips - changing the page orientation, selecting all text, changing font etc. This lesson was also great for teaching the correct use of commas.
Communication - Assessment Task
As part of our Integrated Inquiry this term, we want our students to learn how to communicate effectively with others through a variety of forms. In groups, students selected a type of communication: phone calls, email, letters, postcards, cards, face-to-face, blogs, SuperClubsPlus webpages. In these groups they needed to consider the purpose for this communication (including advantages and disadvantages), the conventions and tips to effective communication with this form. They then needed to decide on the best way to present this information clearly to their peers - all while cooperating with others in their group.
Students had most of Friday to work on this, but still need a little more time to fine tune their presentations. They have been working very well together and have been learning a lot both about and through communication.
Description
Both literacy classes did some descriptive writing this week using some ideas we obtained through PD last week. I found this picture of a soldier with a kitten. Students began with the sentence "[Name] is a soldier." They then wrote a description of his clothes, his face and the kitten in his arms. After this, students wrote a flashback to tell the story of how the kitten came to be in the soldier's possession. Linking the flashback to the description was pretty tricky for most students and didn't come naturally. This is something for us to work on in future lessons.
Earth Hour
On Friday our school turned off all electrical power between 11am and 12pm in recognition of Earth Hour. We tried to continue with lessons as much as possible. In Year 4 students wrote in their reflective journals and moved to spaces in the room with greater natural light.
Walk-through of Cross Country
Our Cross Country carnival is two weeks away so on Wednesday we walked the course that students will run - just to make sure they know where they will be going. The next day some of the students were complaining about how their muscles were sore from walking the track. Looks like we have some training to do before the big day!
Rowan of Rin
For information about what we learnt in our unit of work on Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda, click here.
Maths
After all the difficulties with teaching subtraction with trading last week, I couldn't simply move on and ignore it. It was eating away at me. I had to conquer it. So this week, rather than moving on to multiplication and division, I spent some more time on subtraction. I found some great videos on subtraction with regrouping and played these for the class.
We then used the rhyme "If there's more on the floor, then go next door" to help us solve a range of two digit subtraction questions. This also helped with explaining the more difficult subtractions from 2000 etc. The rhyme can be applied by the first neighbour saying "I'm sorry, I don't have any numbers to spare. Let's try next door" and so on. I think my students really enjoyed the idea of the numbers being characters and fitting into a story!
My new challenge is to help my students to look at the question first before flying into the written solution. Too many were using the written method to find the answer to 50 - 49 which I know they can do mentally!
We also touched a little on multiplication and division (as I didn't want to overlook it completely) by reviewing some one-digit multiplication and creating the "families" for those facts. For example, 5x7=35; 7x5=35; 35 divided by 7=5; 35 divided by 5=7. Again, my students loved this idea of the numbers being in families. I'll have to remember this as I teach them other concepts - they like to bring the numbers to life!
Spiders in Spider Webs
This relates to our Rowan of Rin unit, but we did it in our homeclasses, so I've decided to include it in Friday Fun. We listened again to the passage in chapter 6 of Rowan of Rin where the characters face thick spiderwebs covered in big, black spiders. We used white oil pastels on black paper to create a web background. We then created our own spiders from shiny black paper and stuck them on the background so that they stood on the page with bent legs. We made the web sparkle in some places using some silver glitter paint. They look really fantastic displayed in our classroom.
Jonno and I were chatting about how great they were and that chatting lead to more ideas and so we decided it would be good to teach the kids how to write a description about spiders and spider webs and then attach their writing under their artwork on the display. We brainstormed some good adjectives and then students created sentences using these words. I suggested that they try some alliteration and rhyme but use no more than three adjectives per sentence. The writing that resulted was really fantastic. One of my students then suggested that we type up these descriptions in our lab lesson rather than handwriting the final copy. Brilliant idea - and a brilliant opportunity to teach some simple word processing tips - changing the page orientation, selecting all text, changing font etc. This lesson was also great for teaching the correct use of commas.
Communication - Assessment Task
As part of our Integrated Inquiry this term, we want our students to learn how to communicate effectively with others through a variety of forms. In groups, students selected a type of communication: phone calls, email, letters, postcards, cards, face-to-face, blogs, SuperClubsPlus webpages. In these groups they needed to consider the purpose for this communication (including advantages and disadvantages), the conventions and tips to effective communication with this form. They then needed to decide on the best way to present this information clearly to their peers - all while cooperating with others in their group.
Students had most of Friday to work on this, but still need a little more time to fine tune their presentations. They have been working very well together and have been learning a lot both about and through communication.
Description
Both literacy classes did some descriptive writing this week using some ideas we obtained through PD last week. I found this picture of a soldier with a kitten. Students began with the sentence "[Name] is a soldier." They then wrote a description of his clothes, his face and the kitten in his arms. After this, students wrote a flashback to tell the story of how the kitten came to be in the soldier's possession. Linking the flashback to the description was pretty tricky for most students and didn't come naturally. This is something for us to work on in future lessons.
Earth Hour
On Friday our school turned off all electrical power between 11am and 12pm in recognition of Earth Hour. We tried to continue with lessons as much as possible. In Year 4 students wrote in their reflective journals and moved to spaces in the room with greater natural light.
Walk-through of Cross Country
Our Cross Country carnival is two weeks away so on Wednesday we walked the course that students will run - just to make sure they know where they will be going. The next day some of the students were complaining about how their muscles were sore from walking the track. Looks like we have some training to do before the big day!
Rowan of Rin
For information about what we learnt in our unit of work on Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda, click here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
