Playground Designers

With our new playground currently being built, and only a matter of days away before being finished, Mrs Lindley decided to seize the opportunity to give us the chance to be our own playground designers.

First we talked about all the different playgrounds we've been to..... the good bits and the bad.

Then we used the ipads to look at different playgrounds. Picking out all our favourite parts we then designed our own playgrounds.

Here's what we designed. 

Braxton and Jonah, Aylah and Kohana talk us through their design.

Tuakana Teina

As part of our Maniakalani program I have enrolled our class into a group where we look at other schools blogs and they look at ours (leaving comments as we look).

My class went to a senior room to help us learn about commenting on blog posts
"Is it positive, is it helpful, is it thoughtful"

Buddy Reading

 Students are set up with a buddy to read with (they are done on ability ie: more able with someone not as strong).
 The students have to take turns reading each other a book from their reading folders.

Making fairy bread

Learning can be fun and hands on. Here is Room 5 making fairy bread to help learn about 1/2s. 

Modelling for students

Writing is modeled in a modelling book. To help scaffold for the students

Learning how to listen

All students are modelled what a good listener looks like. Examples are given and constant praise is given to those demonstrating these skills ie: "I love the way you are showing good listening skills".

Students are expected to be attentive to their peers when one another are sharing.

Generating Ideas

 In one of our writing sessions I wanted the children to extend a basic sentence "this is a cat". I wanted them to use more descriptive language, I knew that I would need to generate a discussion to give them ideas so we had a whole class discussion. I encouraged them to think of their own cat if they had one, This really helped them to make connections.
I then took a photo of our chat and put it on the screen the next day to remind them what we'd discussed so they could write their own sentence.