How to Swim a Length Under Water

Today the Jedi Knights read "How to Swim a Length Under Water". We are learning to visualise and the students drew very quick visualising texts showing the words that put pictures in their heads. We then had to go at trying to recite the poem in one breath, with some hilarious results. Play the podcast if you want to hear my effort!

ToonDoo

By MrMoriarty | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

Mrs H. shared this great cartoon site with me. I had a go, created a character and made this comic strip about learning in our class. Anyone with an email can get an account and create!

Quality Comments

I am very impressed by the number of positive comments coming into our blogs. Thank you!

This week we are going to build a success criteria for quality commenting. Then we will expand our commenting so that we comment each week on at least one Room 20 blog, one other Parkvale blog and another blog from Aotearoa or the rest of the world! As we do this, we will copy and paste each comment we make on to a Google doc to build a record of our comments and blog visits over the year.

Here are two three four links to help us:

• Comments4Kids
• Miss T's Reflections
• The First 15 
• The Ins & Outs

Update: I have taken some screen shots of the Google doc we were working on today. The idea was to build our success criteria for quality commenting. Next, we will summarise these ideas into around five main criteria. Awesome teamwork, Room 20! Remember to click on the image to make it bigger.

Our criteria for quality commenting:

(We summarised it into five main points)

Casey versus the Boys

Casey and Parris were the champion swimmers for Year 6 and Year 5 girls at the Parkvale Swimming Sports. They got to race the other champions in an exciting race. Casey pushed Matthew and Kayden right to the finish bar. All of Room 20 participated with enthusiasm and had fun at our swimming sports!

Buddy Class Swimming

Photos by Teva. Room 20 were wonderful teachers!

Some Reflections

Reflections from our first three weeks in a Digi Class!
Something I was pleased with was being in a digital classroom because you get to learn new things everyday - Sushila
Something I was pleased with was being able to go on a computer and do things that I couldn’t do before like using google docs and being able to blog - Courtney
I really enjoyed learning how to use Google docs because I get to write stories that I think of and it makes me happy because I like writing. Tyler
Something I was pleased with was being in a computer class because not many people get to be in it and we get to use computers all the time. Bianca
Something I found hard  at first was keeping up with instructions for publishing posts on the blogs - trying to keep up with the steps. I feel like I have improved and now can keep up with the instructions. Hannah
Something that made me think was how to solve the area problem because it was hard and I thought about it and I solved it using my known facts, my times tables. Parris
Something I want to get better at is typing faster on the computer.
(What can I do about it?) Practise on Tux typing. Type lots! Katrina
Something I want to get better at is typing with two hands. Rhys
Something I found hard was remembering to email to check before I put my post on the blog. I have got it now! Lachlan
Something I was pleased with was my summer writing. Because I used my brain to think of what summer is like for me.  Flossie

Image created on Wordle.

Nicholas

We have just finished our class book, Nicholas. Follow the link to his great website. It includes his blog!

Leave a comment here to share your feedback on the stories. I am also thinking of creating a Nicholas survey on Google forms. Good idea?

Stefan did a wonderful visualising sketch as we listened to two of the stories, using Google drawing. Here it is:

WALT: describe an experience

A snapshot into our writing today...

Our Tessellation Art

WALT: create art with tessellating shapes

• no overlaps / gaps
• pattern can keep on going
• colours stand out - pattern, pastel / dye, blending

WALT: Visualise

Today we read a story called Earthquake by Lynn Davis. It was set in the Christchurch Earthquake, 4 September 2010. We experimented with Google drawing to show words that helped us to visualise what was happening in the story.

WALT: use number strategies to find perimeter

A quick question to explore and develop our understanding of perimeter while using our number knowledge.

This image is from the maths dictionary.

 Below is an example from Katrina.

Here is another from Sami.

Word Of The Day

We had fun exploring words on the Snappy Thesaurus at Brain Food today. Kharn suggested "big" and the other words for big exploded out across the webpage. Then Tyler suggested "little". It is a great site for having fun with words and choosing the exact right words for your writing.

Everything We Know About This Square

Please add a comment if you can think of or find out anything else about this square.

WALT: Identify & Describe 3D Shapes

We made 3D shapes from nets downloaded at Adrian Bruce. Visit the website to find more nets, play the 3D shape game and check on the features of 3D shapes.

Week One Reflection

We experimented all writing quick reflections on the same Google doc at once today. It was fun but challenging at the same time. I created a wordle of our effort.

Language Of Success

Blogging is part of our daily routine. We will look at each other's blog posts to leave comments.

When we post comments they need to be positive, thoughtful and helpful. They also need to be proof read, just like our blog posts. 


In our blog posts and in our comments we will learn to use the language of success. This means using correct spelling and punctuation. Simple things like capital letters and full stops are important, because we are sharing with the world on the internet. We are representing ourselves, our class and our community. We need to show Parkvale PRIDE. It also means it is easy for people to understand what we are saying. Our learning has an audience.


Update: Our blogging criteria to get a Blogging Licence:

• use the language of success (correct language, spelling and punctuation)
• decide on relevant and interesting content
• proof reading skills
• save as a draft first
• multimedia skills (image, sound, video, embedding)
• linking (including citizenship)
• labelling
• view and comment (positive, relevant, constructive, language of success)