Mufti Day is upon us!

Hi Parents & Students!!

Well tomorrow (Fri, 18 May) is Mufti Day!!  Yay!  Mufti day is always fun, especially because it always supports a great cause.  This time around is no different.  

Instead of bringing a gold coin donation to school for Mufti, students will need to bring 2 Colgate Toothpaste boxes each.  

Our school is currently part of the Colgate Carton Race.  We are in the competition to win first prize of $12,500 dollars worth of PE equipment for our school.  With our whole community around us we will win for sure!  Students can bring more, and Room 4 have been excellent at bringing cartons all week - but tomorrow remember 2 new cartons per child.

We are currently at 13th place...Come on everyone, WE CAN DO IT!! Click here to check the leader boards

Thanks everyone - the pay off for this one is going to be HUGE!  Watch this space for some cool Mufti photos tomorrow :)

Happy Birthday Ps Jamie!!!

Our A-MAZING TEP teacher Ps Jamie stopped in today, just in time for us to sing "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" and snap a photo with her.  Room 4 loves Ps Jamie  and we wish her a very very blessed Happy Birthday! 

"Happy Birthday Ps Jamie, We bless you lots and have a great day!" - Brooklyn

"Happy Birthday Aunty Jamie, have a great birthday!" - Roman

"Happy Birthday Ps Jamie, have a good day!" - Solomon

Fable Retelling

During English we have been studying Fables and Fairytales.  One of our learning outcomes is that we are learning to write first-person accounts and description based on observation. 

We learnt that a fable's main characters are usually animals with human-like qualities, they are short stories and they have a message or a lesson to be learnt. 

During one of our lessons Mrs Nansen read us the story of The Wolf in the Sheep's Clothing.  

Here is the fable retold, edited and published (typed into our blog!) by Praise Dobbs and Carlos Toimata.

The wolf in the sheep clothing
Once upon a time there was a wolf.The wolf was hungry so he dressed up as a sheep.One day the farmers' family were hungry so the farmer got a sheep.But it was the wolf so the wolf got eaten by the farmers' family.

By Praise Dobbs

The wolf in sheep's clothing
Once there was a big bad wolf.He disguised himself as as sheep.
He wanted to eat one of the farmers sheep for his supper.
The farmer wanted roasted lamb for supper so he accidentally took the wolf for supper.
Pretending what you are not can bring bad trouble.

By Carlos Toimata

All About Magnets!

In Room 4 our current focus for science is "Materials".  

We are learning what the various properties of different materials are, and which materials are suitable for certain kinds of jobs e.g rubber for tires due to it's grip and durability etc.

Our latest set of investigations were about discovering what makes something magnetic, and how to identify magnetic materials.  

First Mrs Nansen gathered some prior knowledge, to find out what we already knew.

"What does Magnetic mean?"

Charlize: "Magnetic things stick together."

Roman: "They go to each other."

We all had similar ideas.

We then teamed up in pairs with a class magnet to find out if a range of materials were magnetic or non magnetic.

We tested objects to see if we could feel any attraction (pulls) or resistance (pushes) to our magnets.

 Tinashe and Caleb are testing the pencils to see if they are magnetic...

Keilani and Erika Lee have completed a test and are recording their results (sorry it's a bit tricky to read our test sheets!)

On our test sheets we indicated whether an item was magnetic or non-magnetic by using a smile-scale.  So here is our own smile scale...

Erika Lee and Keilani are showing us that books are non magnetic

Alize and Mikayla are showing us that this ruler is non magnetic

Gideon and Roman are showing us that the .50 and .10c coin are magnetic (We were very interested to see that the $1.00 and $2.00 coins are non magnetic...ooooo!)

Jacob and Carlos found out that paper-clips are magnetic

Ekklesia and Brooklyn found out that connector blocks are non-magnetic

Shannahl and Liana discovered scissors are definitely magnetic!

Genesis and Caleb found out that rubbers are non magnetic

The next stage was to find out WHY all these objects are non/magentic.  We discussed our findings, and our reasoning behind them.  

"Those things {the magnetic objects} are magnetic because they have magnets in them" was the most common statement. 

Then Mrs Nansen showed us some special 'dust'.  We guessed what the dust could be...lead shavings from a pencil...black sand...magnet powder ;) 

Then Mrs Nansen got out a magnet and placed it under the paper with the dust on it

The magnet made the dust move around the paper!  It followed the magnetic through the paper.  It reminded us of our "Magna Doodles"!

When Mrs Nansen waved the magnet over the dust, all the dust leapt of the paper and stuck to the magnet like "fuzz" (says Jacob).

We experimented passing the dust from magnet to magnet.  When we wiped the 'fuzz' off the magnet, it fell back to the paper like dust again!

Mrs Nansen explained that the 'dust' was Iron Filings.  Small particles of iron.  We learnt that iron is a naturally-occurring metal that comes from within the earth.  The iron has properties within it that make it magnetic.  Many of the items we tested that were magnetic were made with some iron, or a similar naturally-occurring metal from within the earth.  This is why they were magnetic!!

In our next lesson we are going to learn about atoms, electrons and charges!

ROOM FOUR LOVE SCIENCE!!

Happy 7th Birthday to Carlos!!

We love you Carlos!! Thank you Mrs Toimata for the delicious chocolate cake. Another blessed birthday in room 4!

Mrs Nansen's App Crawl

Hi Everyone!  Let me introduce you to a new segment on our blog called "Mrs Nansen's App Crawl".  

I'm a big advocate of using technology where appropriate in and out of the classroom to help students in their learning.  I have shared with the class on a few occasions useful applications I've found on itunes store (I own an iPad and use it frequently in class - sorry i'm not much help when it comes to Google Android!) that are very practical for the areas of the curriculum we have been covering.  I have found the students find these apps easy to use and they have proved to be beneficial with their learning.   I will feature these segments every now and then for you to check out if you like.  Please let me know if you find this useful!

App 1  Clockmaster:  We used this app both as a whole class and one on one whilst studying "Measurement: Time" in term one.  The game presents an analogue clock displaying a time that the students must present on either an analogue clock, or in word format at the bottom.  This was a GREAT app that really helped by way of providing plenty of repetition to cement the time concepts taught during maths lessons.

App 2 Geometry for Kids:  In term one we also studied Geometry.  I found this app covered nearly every concept we learnt in class and the kids thoroughly enjoyed the 'tests' after the revision section to see their learning achievement.  

App 3  Dictionary.com:  This is a very throrough dictionary that is useful when a paper dictionary/thesaurus is not on hand.  It offers a range of definitions for words requiring students to work out the most appropriate via process of elimination and also has a thesaurus function to find synoyms

We Love our Parents!

Thanks Mr Toimata for dropping in for a spot of Cowboys and Indians!! Carlos especially loved trying to get dad "out"!

Read to Self

Here are a few shots of our daily session of Read to Self. We pick three good fit books from our class library, find a comfortable space within the class and settle in for some good reading. Our goal is to reach a high level of "reading stamina". This means we will be able to read without distraction for a long period of time as a class - Mrs Nansen sets the timer to time our stamina each day. Everyone is accountable towards the goal, once someone becomes distracted and loses focus the timer stops but we carry on reading for a while longer. So far we are up to 14 minutes as a group!

Good Fit Reading!!

One of the crucial parts of becoming a good reader is choosing the right books to help you reach your goals.

In class we discussed this and I used this fun little illustration to help us understand what "Good Fit Books" are. I asked all the students to take off their right shoe and add it to a pile in the middle of the circle. When everyone was back in their seat, I instructed them when I said "Go!" to quickly grab a shoe and put it on as fast as possible. The moment came and everyone leapt for a shoe. Laughter spilled out as everyone was trying to put on their "new" shoe, finding it was either too big or too small and just plain looked funny on them.

The purpose of the lesson was for students to use the "ipick" rules to choose books that match their reading ability, just like how wearing a shoe that is too big will take you a long time to get to your destination - reading books that are still too difficult for you will take you a long time to improve your accuracy, fluency and comprehension.

Lesson well learnt and room 4 are excellent at picking "good fit books"!