Last Post for 2016

On Monday Zach's dad brought a mini stock car which his sister drives. Speedway racing is the Hatton's passion. Dad Dave drives a super stock car but was unable to bring the car on Monday. 
Thanks so much to the Hatton whanau for sharing this with Kauri Hub.

HOP MOSAIC ARTWORK

David and Max created these wonderful mosaic tiles at HOP. They chose their subject, smashed the ceramic tiles, traced their picture, applied the glue, the tiles and the grout. Frustrating at times, definitely messy but soooooo satisfying and they are sooooooo proud of their artwork.  Thanks Mrs Cacace!!!

Safe Cycling -Road Cycling

Day One On The Road.

Te kapahaka o Parkvale Rōpū

Te Kapahaka o Parkvale Rōpū

Tēna koutou  Greetings everyone

Ko Parkvale tā tatou kura  Parkvale is our school

Ko te kaupapa o te tū, he maumahara ki ngā hoia ANZAC i whawhai  mō ō tātou whenua i te pakanga tuatahi o te ao.

The theme of our performance  today is to commemorate the ANZAC’s and all those who fought for our country.

Kia pai tā koutou mātakitaki mai  We hope you enjoy our performance.

Tēna koutou, Tēna koutou, Tēna koutou katoa

This year Parkvale sent two 60-strong kapahaka groups to the Ngati Kahungunu kapahaka festival held at Richmond School last week. It was our privilege as teachers, tutors, parents and whanau to witness a stunning performance from both groups. Each group demonstrated PRIDE, PASSION and PERFORMANCE-PLUS. Ka rawe ō mahi tāmariki ma!

Grandparent/ Koroua/Kuia Descriptions

For the first 4 weeks of this term, Room 10 and 11 had the task of compiling a biography about a grandparent/koroua/kuia. This was their opportunity to interview, construct a timeline and then write a description of a grandparent as seen through their eyes. Here are just a few examples of some wonderful pieces of work. Please visit your child's blog to see more.


   

Grandparent/Koroua/Kuia Reading Week and Taste of Hangi

Kia ora ki nga koroua me nga kuia

Thank you to Marlene Greaves, Alma Bainbridge, Bonnie Amner, Tom and Doreen Condon, Karen Spargo, Les Byford, Russell Kupa and Linda Maggin our Room 11 grandfathers and grandmothers who came in to read to their grandchildren and experience eating a hangi with us all. It was a huge success. Sorry we weren't able to take photos of you all with your grandchildren to post to the blog.

In partnership with the Whanau Roopu, our  vision is:

 “Kia tuhono, kia mahitahi ki te whanau, kia whanake i a tātau tamariki”

“Connecting and working with whanau to grow our children"

Tiaana and her Nanny Bonnie

Michael and his nana Alma

Ngahere and his Nana Marlene

Growth Mindset versus a Fixed Mindset

Kia ora koutou

 I found this description of a Growth Mindset versus a Fixed Mindset. In Kauri we are developing a Growth Mindset, the ability and capacity to be lifelong learners always growing and developing as people.

Growth Mindset

When I fall, I learn.

If you succeed, I'm inspired.

I can learn anything I want to.

When I am frustrated, I persevere

Tell me I try hard.

                                                            versus

                             Fixed Mindset

I'm either good at it or I'm not
When I am frustrated, I give up
I don't always give things a go
Tell me I'm smart.

Poi for Parkvale

Poi for Parkvale from Room13 on Vimeo.

Kauri Does the Arts

Term 3 was an amazing learning experience exploring, appreciating  and creating through the Arts. We appreciated the Art around our own school before going out into our town to see, some of us for the first time, the wonderful pieces of art created by our own resident artists in Hawkes Bay.


 Each class studied an artist, the techniques of that artist and then created pieces of art that communicated a message. Here is our amazing art.
In amongst all that we split into dance, drama, and music groups, choosing which discipline
we would like to learn. Here is some of our work.


Kauri Dance Crew from Room13 on Vimeo.

Optimist Yachting

Kia ora koutou

Watch this video with your parents, especially if Optimist Yachting is new to you. This week we will be preparing you for Week 9 Monday14th-18th September when we will go.
I have posted the Timetable as well for you to be organised. Gear notices and an adult Timetable will be coming home this week.

Optimist Yachting, Week 9: 14 - 18th September

Ro Hill to be at Pandora Pond all week (kayaks / yachting) - up to hubs on where they need support.

Bus	Departs School	Departs Pandora	Monday 14	Tuesday 15 Interschool C.C. (Yvette to CC)	Wednesday 16	Thursday 17 Interschool C.C. Postponement	Friday 18
1st Bus	8:00am	10:20am	Rooms 21 & 21a	Rooms 10 & 11	Rooms 19 & 20	Rooms 21 & 21a	Rooms 10 & 11
2nd Bus	9:50am	12:50pm	Rooms 19 & 20	Rooms 21 & 21a	Rooms 10 & 11	Rooms 19 & 20	Rooms 21 & 21a
3rd Bus	12:20pm	2:45pm	Rooms 10 & 11	Rooms 19, 20	Rooms 21 & 21a	Rooms 10 & 11	Rooms 19 & 20

If your child is attending the first session, they will need to be at school at 7:45am to ensure they do not miss the bus.

If your child is attending the last session, they will arrive back at school at approximately 3:15pm.

Room 12 Assembly Item

Room 12 performed a Reader's Theater in front of Parkvale School for their assembly item last Friday, we performed 'The Animal Band' which is a retell of the story 'Musicians of Bremen'.  
We had to think carefully about speaking clearly, speaking loudly, speaking together and with expression.  
Congratulations to Kaedyn Beazley for being awarded the PRIDE award for achieving our success criteria.
Check out our photos...it was very cool how much effort everyone made to look like their character.

Lachlan, Max, Liam, Boston, Tayla
Nathan,  Kaedyn, Jack and Ella
'The Robbers'

Ruby H, Emma, Sienna and Terenzo
'The Cats'

Teague, Beau and Thomas
'The Readers'

Jasmine, Kalae, Declan and Jaden
'The Dogs'

Maiya
'The Narrator'

Jerome, Brad and Daniel
'The Roosters'

Ruby L, Kady and Henrietta
'The Donkeys' and Kady was a Narrator too!

Stem and Leaf with Hundreds

How to convert any fraction into a decimal

Hey Mathematicians, watch this video to give yourself a headstart on converting remainders/fractions into decimals. Any bits you don't get we can look at it in class.

Tihore Mai te rangi-Poi for the girls

This video is for nga kotiro. Lots of (swaying)hope and smiling needed

WALT Be Sustainable

This term Room 11 was asked by Kathy Woods to collect our food scraps from our lunches and morning tea to feed the chickens on her farm. This sounded like an excellent idea. Why send our food scraps to the landfill when we can feed animals with them?
 Here are some pics that were taken by Kathy.

Nga Toi ki a Parkvale Kura

Kia ora koutou

What an awesome morning we had with our buddy classes Room 5 and 8 on the Amazing Art Trail created by Mrs Hill. KIA ORA MRS HILL! WE WERE ART DETECTIVES!

We had the enjoyable job of helping our junior buddies read, understand and follow clues with a map to find all the wonderful art at our school. Luckily Room 11 had already completed the task the days before so we could fully concentrate on helping our junior buddies with the same task.

Mrs Lowe had made our task quite digi as we had to bring up the document of clues on an I-Pad. We read, followed instructions, recorded the answers to the tasks and took photos of the art we found. Returning back to class, we then had to choose an app to creatively share our learning which was 
"TO APPRECIATE THE ART IN OUR ENVIRONMENT AND  FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS." 

For some of us, the second part was challenging. Anyway,  here is one of the Pic Collages of the art found on the Trail.

Connecting maths to real world contexts.

How High is that Tree?

I am a believer in teaching maths within a real-life context. I teach maths in ways that connect with student's real-life experiences because I want them to see that maths is everywhere and it can be used in the realities of everyday life - it is simply a language, a way of making sense of, interpreting the world we live in. 

By placing maths in an authentic real world context, we make maths more relevant and purposeful, the students learn the mathematics knowledge and skills that they need and understand better the learning contexts that they see each day. They begin to see the learning about maths in ways that make the knowledge and understandings transferable and connected to other topics, subjects and their lives.

In this learning task, we are learning about angles by making a clinometer to measure the height of a tree, pole ....  and in doing so relating the maths concepts that we are learning about, such as right angle triangles (vs equilateral), degrees, units of measurement, interior angles, adjacent lines, side lengths etc  ... and the skills of using a protractor, a metre ruler, measuring accurately, using number knowledge, choosing operations & applying strategies, working together, communicating ideas ....and how to apply such knowledge and skills to do some basic trigonometry.

PART ONE:  sequence and a video snapshot of the learning involved in making a clinometer.

PART TWO: measuring the tree/pole in student blogs (coming soon!)

Thank you Max

WALT show not tell.
Success Criteria:
1. First paragraph is the introduction with details of who, where, what and why and with a hook.
2. Add relevant and interesting detail to each paragraph by using my senses.
3. Use interesting vocabulary that creates a clearer picture for the reader.

Max's Smoothie

'Cheers Big Ears!' I said aloud, grinning from ear to ear.

 Today at school Max brought me a smoothie that he made with Mrs Cacace. He was learning to follow instructions to make a healthy smoothie and he brought me a glass. What an awesome surprise!

As soon as I saw it, I knew that one of the ingredients must be the super vege ' SPINACH'  BECAUSE IT WAS A LIME GREEN.....and it looked  the same colour as my smoothies I make every morning. 

When I was a kid, there was a TV cartoon character called Popeye the Sailorman who would down a tin of spinach whenever he needed strength to fight off the baddies. Who'd figure that years later I would be downing spinach too, except there are other ingredients with it like banana and kiwifruit.

Wel,l I was supposed to have it for lunch but then Mrs Tamati an ex-teacher at Parkvale came in to see me and the class, and I forgot about my smoothie sitting in the teacher station.

So it was again a nice surprise when after school, I peered ito my teacher station and saw that super smoothie sitting there just waiting to be swallowed. Kathy our cleaner was in the classroom at this stage so I asked her to take a photo of me just before I drank it.

Yuuummmm! Cheers Max, I enjoyed that. 

Camp Kaitawa Highlights and Recounts

Measurement: Planning the Tramp

Planning the Tramp

In this task, I took the following information out: the average speed, the scale with the distance operationalised, rates info relating to average speed and the rest break times.
Why? because I wanted to  so to speak, "open the task up" and create more real, authentic learning opportunities with a focus on problem solving and the strategies used therein. I wanted them to think more and ask/create Questions to find out useful information that could help them solve this.

So the students themselves made decisions about this stuff and let them go for it. Along the way we had some interesting discussions about how long the tramp would take. Having calculated how long the tramp would take based on their own measures they had calculated that the tramp would take between 17 to 20 hours, this of course, created much debate about whether or not this was practical and/or realistic to achieve in a day. Further discussions were then created about which measure would have to change.

Room 11 says "Kapai Camp Kaitawa"

CAMP KAITAWA ROOM 10

Click here to view dozens of photos

Conservation Padlet

Created with Padlet

Learning as a Process

This term we/I am pushing even more the idea of learning as a process in class and trying to get the students to understand what this means. I want them to understand that there are many learning outcomes that can be captured as we learn, by not only me but also by themselves. I want them to come to the realisation that it is their learning and that the control of this goes hand in hand with an increasing self-awareness of what they are learning and how they are learning.

I am intending to use this blog and their blogs to capture those authentic learning outcomes occurring during the process, to capture learning conversations, to show learning in action by any means possible and to ensure that even though it is not always a polished, finished product that will be shown, shared, reflected upon and feedback on in order to improve learning.

Below are some 'ramblings' from a couple of authors who strongly argue the case for assessment for learning.

Keys to Making It Work from DR. RESHAN RICHARDS (Phd) on Qualitative Formative Assessment.

Gradually release control of and responsibility for learning to students.The authoritative agent (usually a teacher) needs to be OK with not always knowing the direction students will take and that each student's representation of understanding will be different.

Let go of polished and "final" drafts.Shift away from final products and toward cumulative and cyclical iterations of learning. The process is the product.

Have a system for artifacts.A book. A website. A file repository (like Dropbox or Google Drive). Use whatever already works for you. . . or find a new system that works better.

Find intrinsic value in the process.The authoritative agent has to recognize and value the process afforded by the QFAT. For someone with a much different definition of teaching, learning, and assessment, this way of thinking will feel like "more work."

Provide access to any number and type of mobile technologies. While a 1:1 (standard device or BYOD) would certainly make this process accessible, it could also be achieved with a single smartphone.

One does not need to use all four components of the QFAT every time learning is documented. In isolation, each artifact is powerful. When you bring them together in a deliberate and thoughtful way, though, something that was not possible without the technology becomes easily accessible and immediately useful.

and from Dr. Dylan Williams (Phd) a pioneer and leader in the field of Formative Assessment and Learners as Owners Pedagogy:

5 strategies that he has come to believe are core to successful formative assessment practice in the classroom: 

1. Clarifying, sharing, and understanding learning intentions and criteria for success – getting the students to really understand what their classroom experience will be and how their success will be measured.

2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, activities, and learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning – developing effective classroom instructional strategies that allow for the measurement of success.

3. Providing feedback that moves learning forward – working with students to provide them the information they need to better understand problems and solutions.

4. Activating learners as instructional resources for one another – getting students involved with each other in discussions and working groups can help improve student learning.

5. Activating learners as owners of their own learning: self-regulation of learning leads to student performance improvement.

Sustainability & Conservation

Responding to texts

As part of out theme of Sustainability and Conservation, we (room 10) have been interacting with oral, visual and multimedia texts, This learning has included using reading strategies that involve making meaning of texts at both the literal and inferential level: what's right there in the text and what's not, requiring us to think some more and understand the context (the situation) in which the author is trying to communicate a message.

This has meant improving our own understanding that "Good Readers" connect to a text, activating their prior knowledge - feelings, thoughts, experiences, questions - in order to make meaning. We have been actively sharing these responses and responding to oral, visual and multimedia texts, sharing/discussing our different understandings and connections.

Geometry and Measurement

This term our learning focus is on measurement, with my own emphasis on integrating the geometry strand, so that the strands are not taught in isolation.

What follows is part one and two of a teaching sequence with some evidence of learning conversations, classroom activities and learning tasks that show the learning process.

The videos also hopefully highlight activating learners as instructional resources for one another – where getting students involved with each other in discussions and working groups can help improve learning.

 

Kids Learning to take action and make a Difference

Kauri Hub Buddy Reading.

Mā te tuakana te teina e tōtika, Mā te teina te tuakana e tōtika (The older will lead the younger and the younger will lead the older)

Kauri Hub are reading across the rooms every Monday to foster tuakana teina relationships.

WALT read aloud

Success Criteria:  What will I see/hear my buddy doing?

• I will read with someone at a different year level if possible.

• I will be able to hear my buddy read clearly out loud.
• I will read with good pace...not too slow.
• I will make sure my voice has interesting expression so that my buddy enjoys my reading aloud.
• I will look at my buddies text while they are reading out loud to me and have my book shut.
• My buddy needs to let me see their book.

WALT give compliments and feedback

2 Stars and a wish

(2 compliments on the success criteria and one thing that your 

buddy needs to improve on)

ANZAC Padlet

Created with Padlet

Gloryumptious!

Congratulations to these children from the Kauri Hub for finishing off Term One and receiving certificates in our assembly for a wonderful variety of achievements:

Makayla, Tia, Lake, Ruby L, Shontae, Diksha, Erin

Amy-Rose, Caleb, Jacob and Jaden

PS: Gloryumptious - Wonderfully glorious (Roald Dahl)

People Savers First Aid, Red Cross - Room10

Sharing our Learning

We are learning to show our Maths Learning through talking

Three things I/we have learned from this:

1. I need to model aloud more how to talk about my/our learning - showing to others in small groups/class
2. I/we need to be more honest about our learning, That it's ok to admit to others that we found something difficult or challenging and that this helps our learning.
3. I/we need more practise learning/teaching new things, to take our time and do things in more depth.