Communities - Term One Concept

 Communities Concept

The Term One Concept at St Mary's School in 2013 is Communities. The children looked at different types and sizes of human communities and how they function. The children also looked at the roles and responsibilities of everyone living in various communities. They learned that the word  'interdependence' means everybody relies on everybody else in any community.

The children then learned about ant communities and how they work and compared them to bee communities.

The children completed a compare and contrast map to plan their writing assessment and then wrote about the similarities and differences between ant and bee communities.

Some children are also preparing information boards using the Comic Life app on the i-Pads.

 The children helped research information about bee and ant communities and this information was displayed in posters.






 One interesting thing that we learned is that ants are very strong for their size. They can lift up to ten times their own weight. That is like Mr Bach lifting ten adults above his head. Actually he can only lift nine!!!!!!?

 Ants can farm aphids for the honeydew (liquid food) that oozes out of the aphids backs. In return the ants protect the aphids from predators, including fighting off larger ladybirds.The aphids are free to drink sap from the plant to eat themselves and provide more honeydew for hungry ants. The ants and aphids rely on each other.

 Bees are also interesting insects that live in large communities like ants. Unlike ants, all bees fly and when a worker bee finds a special pollen or nectar source she performs a dance to tell other bees. The type of dance tells the other bees in what direction and how far away to fly to find the pollen.

We also learned that the Maori for communities is He Hapori and that the various levels in the Maori community are very important to the health and the flow of life in the Maori world.

Maths in Room 6

Maths in Room 6

Maths in Room 6 is done for usually one hour every day, bright and early in the morning during the first block, before morning tea.

In Room 6 have a rotation system in place where children are grouped according to their current needs and abilities and then go through a range of activities and exercises during the one hour of maths. These exercises and activities are to support the teaching and learning of maths knowledge and number strategies by Mr Bach.

The first stage of the rotation is learning on the mat with Mr. Bach where we practice our basic facts a little and then learn a new number strategy, or talk about one we are still learning. 

At present we are learning strategies to help us with addition and subtraction.

We use materials and the interactive whiteboard to help us learn.

 Children will then work independently in the next stage of the rotation to practise the strategy that they are learning by doing book work. Worksheets will often have the strategy explained on them, and when we are lucky Miss James is often around to assist. 

 Children in the same group will often help each other with their learning, especially when the strategy seems hard to understand the first time.

 Another stage in the rotations is practising basic facts on the computers through particular websites, especially Tutpup and Studyladder. Studyladder can also help children with their strategies.
i-Pads are also used to practice basic facts.

 Veronica concentrates hard on her book work.

 Lucille tries to practise the new strategy that she has just learned.

 Malia and her classmate use play money to help them with their maths learning.

 Naina and Veronica are practising adding strategies that use tidy tens or splitting numbers by using place value (the chainsaw strategy).

Ria shows clearly how she has used one strategy to work out the addition problems.












This term we have also been learning about statistics and how the basic statistical investigation works. Find a problem - Do a survey - Record your answers in a tally chart - Put your data into a graph - Talk about what information the graph is telling us.
Children are at various stages in being able to follow this process.