New Adventure Playground

 Adventure Playground

The new children's adventure playground, built this year, has been a real hit with the children. They absolutely love this swing in particular and will head straight for it, and queue up, to be able to use it at lunchtime and during golden time.

Sometimes taking your turn fairly by not queue jumping, and spending a fair amount of time on the swing, are issues that need to be dealt with by senior students looking after the swing.

Dress up Day - St Mary's 2014

 Dress up Day

Last Thursday St Mary's staff and students came dressed up as their favourite book character. We had all sorts of characters in room 6 as you can see from our photos. Children had to bring a gold coin donation, which will go towards relief efforts for the typhoon ravaged Philippines.

Some of the children put a lot of effort into their costume selection.

A group photo shows the wide range of characters we had in room 6.

Poppy vainly attempts to scare Mr. Bach with her costume.

  Charis

 Veronica

 Koby

 Jasmin

 Naina

 Ria

 Lucille

 Tyler

 Willem

Misty

Wacky Hair and Sock Day

 Wacky Hair and Sock Day

Wacky Hair and Sock Day was to raise money for the Special Needs Christmas dinner on Friday 30th August. Room six won the the class prize for its overall participation in Wacky Hair and Sock Day  Even Mr. Bach got involved, grudgingly, when swarmed on by teachers and children with hair colouring and pipe cleaners. Some children in room 6 really got into the wacky hair theme with some excellent colours and styles. Look below at all the awesome looks.

Willem












Koby

Tyler

Charis
                                                                            Wylie

Joseph

Tae'o

Alex

Ryan

Mr. B

Patrick

Tom

 Welcome back to Term 3

Welcome back to Term 3 for 2013. Hopefully children are all rested from their break and ready for some learning. Opposite is a small selection of some of the creations of several children - Charis, Veronica, Vincent, Mele, Malia and Misty - on the 'Book Creator' app on the iPads. I could only choose the ones which were named, so I am able give credit to the authors. There are a few more  exceptional ones I could put up at some later date if the authors can find the creation, name it and then tell me it is ready to go up. Some creations could also do with a bit of editing. 

  

 These creations were developed as part of last terms concept of sustainability. This term our concept is enterprise. We will be looking at what enterprise and enterprising mean and what makes an enterprising person. Perhaps we could see some Book Creator creations on this topic soon!?

Carbon Footprints

 How big is your footprint?

Room 6 have been learning about carbon footprints and how many of our practices in the West cannot be sustained. We must reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane we are producing through our daily activities and choices.

We looked at the ways we are all contributing to raising levels of greenhouse gases on Earth, which are helping to heat the planet. We asked, 'how big is your footprint?

We then discussed all the different ways and all the different things each of us can do to reduce our carbon footprints.
The children traced their own footprint and wrote all the ways they could help reduce their own carbon footprint onto their foot poster.

 The children used some of the class' ideas and some of the children came up with their own individual ideas.

Sustainability -Term 2 Concept

 Our concept this term at St Mary's is ‘Sustainability’. Children will learn what difference they can make to their immediate environment. We will focus on sustainable gardens and recycling will also be part of the programme. Middle School children will be using the school gardens, looking after the chickens, recycling scraps, running a worm farm and trying very hard to persuade others to do the same.

 The middle school has exclusive access to the school garden's this term and room 6's day in the garden is Wednesday. In class we will be talking about sustainable practices and why sustainability is important but on Wednesday's we are allowed to get our hands dirty weeding the gardens, getting the scraps from the chickens and keeping an eye on the worm farm.

 The children enjoyed their first afternoon in the garden and found lots of fascinating things to talk about. Tae'o and Misty in particular seem really keen to share something with Mr. Bach.







The children were not scared to get stuck in weeding the gardens and looking for insect pests on the leaves.

 Some caterpillars were found on some of the cabbage leaves but with autumn upon us there should be no more butterflies laying eggs.

 This week Poppy also shared something very interesting for news. She brought a large abandoned nest from last summer, probably made by a larger bird like a blackbird or starling. Interestingly among the twigs and leaves used to build the nest was a piece of plastic rubbish.

Koby was also lucky enough this week to receive a special prize at assembly for his holiday reading. He won one of the main prizes - a book voucher. Well done Koby.

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.