Similes

An activity I have made and shared in our school wide doc.

WALT: compare two different things in an interesting way.

By using similes we can make our writing more interesting for the reader.

 

Our First PENN Movie

This is the first of our PENN Movies this year. 

Professional Inquiry.

This year I have a class of bright beautiful energetic year 2s. We started the week getting to know each other, the class routines, and 'The Pt England Way'.  So much has happened in the last 4 weeks. Swimming, Kiwis Sports, Creative space, Maker space, team assemblies, the opening of our new bike track and to top it all off a leaky room, which meant relocating to another room. I was devastated I had spent a lot of time getting room 26 ready for the new students. After a whole day I managed to turn our new class into an amazing learning space for my students and I. I have to mention my students were amazing and concerned about how I was feeling, they  kept asking me if I was ok even during a swim lesson a student swam over to where I was sitting to ask if I was ok 

"It's ok Ms Tumahai we will help you clean"    Bless.

So now that we have settle I have been able to put some thought into my Professional Inquiry and this years inquiry focus is Maths. I have to say this area is making me a little nervous. I never understood maths as a child and so I didn't enjoy maths at all. But I have an obligation to give my students every opportunity to learn maths and enjoy it. Which brings me to a group of students who I have identified as the "Stuck Stage 2s"

So my inquiry is: 

Back to school

  
  Why is it that every year we all return to school after the holidays and summer decides it wants to make an appearance, What's up with the weather? I'm not sure about others but summer in my neck of the woods was blowing a gale. More windy days then the hot relaxed days of summer. 
  I began thinking about the village and the sweltering hot and stuffy rooms that make it very uncomfortable for me and the students to stay focused in the hot afternoons .However the students returned, some ready, some not so sure, and some still taking time to settle into the routines of school and the classrooms are hot.

Inquiry Term 1 2017

Kaitīakitanga i nga wā katoa

My Class for 2017

I get to spend 2017 with this lovely group of students. There are some that I taught in the NewEntrant class and some who are the siblings of the students I taught in 2016.  I am excited and can't wait to take this journey with Room 26 2017.

My Gem Moment

'Writing Test'

"Room 26 you smashed it!" 

  After the shock of February's writing test results I decided to put a lot of work in this area.

The decision to have a whole class writing plan, which focused on repetition of alphabet sounds, beginning bends and vowels, saw an improvement in their attempt at spelling high frequency words along with their site words.

 Word games also helped to re-enforce the learning. 

However our focus was writing a sentence using a capital letter and a full stop.

Ok, this does need a bit more work. What am noticing is the students using connectives to make their sentences longer (this is what the student think) not more interesting, just longer using the same two words 'and den' (and then) (aargh)

Some of us have tried moving on from this with a lot of success. 

My Gem Moment

Our writing tests show, a beginning, middle and end, some kind of ending some not complete. One to two pages of writing, most of the writing has coherence. Really good spelling of high frequency words. 

The best thing about this was their enthusiasm to get started.