Tiddlywinks Treat

 Room 9 filled their marble jar - awesome teamwork Room 9!

As a reward the children voted on a boys vs girls game, so Mrs Walker had to think of one.

I decided everyone would love tiddlywinks and I was right. Lots of the children hadn't seen the game before so they really enjoyed it.

We included it in our math focus on Friday. Each team (boys and girls) had a player go up and flick their tiddlywink. If they were not happy with their shot, they got one more chance but you had to accept your second score.

Mrs Walker wrote a scale of centimeters on the carpet with chalk (sorry Mr Hogg). The children got a great sense of distance between 2 and 3 metres. We discussed the likelihood of getting a 4 or 5 metre jump and everyone agreed it was unlikely but we couldn't say it was impossible- we've been reading a book about probability, can you tell?

 Then we ran into a problem, the boys were outraged that there were more girls in the class and William was away so it was even more unfair.

We needed a solution:

Ashley said why don't four more boys just have a go. The boys agreed and chose the four boys who had made the longest jumps. They chose Jacob who got a massive jump more than three metres- more of a roll than a jump.

Then the girls decided that wasn't fair because the boys would probably get big jumps again.

We had to work out a fair way to pick. Jacob thought that Mrs Walker could pick but some boys thought it wouldn't work because she was also a girl.

Mrs Walker told the children about picking randomly and we selected four boys at random.
Jacob was one of them, and on the second go all of the boys improved their jumps by a lot. The girls were worried.

Each thinking partner pair got a calculator and added up both the boys and girls totals. They were very careful and systematic, everyone did it three times and were surprised at how easily you could get the wrong result.

The pairs worked out some excellent ways to record each total and we were all happy that we had the correct totals as most groups ended up with the same totals for most of their calculations.

In the end the boys had the largest total. Then Mrs Walker demonstrated how to work out the average. We divided the totals by the number of girls and then the boys total by the number of throws the boys had. Guess what, the girls had the greater average.

Two winning teams, thanks to maths.

Expressions

On Friday, Room 9 works on mathematical challenges, tasks, problems and activities which gather all of our collective ideas and make us use our understandings in different ways. The key part of this learning is using and communicating our understandings. This week we looked at algebra and different ways we could express number values. For us that means using the numerals and signs we know to write/communicate (or express) values in different ways.

Lots of the children noticed patterns they could use to find lots of different expressions.

 The children always work with their thinking partners for these tasks. They were free to move around the room and contribute to any of the sheets of paper with number values written at the top.

 They were very engaged in the task and loved making so many connections with each other and with their mathematical understandings.

Found Alphabet and Numerals

Our next task at looking closely was to find letters and numerals where we didn't expect to find them. The image below is the alphabet that adults have put together. Whole teams of people do alphabet and numeral hunts all over the world. I think some of ours are just as good. The children were very creative and all of the team work and co-operative skills we have been discussing and trying to build were so evident.

Found Alphabet, Pintrest

O

Y

T

X

A

Y

B

F

H

Another O

X

A Real Find - No one in Room 9 would ever do this however.

Thank you Leena

Leena has been working away in her own time, thinking about how she could help other people. She organised and donated a gift basket to CanTeen and has recieved a thank you card from CanTeen for her kindness.

Leena shared this with us today. We are so proud and grateful to have such a special and caring person in our class. What a lovely difference to make in the world Leena.

Using Perspective

We have been talking about perspective, both how other people see things differently and using perspective to take really cool photos.

Here are some photos of Room 9 taking photos that use perspective to make some things look big or small rather than close up of far away.

And here are the photos we took...

Zooming In

We have been looking at lots of books which zoom in and out, using point of view to create amazing images.

We made our own in co-operative groups using small objects on top of National Geographic magazines. Here are some of the best and funniest.

Treaty Signing

All of the junior classes meet outside Room 3 to sign our class treaties. We have been talking about the Treaty of Waitangi and about how different people interpret things that are written down. This connects with our learning focus on looking closely and thinking about perspectives.

We wrote our class treaty with positive ways to be at all times not just in our classroom. We looked at lots of pictures of us working so far in Room 9 and everyone agreed that we are doing a great job so far of living our treaty everyday. Our treaty was signed with our fingerprints and initials (because everyone loves playing with these at the moment). Maita is 'M and M' like the lollies, which everyone thinks is the best.

Our treaty is hanging up in our classroom next to the pictures of us 'Loving Learning as Active Achievers at Maori Hill School'.

It reads:

Everyone should be included.
Be compassionate and kind to everyone.
Forgive and be generous.
Show gratitude by looking after our school and classroom things.
Remember, all day, everyday, we are here to learn.

Cricket

We have enjoyed two sessions on cricket skills this term.

 We held the ball with our fingers in the rabbit ears position.

In this game we had to try to hit the wickets, each time we did one wicket was removed. The first group to get rid of all the wickets were the winners.