Chromebook deals for St Mary's

Student Led Conferences

A big Thank You to all Room 16 children and their parents and caregivers who participated in the Student Led Conference on Monday 30th November. The children were all able to talk about their learning well and show off their blog-portfolios. There are a few children who will be doing theirs a little later on but otherwise most of the comments made by parents on the night about the conferences are on the padlet below.
 

Created with Padlet

Student Lead Conferences 2015

Student Led Conferences 

 These are some questions you could ask your child at the Student Led Conference next Monday. Please book a time online, ask the office or myself to do it for you or see me for an alternative date and time if you are unable to come Monday.

 

Student Led Conferences Information for Students and Parents

Athletics Day After School Care

Athletics Day

If your child attends Glenholme After school care, and you need them picked up by MaryAnne from JPC after Athletics, can you please let her know as soon as possible.  She is happy to offer this service but would like an indication of how many need to be collected.

Kapa Haka Wednesday

Please click on this link for information about Kapa Haka on Wednesday - Ahurei -  HERE

Meeting about Chromebooks and Digital Learning in 2016

Google Apps for Education Accounts and Chromebooks.

You may or may not be aware that in 2014, with the support of our Board of Trustees, we introduced Google Apps for Education accounts for all our Year 3 and 4 students. Since June 2014 we have allowed students to bring a Chromebook to school. 

This programme was expanded In 2015, so now all our students in Year 3-6 have Google Apps for Education accounts and a large number of the students bring their own Chromebook to school. This has resulted in all our Middle School students having access to a device, which is used on a daily basis for learning purposes. 

Some common questions parents have are:

Why have we done this?

What is a Chromebook? What can you do on them? Why this particular device? Can my child bring a different device?

What is a Google Apps for Education account? Why and how are students using this to help them with their learning? Aren't Year 3 students too young for this?

Is it worth buying a device for my child? How much do they use it in class? What are the benefits of bringing a personally owned device to school? 

Where can I buy one? How much do they cost? Which model should I get?

On Monday 16 November, our Elearning Lead Teachers, along with some of our 2016 Middle School Teachers, will provide an information session to help parents gain a better understanding of how and why we are utilising Google Apps for Education accounts, along with devices, to assist our students with their learning.

On Friday all Year 2 students were given a notice to take home. In case this notice never reached you, this is what it said.

Notice for Parents of 2015 Year 2 students

On Monday night we are holding an information evening for parents who have children who will be in Year 3 classes at St Mary’s in 2016

When: Monday 16 November

Where: Room 14

Time: 6pm - 6.45pm

Purpose: To provide parents with a better understanding of why and how  students use Chromebooks and Google Apps accounts in our Year 3-4 classrooms.

We hope you are able to attend.

Below is some excellent story writing about a troll by three children from Room 16 - Aaron, Ariahna and Jasmine

The Colossal Troll

Smash! the colossal troll threw its massive foot on the cement.  The troll howled with laughter. The people on the ground started screaming and dashing in all directions. The massive troll picked up a fully tiled house roof and threw it several metres away. The roof landed on a very brand new car. The car was crushed under the weight of the roof. The owner of the car just leaped out before it got crushed. “Argh,” screamed the car owner, “That car was brand new!”                                                                          “Nobody cares about your car!” bellowed the big angry troll. The owner of the car ran away in terror. Suddenly a 12 year old kid named Alex came out of the house and said, “Why don't you go back to wherever you came from!” The big ugly troll just sniggered. Finally when it was dusk the colossal troll staggered back to its cave.

“Ha Ha,” chuckled the troll’s friends. The tallest troll in the bunch was called Greely. Greely had just cracked a hilarious joke. The troll was in his humongous cave. He was with five other friends. The trolls were going to sleep now. The troll grabbed a giant boulder and used it as a pillow for his head. Then the trolls went to sleep. At dawn the troll got ready to go back to the city and terrorise the citizens. Now there was a massive lake between the cave and the city. The cave was on a massive island. The trolls had a gigantic boat that they used to travel to different places. The troll leaped 23 metres into the boat. The boat shuddered violently. The troll started rowing back to the city. Even with the troll’s mighty arms pulling the water back, it still took hours to get to the city. Finally, he popped out of the boat and onto the city. When the people saw the troll they started screaming and running away. The troll just smirked. Then the troll flicked up a car and booted it hundreds of metres away like it was a soccer ball. Suddenly the kid called Alex came onto the front yard and started screaming at the troll.  The troll thought it was best to head back to the island.

The troll thought that if he was going to permanently take down the city, he would need to have a few more trolls to help do the job. So the troll raced back to the island. The troll was so fast that he was back in 30 minutes. The troll told his friends the devious plan that he had come up with. After that the trolls got to work. They made a map of the city and they said that one or two of them would attack one corner of the city at a time. The trolls were enthusiastic about their lethal plans to takeover and eliminate the city and everyone living in it. Meanwhile in the city, Alex was making a very complex device. The device would tame the trolls. He was on his 57th test. No matter how hard he tried his device always started to spark or blow up. Thud! There was a loud sound on the wall of the house. Then after the last tune up to Alex’s device the wall was completely pulverized by the trolls fist.

Alex lept out of his seat in horror and sprinted outside. He was in even more shock when he saw not just one troll. He saw two devastating trolls. Alex aimed his weapon at the  troll. Suddenly a massive hand smashed into his back sending Alex flying hundreds of metres. Smash! Alex smashed into a building. Alex groaned in extreme pain.  He blacked out. A few hours later all he saw were crushed buildings, screaming people and debris flying everywhere. Then Alex remembered that he had the troll taming device in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at it. He was hoping that the device would work. He sprinted onto the road and saw a troll. He needed to act quickly. Even though Alex didn’t have a drivers license, he jumped into a cab. Then he drove to the nearest troll. He was going 37 kilometres per hour. Then he stopped the car and leaped out. He activated the device and aimed it at the troll. Immediately, the troll fell to its knees.

The boy leapt and cheered in excitement. Then he said roll over and the troll rolled over. Then he said gather up the other trolls. He did exactly that. A few minutes later the trolls were all gathered up. He told them to clean up the mess that they had created. They did exactly that. A few days later they had replaced the broken down building with even better buildings. The people of the city had found out about the marvellous creation and believed it had been very useful. That was when the taming device broke.                                             “Argh!” the trolls are back!!  


The Forest Troll

I walked across the long flowing grass to the perfect place where I can plant my seed. My dad gave me one single seed to plant this summer so I have been looking for the perfect space all summer and I have just found the perfect place for me to plant this tree I just hope it will rain enough for my seed to grow. Oh by the way my name is Mary I love nature and gardening that is why I have spent most of my spare time looking for the perfect spot to plant my seed. I have this amazing feeling inside of me that is saying this seed is special. I have now planted my seed and am on my way to my house my dad, mum and live in a small village we moved here a month ago there are no schools here which I am sort of relieved about and sort of not because....

THE TROLL

CHAPTER 1

Once upon a time there was a confused troll named Benjamin that saw a human land he wanted some new friends, so of he sprinted but like a old sloth. He was so excited he took a roof off a old fashioned house, his nose went into the house because it was long and baggy and then old grown grass went all over the house he looked for humans but he couldn't see any so he put the roof back on and saw a yacht, he picked the humongous thing and people were still in there even older people.

CHAPTER 2

His foot smashed on the stony ground, and the cars went crunch and the people were screaming at the top of their lungs. He went berserk on the road as he danced,

Assembly

Room 16 will be running assembly this Friday starting at 2:05pm. This week we have Jack our Mandarin Language Assistant who will be talking to the assembly. There will also be the draw for the Reading Log prizes and a lady is coming to explain the Weetbix Tryathlon to St Mary's School. Ariahna is on computer duty and will adapt the presentation below for the term 4 assembly.

Golden Time

Below is the Golden Time schedule for term 4 for the Middle Team.

Children's Blog Portfolios

Please click on the link Here to access a link to your child's personal blog. The blogs are the children's portfolio and most children should have a large amount of work posted here in different formats. You do not have to wait until the end of the year or for parent interviews to look at samples of your child's digital work from school. You can view the blogs at any time. Please feel free to come and see me if you feel your child does not have a lot of work posted here or if there is incomplete work posted. 

Calendar Art

Rooms 16 and 17 have begun to collaborate more with their learning as St Mary's begins to move towards bigger collaborative learning environments opposed to single cell classrooms. One of the recent collaborations was last Friday when we did our calendar art together, the children were given a choice of four different designs. See the presentation below.

Quick Writing Plan - Stories

The children and I have been collaboratively planning and writing stories in Room 16 using Mr. Bach's Quick Plan model. See example below.

Problem Solving approach to maths

We have been looking at the problem solving approach to maths learning in Room 16 this year, as have many other classes at St Mary's. Below are some modelling flipbook entries with problems and their solutions using increasingly more complex maths skills. Simple solutions are stage 4 and more advanced ones stage 5 or 6.

Inventions - Concept

We have begun looking at inventions in the Middle School as the second part of our concept learning for the term. The children have really got into it and begun thinking of all the inventions we use around us every day.

Screencastify - Poetry

We are about to commence poetry reading and writing in the Middle School. Here is a screencastify Mr Bach made to show children how to get started writing poetry on Storybird.

Padlet - What is an invention?

The children give a variety of ideas about what they think an invention is.... Added from individual chromebooks to class Padlet.

Created with Padlet

Modern learning environment furniture

Room 16 has just acquired some new furniture for the class, which has been designed for the digital modern learning environment. Gone are all the old style individual desks in exchange for large flat desks, ergonomically designed chairs, bean bags, tall flat top desks, children's low arm chairs, benches and generally more floor open floor space to spread out. The children can select from a range of options that best suit their individual preference for focusing on their learning using the chrome books. Group and class teaching is still undertaken, but a lot more individual help at each child's chrome book is becoming the norm.

Mary MacKillop Feast Day - Friday 7th August

Click on this link to see a lovely Photopeach movie made by Mrs Dunkley and Room 4 students about Mary Mackillop Feast Day

Sequence map using Solo

Look on your child's blog to see examples of work they have posted there. Your child's blog is his or her digital portfolio and will contain both assessments and tasks completed throughout the year. They all know how to access it online. I will post an extensive comment on each blog portfolio twice during the year. Look out for examples of work such as the reading presentation above, on sequencing, that your child should have posted recently.

Book for Maori Language Week

The children were able to create a book for Maori language week on a Ngai Tahu site.

Prayer Cards - Room 16

Room 16 children created their own prayer cards to be laminated and given to parishioners at mass on Sunday. They needed to copy and paste their own slides on to our class presentation.

Screencastify

Here is another screencastify, about four minutes long to explain to the children the steps to go to in order to make a digital picture book using the Storybird Website. A link to the screencastify was embedded on the children's learning site so that they could access it at any time from their chromebooks if they got stuck and the teacher was not around. Very powerful!

Concept - Cycles - Room 16 Padlet

The Concept for Term 3 at St Mary's is Cycles. The Middle School are looking at Cycles of Time.
Below are some ideas that all the children posted to a Padlet about what they thought Cycles were all about.

Created with Padlet

Badminton - Hit It PE programme

Room 16 Children enjoyed learning some badminton skills on the HIT IT programme last week. they also got some tuition in tennis showing enthusuasm outside in the cold.

Screencastify - We are all learners

In Room 16 we are all learners and teachers of others. Some keen Room 16 children found the Screencastify app themselves on the chrome webstore and introduced this fantastic and easy app to Mr. Bach (although technically it is an extension not an app). There is a link below that takes you to an education/technology blog that explains in detail how it works and how useful it can be in the learning process. Basically the app allows you to do a screen recording of anything you do on a web browsing tab or on your desktop so children can film as they explain their learning using Google chrome on a chrome book. You can add audio of yourself speaking and of any sound that comes from the tab. You can also add a video of yourself shown on a small screen in the corner of the tab. There is a further option to only video yourself speaking on a large screen.

Click Here for more details about screencastify.

You can find the screencastify app/extension to download to drive on This Link

HERE is a screencast of a maths whizz exercise that I created using many of the features.  Below I actually managed to embed it using the embed code - hurray!

Maths Whizz and Screenshots

The children have been going really well with their Maths Whizz work this year. Many of them are making excellent progress with their number and maths strand learning (such as measurement).
The children are motivated by progressing well and getting a green tick and earning points to buy things for their study on Maths Whizz. They have also been learning to take screenshots of an example of the activities they have been doing and uploading these to their blogs. Please look at your child's blog to see all the work that they have uploaded. Above is an example of one screenshot about measurement and above that the high achievers page showing those who have done the most work and those who have improved the most for the past week.

Statistics - Google Sheets

The children have been learning about statistics with Mrs Stevenson while Mr. Bach was on teacher release. This is an example of recording data and a graph that they created on Google Sheets.

Golden Time - Google Draw Native Bird Art

The middle school had a Google Draw native bird art competition for Golden Time last Friday. The children had to all download their drawings as jpg files and upload the images of their creations into the presentation on the middle school learning site.

Below is an example of the story writing some of the children are producing. This is written by Teuila, in year 3 who has been hooked into writing. You can see she is starting to edit her work and separate ideas into sentences. See the link below to see the sort of comments I make to go with some of the children's writing on Google Apps.
Writing Link

Story Writing

As a break from our report writing room 16 have been doing some story writing using the quick plan below. Using Mr. Bach's writing cards we think of a character with a few words to describe them, a setting, a special thing and a problem. Mr Bach is writing a class story below, which he is sharing as he goes and getting ideas from the children for the next part of the story.

Bongani video

Wonderful Bongani doing his writing before school.

Physical map

Hopefully this will help with your study of plate tectonics Fred.

This photo was sent directly from Mr. Bach's iPhone to the blog post page as a draft and as a first test of the new skill. It is also possible to do this from the i-Pads. A video can also be sent, saving us from the need of going through youtube and having to double-handle something. It is also possible to screenshot or use the chrome books camera to take photos and send them through g-mail. The children will be trained up to send work to their blog in this way. Look out for more posts on your child's blog, which is also their portfolio. More and more work is going to appear on their individual blogs. 

Report Plan and Report Writing

The children have been using Google Apps and their chrome books increasingly for learning purposes.  Below is an example of an activity for writing, where the children need to make their own copy of a planning template and then complete a piece of writing. We are focusing on Information Report Writing this term for writing and NZ Native Birds for our Concept of Sustainability. Ariahna made an outstanding job of her planning and writing about a kiwi.

Canva mother's day art

Check out the art on 'Canva' that Room 16 children created for Mother's Day. The work was started during Golden Time and finished during the week.

Padlet - facts about New Zealand animals

Room 16 created a class 'Padlet' after the children had each created their own one. We were coming up with facts we know about New Zealand animals

Created with Padlet

Assembly

 Assembly - Room 16

Last Friday Room 16 lead the school assembly. Many children got the opportunity to speak in front of a large audience in the hall. Some of the children introduced parts of the assembly, while others read out their war diary entries they had published during the week.

The children are also publishing their diary entries to their own blogs. Please take the time to ask your child to show you the work that they have posted. We will regularly be posting work there.

Event

Lakes District Health Board PRESENTS

An evening with NATHAN MIKAERE-WALLIS

Tuesday 5 May 2015, 7.30pm

Edmund Rice Centre @ John Paul College, Whitworth Road, Rotorua

WHAT OUR CHILDREN NEED TO LIVE, LEARN AND SUCCEED

This event is tailored for PARENTS, CAREGIVERS, GRANDPARENTS, AUNTIES, UNCLES AND WAHNAU

Nathan is a trustee for The Brainwave Trust and is a sought after trainer.

Nathan’s presentation makes use of real-life examples and case study material, in an accessible, interactive manner.  This is an invaluable opportunity for everyone raising children.

GOLD COIN DONATION-PROCEEDS TO JOHN PAUL COLLEGE PTA

Also-

On 13 May, Jasmin Jackson from the Heart Foundation will be coming to 

present a workshop on healthy lunches.   All year 5 and 6 students will be 

attending and we would like to invite all St Mary's parents to attend.  The 

presentation will be from 1.30-2.30 in the hall, and I am sure will be very 

interesting and informative.  We look forward to seeing you there.


Sheryl Todd

Children's Learning Blogs

The children are all able to get to the middle school's learning site where they have personal access to all of their learning. Here they can make copies of presentations or documents for their own use and revisit learning we have done as a group or  a whole class. Also on one of the button links (our amazing blogs) they can access their personal blogs. These blogs are being used this year as portfolios, where learning is displayed both from end of term assessments and ongoing posts by children. Please ask your child to show you what they have on the blog and to talk to you about some of what they are learning and any improvements that could be made.
Click on this link to go to the Middle School Google Site for Learning for 2015 - Link
You may have to get your child to login to Google to see the site if you don't have your own Google login.

The children spontaneously got into the shape of a poppy while waiting to do poppy mosaics with Janet Keen for our ANZAC memorial.

Google Apps for Education Summit 2015

A team of dedicated St Mary's teachers and management attended the Google Apps for Education Summit 2015 in Auckland during the school holidays. We were exposed to a lot of interesting and helpful new skills and ideas to help us with our digital learning. One of the best and most humorous presenters was Jim Sill who talked about the use of videos and video editing in education. See a brief part of one of his talks in the video above.

Palm Sunday - Donkey Parade

Palm Sunday - Donkey Parade

On Friday last week Room 16 ran the Palm Sunday Liturgy along with children from Room 5. All of the children read their parts well. After the Liturgy we had our Donkey Parade outside and Abigayle from Room 16 was lucky enough to be selected to ride the donkey. We all sang 'Hosanna Bless our King' and thought of the moment Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and the people sang and waved palm branches to honour their 'King'.

 

Harold the Giraffe - Life Education

Room 16 children all love Harold the Giraffe when he comes to help Bernie teach us interesting science stuff once a year. The children all get to meet Harold personally at the end and those that choose can give him a hug (or get a friendly bite from him). Thanks for helping to teach us Harold.
Below should be photos of all 29 children who were present on Tuesday last week.