Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Show Me 5

We are continuing to "Show 5" in Room 2. 

  • Hands Still
  • Feet Still
  • Mouth Closed
  • Eyes on the speaker
  • Ears open and listening
It's really important when we're sitting on the mat listening to the teacher.

But it's not just on the mat.  We need to "Show 5" whenever we listen to a speaker.  We share news in Buzz Groups.  The speaker has the 'talking toy in front of them to remind the listeners who should be doing the talking.  We're pretty good at it most of the time! 

Here are some photos of us Showing our 5 Listening Skills

Tigue, Zane and Kerrianne with their eyes on Caitlin and the pom pom she made and brought for news.  Kerrianne asked if she could touch it and Caitlin had said yes.

Rebecca, Arleyah and Briah are being polite to Libby by 'Showing 5'.

Steven shares his news with Kelli, Cairo and Aden who are doing a great job of listening carefully.

Zoe, KayLee and Mina have their hands and feet still and their eyes on Paige as she talks about Pinky, the fluffy pink dog.

 See you again soon.


Monday, May 16, 2011

Week 2 concludes

Hi everyone

Last week was exceptionally busy and we achieved a lot.  Learning about Place Value is going well and we've been having a real blitz on using capital letters and full stops in our writing.  EVERYONE is making progress with reading and we are learning more and more new words every day.


Friday afternoon was incredibly exciting.  After silent reading Mrs B announced our ABC.  (Awesome Behaviour Celebration.)  We all lined up and ordered a chocolate or strawberry milkshake from Paige (the star of the week) and Josiah (the super helper for the day). After we ordered we went into Room 1 and had great fun playing with balloons.    And the best thing...  we were all on the GREEN traffic light so we all got to join in.  Yay!!

At assembly we started by sharing the poem 'Undersea' with some really cool actions.  Some of us read out 'Fishy Stories' we had written using cartoon pictures as inspiration.  

Here's a few for you to read.


The Mermaid - by Arleyah 
The mermaid and the dolphin went for a swim in the 0cean.

The Rescue - by Kerrianne
The Mermaid got caught.  The Dolphin saved the mermaid.

The Mermaid - by Paige
Once upon a time there was a little mermaid and her pet dolphin.  They love jumping out of the water and back in again.  The mermaid had long white hair.  The dolphin could talk and the dolphin was pink and sparkly.  The mermaid has a sparkly blue tail.


Dinner - by Tigue
Once upon a time there was a fish in a glass.  One day the cat came and looked in the glass.  The fish was scared so he got eaten.  When the cat finished eating the fish he did a burp.
And finally...
Here is the finished artwork that we displayed in assembly.  We painted a variety of sea creatures with bright acrylic paints like Marcus Phister and cut them out.  After we spent a little while composing the layout we glued them to the watery environments.  Check out the paintings for sharks, starfish, seahorses, puffer fish, sting rays, jelly fish, rainbow fish and lots of others.  Oh, and a few mermaids of course!  We learned a lot about mark making with paint during the last two weeks and how to respond to the work of ourselves and others.  We also think they're pretty cool paintings!







KayLee

Zoe

Friday, May 6, 2011

Fishy Business in Room 2

Well folks - it's great to be back.  

It's been jolly damp and chilly outside for most of this week and we've been inside a lot.  But... we have had some seriously good learning already.
We've been learning about Place Value and how to count in 10's.  There are two great games on a website called ICT games that use Place Value.  

Here are the links.   
http://www.ictgames.com/sharknumbers.html      
http://www.ictgames.com/sharkNumbers_v2.html  

Mrs B is going to give the blog a new look sometime soon and will try and put a few good links on it.  Stay tuned!

We are starting to look really hard at learning intentions.  So we all know just exactly what we are learning and what we will be doing to show that learning.  Have a chat about the learning intention when doing reading at night to see how it works.


Fishy Business

Our fishy friends have been named.  We wrote down our ideas for names and posted them in the class mailbox.  There were so many awesome names but only two fish so two names were drawn out of the box.  And the names are...  Bubbles and Spongebob.   Come and visit some time.

We've also been creating some fantastic artwork with a fishy theme.  Check out the first stages.  The work of world famous Henri Matisse, a local artist called Margaret Bell and the author/illustrator of The Rainbow Fish series, Marcus Pfister, have inspired us.

In the first stage we are applying water colours with sponges and large brushes to give a watery background.





 


Stage two involved observational drawing.  We made little viewfinders to help us concentrate on details.  Our drawing books contain observational drawings of all sorts of fish. Sharks, whales, stingrays, dolphins, starfish, puffer-fish and many others feature along with the goldfish.  There are also a few mermaids quietly swimming around!

Observational drawing is all about drawing what you see - not what you think you see.  And we are rather good at it too!  The viewfinders came in very handy for drawing parts of the fish like eyes, fins and tails in detail. 









 
Come and see the drawing books if you are passing but there are two more stages to go until the paintings are finished.  So you will see the completed masterpieces next time Room 2 is sharing at assembly.  Keep an eye on the newsletter for the date.

See you again soon.

Mrs B and the Room 2 crew.