Otago Problem Challenges results

We are a very proud Room 5 today.  The results of the Otago Problem Challenges competitions have been released.  To start with, we all are really pleased with ourselves for trying hard and giving this a go.  A lot of the maths problems in the challenges are really really hard!

We're particularly proud though of our 3 classmates who earned Merit certificates (11 or more answers right across the 5 sets) - three cheers for Zoe, Justin and Sandy.  Even more impressive is our classmate George, who won the only Excellent certificate in the whole of year 7 (16 answers right)!

Character freeze frame

Another drama session - we all chose a fictional character and built a freeze frame of them.

Map making

In maths we are exploring how maps work.  In our first session, we created a 'course' using objects from the classroom.  We then had to create a 'map' of that course and plan a route through it for others to follow.  We had to think about:

• Distance between the objects
• Relative size of the objects
• Orientation of each object
• Placement of the objects relative to other objects and relative to the map

It was harder than it seemed!

Drama Freeze Frames

3 family portraits - 1 from the start of the session, 1 from about half an hour in, and the third about an hour and a half into the photo session when everyone is just over it!

Group 1:

Group 2:

Group 3:

Group 4:

Google 4 Doodle

We're going to each be designing a Google Doodle over the next week and a half, around the theme "If I could travel back in time I would..."

Check out this page for some links to historical Google Hangouts that might give you some inspiration: http://www.google.co.nz/doodle4google/education.html

What would you like to make sure you learn this week?

Let's set some mini goals for the week.  We'll write these up tomorrow, but this evening, have a think about:

What would YOU like to learn this week to do with either:
- Maths - number strategies
- Maths - measurement and shapes
- Writing - persuasive or narrative writing
- CIB - Balmoral Habits

And how could we celebrate when people achieve their learning goal for this week?

Book Week 2015

It's been a while, but wow, what a week we've had!

This week was Book Week.  On Tuesday, we had the Brainbusters Book Week Quiz, for which Room 5 had the theme palaeontology.  An awesome job the students did too of dressing up themselves and the quiz table.
Yesterday we had a visit from Siouxsie Wiles, microbiologist with a particular interest in bioluminescence.  And then today is R E A D dress up day.

We spent some time reflecting as a class on the process of creating the book quiz material.  Here are our thoughts:

Last week Friday we started planning out how we were going to decorate our table and dress ourselves to represent our theme palaeontology.

We had a read of books about dinosaurs and fossils, wrote down lots of ideas in groups and shared these ideas with the class.  We had a vote to make the final decisions.

We used the Balmoral habit of creativity by thinking about possible themes for the table; thinking about different possible names for the team.

We practised the Balmoral habit of thinking to generate these ideas together as teams.

We planned out what we needed to make and what we needed to bring, then we worked in teams to make our costumes and table decorations.

Making the costumes:

• Alice thought she maybe could bring her costume stuff in a day earlier to be prepared.
• Dev was pleased that he created his costume in one day - quicker than usual.
• The whole class: Balmoral Habit of creativity - using old fabric scraps and paper scraps to create costumes
• Keeru struggled with choosing her materials for her costume.  She had to use the Balmoral habit of communicating to ask others to support her and help her create her costume.
• In fact, Jo saw everyone using the Balmoral habit of communicating to work together and problem solve.

Managing self - it’s a class goal at the moment.  So how did we do?

Yay - these were great things	Mmmm, oops, maybe different next time
When Will started making the clubs and other people joined in to help making lots of them.	In the audience for the book quiz - keeping our clubs to ourselves (and modelling to teachers how to keep their light sabres to themselves). When Jo popped out of the class at times, we got a bit noisy. After the book quiz, coming back to class, the whole block was a little out of control and rowdy.

“We looked good.”

“#Swag”

“The table crew worked really hard and the table looked amazing.”

“Everyone was really independent and focused on making their outfit and this showed - it came out really well.”
“I think that our costumes looking amazing, especially Ullrich’s because he made his own pterodactyl suit.  Justin’s mask too.  We all spent so long making them.”

“I think our table stood out and looked really good.”

“I think it looked pretty cool, because when we looked at the volcano we made, we didn’t think it had enough detail.  So we improved it by adding more detail - Samara came and added creative ideas too, like the orange paper for lava.”

“I liked the special effects like the dinosaurs with their guts getting ripped out.”

“I felt like we were going to win the best dressed prize.”