A Change in B4

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'Open the Door to B4' started at the beginning of 2010.

Over the years, through the blog, 

the children of B4 and I have made many wonderful connections 

with classes all over the world.

We have taken part in amazing shared projects, among them

Our World, Our Numbers 

Colour Poems 

The Tale Trail 

Quad-blogging 

and

Our World, Our Stories 






This year, I am stepping out of the classroom and will be working in a part-time role at our school.

To all of the teachers and classes who have interacted with us over the years and supported our students in their learning - thank you!

We've had a blast!

from Judy McKenzie

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'Open the Door to B4' will remain online as a learning resource,

and the new teacher in B4 

may decide at some stage to keep it going.

Our First Skype in a Long Time!

We had a blast from the past today when this year's B4 got to Skype with Mrs McKenzie's friend Mrs. Morris 

and her Grade 1/2 class in Australia. 

Mrs. McK. and Mrs. Morris first met each other in 2010 through their class blogs.

Over the years there were lots of shared projects and Skye sessions.

We found some similarities and some differences between our classes and schools:

Here are some of the projects Mrs. Morris and Mrs. McK's. classes have shared over the years:

Our World, Our Numbers 

Our World, Our Stories

Flat Stanley

Do you have any questions you would like to ask us?

#NZreadaloud - Gavin Bishop

For the next two weeks we are taking part in the Yr 1/2 #NZreadaloud. 
We will be reading lots of stories by New Zealand author Gavin Bishop and we will be posting about our learning on the readaloud blog here.


We read Gavin Bishop's version of 'Chicken Licken' 

and compared it to another version we have in our class.

The endings were quite different. One is sadder than the other!

We voted on which ending we each preferred.

Let us know which ending you prefer!

Hello to Our Quad-Blogging Buddies

This year we are going to be quad-blogging with three other classes in New Zealand.

Hello to ...

Clyde School Rm 6

Broadlands School Rm 4

Mahora School Super 15

Quad-blogging was an idea originally developed by 

Deputy Mitchell in England, 

as a way for four classes to connect via their class blogs.

Over the years, the children who have been in B4 have 

quad-blogged with classes overseas, and in New Zealand.

We are looking forward to meeting our 2017 friends and sharing some learning together!

Students from Auroa School Investigate Our Soil Question

In our Secrets of the Soil posts, here and here, we asked what the soil is like where YOU live.

Mr Webb and the Rm 3 students from Auroa School on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand 

decided to investigate the soil at their school. 

Now we will have to compare notes.

 Do you think soil from the west coast of the North Island will  be similar to soil from the west coast of the South Island?

The Colour Poem Project is On Again!

We were excited when Mrs McK received a tweet from her friend Mrs Yollis in California, 

inviting us to join the Colour Poem project again this year.

Join our Collaborative Poetry Twitter Project!

Details: https://t.co/AV2KURb3RA@NZWaikato @judykmck @Michelle_Colte @mauilibrarian2

— Linda Yollis (@lindayollis) April 4, 2016

Read our posts and poems from last year's project.

This year the project kicked off with poems about 

black and white.

Our class wrote this poem, using the Måori words 

Må (white) 

and Pango (black).

We tweeted our poem, using the #clrpoem hashtag. 

By using the hashtag, we get to read all of the poems, from all around the world, even if we don't follow the classes on Twitter.

Each week, the poems will be about a colour on the visible spectrum - the colours of the rainbow - 

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet

Here is an easy way to remember the order:

R O Y G B I V 

This week, the colour is RED.

What do you like about the colour red?

Aspire- Follow Your Dreams

One of our school values is 

ASPIRE, 

which means to work for or work towards something you want; to pursue something you dream about.

We had a visitor today who talked to the children about following their dreams. 

Our visitor, John Bougen decided a few years ago he would like to visit every one of the 247 nations and territories of the world. 

To date, he has been to 230 of them!

John talked to us today about his travels, and taught us some geography at the same time.

What is your dream?

What will you need to do to achieve it?

Can you name the continents of the world?

Global Maths Twitter Task Challenge

The Global Maths Twitter Task Challenge is a 

great idea from 

Beverley Ladd and Heidi Samuelson.

Classes from around the world can join in. The project will continue for the rest of 2015, and into 2016.  

Questions are tweeted out using the #gmttc hashtag 

(with the grade level added to the end). 

Some classes have signed up to host the questions for their class level for a week, while other classes are just choosing to join in by answering the questions.

We were one of two classes hosting the questions for the week 21-25 September, using the tag #gmttc1

In B4 we like open-ended questions, where there might be more than one solution, 
and we started the week with this tweet:

Here is the problem for Sept. 21 #gmttc1 pic.twitter.com/bhI5DyMVVy

— OpenDoorB4 (@opendoorb4) September 20, 2015

There was a lot of excitement when some classes answered our first question!

@opendoorb4 Here are some of our answers for the #gmttc1 week 1 challenge: see all at: http://t.co/f7ScgSfvdf pic.twitter.com/j8XSQkeu4M

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) September 22, 2015

@opendoorb4 more answers to #gmttc1 week 1 challenge pic.twitter.com/JlRnZ9oBfM

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) September 22, 2015

We tried out our question too:

Here are some of our answers for the Sept. 21 question #gmttc1 pic.twitter.com/CTYEvOyGJy

— OpenDoorB4 (@opendoorb4) September 21, 2015

Our second problem:

This is our Sept. 22 task for #gmtcc1 pic.twitter.com/blaa5Ybbyr

— OpenDoorB4 (@opendoorb4) September 21, 2015

and an answer from Mrs Pennell's class:

Here are a few of our answers for the Sept 22! #GMTTC1 pic.twitter.com/imBKHIyE4F

— Mrs. Pennell's Class (@pennellspeeps) September 23, 2015

Question 3:

Here is the problem for Sept. 23 #gmttc1 pic.twitter.com/juViLWce4A

— OpenDoorB4 (@opendoorb4) September 22, 2015

Question 4:

Here is the problem for Thursday Sept. 24 #gmttc1 pic.twitter.com/snZL5bMpjE

— OpenDoorB4 (@opendoorb4) September 23, 2015

and an answer 

@opendoorb4 Here is the work we did to solve the Sept 24 #gmttc1 problem. It was difficult but we figured it out. pic.twitter.com/Pv7s6aI4uO

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) September 24, 2015

Our final question:

Here is our final task for this week:Sept. 25 #gmttc1 We have enjoyed this week. Now we have spring break fr 2 weeks pic.twitter.com/H26rSSKSfn

— OpenDoorB4 (@opendoorb4) September 24, 2015

and some ideas from B4:

@opendoorb4 Here are some of our ideas #gmttc1 pic.twitter.com/QWQJKqKn9V

— OpenDoorB4 (@opendoorb4) September 25, 2015

We also answered some questions on the #gmttc2 tag, tweeted out by
@missmacsowls

@missmacsowls We have some answers #gmttc2 pic.twitter.com/55qYP97OHY

— OpenDoorB4 (@opendoorb4) September 23, 2015

and problems tweeted out by
@linkedlearners

My shapes have a total of 18 sides. What shapes do you think I have? #gmttc2

— Mrs. Stoufer's Class (@LinkedLearners) September 21, 2015

@LinkedLearners We did this today :) #gmttc2 pic.twitter.com/ZTt1qKwhRV

— OpenDoorB4 (@opendoorb4) September 23, 2015

It has been a lot of fun and we've enjoyed seeing how everyone works out the problems.

Do you have a problem we could solve?

A Song to Finish the Colour Poem Project

The colour poem project has come to an end. 

For our final contribution we would like to sing a song about the colour names in Måori.

Mā is white,

whero is red,

kākāriki green

Pango is black,

Mangu is too,

A. E. I. O. U.

Kōwhai yellow,

parauri brown,

kikorangi blue

Mawhero pink

Karaka orange,

A. E. I. O. U.

Some of us are wearing pink for Pink Shirt Day - a day where people stand up against bullying.

Do you know some colour words in another language?

Blue

The colour poem project continues.

As we worked on our 'blue' poems we were learning that good writers 'show' not 'tell' - letting the words create pictures for the reader.

We started our poems by writing what blue tastes, feels, sounds and looks like.

We thought carefully about our words.

We were pleased with what we wrote.

We were surprised when Mrs McK suggested that now we should take out any word that said 'blue' and any phrase that said 'looks like' 'tastes like' etc.

We gave it a try, and we think our poems sound even better now! What do you think?

What do you think - did we manage to create word pictures for you?

Our Colour Poems

A few weeks ago we were invited to take part 

in a colour poem project. 

Each week a new colour from the visible spectrum is showcased:

R O Y G B I V

The poems are shared with other classes via Twitter, using the hashtag #clrpoem

We missed the Red week, but here are some of our poems for Orange, Yellow and Green weeks.

The next colour is Blue.

Do you have a poem to share with us?