Snail Art

Our art in the past term has been around textured landscapes, and from there the children have moved into observational drawing of creatures and plants. 

Our latest art works feature snails.

The children used Vivid pens to make the outlines stand out, then used strong dye to colour their work.

Learning About the Piano

In Term 1 the class learned about Beethoven and the piano.

They learned that Beethoven was a composer, 

and that he persevered even though he faced many challenges in his life.  

From when he was a small child, Beethoven practised playing the piano for many hours of the day, 

and although he went deaf at age 27 he continued to write and perform great music.

While one of our students played a short tune, 

the class took a look inside an upright piano to see how the sound was made.

Do you learn a musical instrument?
What instrument do you most like to listen to?

Showing "Aspire' at the School Cross-Country

Our B4 students got the chance to show our school value of 'Aspire' by training for, and running in, our school cross-country.

Our school values are match with the initials of our school name!

Reefton - respect

Area - aspire

School - self-manage.

Everyone worked hard and kept going even when they were tired!

What are your school values?

How can you show them?

'Filled to Capacity' - Finding out about Volume

In Maths, we are finding out about Volume.

Volume is the amount of space inside a shape.

Our first challenge was to make a building with 12 cubes.

Although the buildings were different shapes (some were tall and narrow, others were short and wide), we decided that they took up the same amount of room because they were each built with 12 cubes.

The second challenge was to create a container that would hold 30 beads, with just the right amount of space.

It took a few tries, 

but everyone showed persistence and kept trying until they had a container just the right size.

We kept trying!

We saw that different shaped containers can have the same volume.

#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!

Building Our Growth Mindsets

Our 2018 school year is underway!

During the first week back we used videos and activities from 
Jo Boaler's Week of Inspirational Maths
to get our brains thinking again.

Over the past couple of years we've been working on maths in different ways, working in mixed groups to figure out rich tasks that develop our math thinking. 
We've been learning to talk about our learning and to challenge others to explain their thinking. 
We've also been learning that mistakes make our brains grow! Our new saying is 'a mistake is a first attempt in learning'.

The 'Building Shapes' activity got us working as a team to try the challenges. Each team had to convince the 'skeptics' that we'd created the shapes.

Did you notice some groups who kept trying until they found success?

Celebration of Learning 2017

Our school year is at an end. 

Last night was the school's Celebration of Learning.

B4's item was a dance telling the story of 

Tawhirimatea, God of the Wind.

Papatuanuku the Earth Mother, and Ranginui the Sky Father were clasped closely together, leaving no room for their children to grow. 
The children, all boys, decided to push the parents apart.

Tawhirimatea was against his brothers separating their parents  to make more room.

When they succeeded, he went to live with Ranginui in the sky.

Now, when he is happy, the sun shines, but if he feels angry, we get storms.

Our new school year starts at the end of January, 2018.

See you then!