Sunday 28 June 2015

Week 10, Term 2 2015

Hello Everyone!

Another busy week in LC1.  This week we welcomed Finn into the Learning Common.  We have continued our Immersion Learning about pollution and focussed on land and air pollution this week.  We've also been lucky enough to have some more fabulous parents in supporting - a big thank you!

Immersion - Land and Air Pollution

We began the week thinking about what happens to our rubbish once the bins are emptied?  This then led to some workshops on recycling and on 'The Dump'.  We continued to use powerful photographs to evoke wonder.  We then looked at some of the different types of air pollution - some of which were in NZ and some of which weren't.  We talked about healthy/unhealthy air.  The children were quite shocked by some of the images we showed them!

Pattern

We have begun looking at different patterns in Maths.  We've used a range of materials to continue, copy and create our own repeating patterns.




Making Sushi

On Thursday Jinna (Ashley's Mum) and Chelsy (Olive's Mum) came in and made sushi with some children in LC1!  What a wonderful experience! The workshop was so popular they are coming back next week to run another session.  





Writing To Inform

Some of the children have started to come to Writing to Inform workshops. This links really well to our immersion learning on 'Change'.  So far we have learnt about Fact/Fiction/Opinion and have begun to write some simple information reports. Next week we will be linking our new learning to writing information reports on things babies can do vs things five and six year olds can do.  


Can I Manage My Time and Resources?

This week we took Learning Advisory Time to the gym.  We set up five stations (circuits) for the children to do. The children were allowed to move the resources as long as they put them back.  Everyone in the team had to have a go and this was more difficult than it sounds e.g. for a team of six there were only five beanbags.  They had 5 minutes on the timer for each station and had discussion time at the start and reflection time at the end.  It was not without problems! We were amazing by the detailed reflections the children were able to contribute to.  We are beginning to notice the focus on managing time and resources in L.A time having an impact in the day to day life in LC1 now too.  









Sunday 21 June 2015

Week 9, Term 2


Hello Everyone!


We have started our next immersion block for the year.  it is inspired by the NCREL research and is 21st Century skill of Digital-Age Literacy.  In LC1 our key concept taken from this is 'Change'.  We have begun by looking at pollution.  This week we have looked at water pollution, with a specific focus on powerful digital images that evoke wonder and inspire thinking.  Below are some of the immersion workshops and independent learning we have been doing around this:

Hexagons

We asked the children 'What is Pollution?'  We gave them no clues or insight and they recorded their thinking on a hexagon.  From there, in smaller groups of 8, we shared our thinking and discussed any shared understandings that shone through.  There were three main ideas that came through:

Pollution is ... working together
Pollution is ... working by yourself
Pollution is ... something to do with rubbish

Alongside the main thinking there were many stand alone ideas, here are a few of them:

Pollution is ... a mermaid's house
Pollution is ... a rainbow
Pollution is ... a star




Powerful Images

To engage the children, we have looked at a range of digital images this week.  We have discussed our thinking, feelings and wonderings about the images and it has left us with many unanswered questions!  Below shows some thinking about water pollution.  The children sorted them into two groups - oil pollution and plastic/rubbish pollution.  




Can We Clean Polluted Water?

On Wednesday Yodette led a workshop on cleaning polluted water.  She filled trays of water with oil (from the kitchen!), food colouring and chopped up plastic bags.  Then the children had to try to clean the water! Hmmmm this was difficult.  They tried to sieve out the plastic... but that was only part of the problem.  They tried to make it rain (with a watering can) ... but that wasn't enough!  





They then explored this further independently.  Ashley realised that if you only use water the oil doesn't come off, but if you use soap you can get rid of it.  As I was cleaning up and emptying the dirty water down the sink Nathan turned to me and said 'Rosie, does that water end up in the ocean? That's not very good pouring it down there is it?!' Wow!