Thursday 31 August 2017

Caring

A few weeks ago, we began our journey around what it means to be Caring.
Caring is one of our Bromley School Values, and is an area that Miss Gardner and Mrs Smith noticed needed some thinking around.

We began by noticing tamariki that were showing Caring in different ways. We celebrated how they were showing this value and began to note them down on Post It notes.
This then turned into the children nominating their peers for being caught Caring throughout the school day.



We talked about 4 main areas within which we could show Caring at school - People, Work, Class and Environment.

One afternoon we split into small teams and brainstormed as many ideas as we could for how we might show our value of Caring within each of the main areas...





During one of our Kiwi Can sessions we looked at goal setting.  This gave the teachers an idea...what if we thought about setting our very own Caring goals?

Whilst brainstorming possible ideas for our goals, we needed to be quite reflective about ourselves and think about an area that suited our individual needs.

Check out what we've decided on...


Pītau 1 had a sneaky peek at how Koru 1 display their goals and saw that they used a continuum to monitor how they are going towards achieving their goals.

We have set up our own continuum and are starting to reflect upon how we are tracking with our goals.



“My goal is to move away when I’m getting distracted.  I put myself on number 3 ‘cos I’m doing it sometimes.”  Jyuvana

“My goal is to put my reading folder in the basket every day.  I’ve put myself on number 3 because I’ve been doing it lots.”  Manaia

“My goal is to use my manners.  I’ve put myself on number 3 because I’ve been showing manners wherever I go.”  Leo

“My goal is to pick up rubbish in the classroom.  I’ve put myself on number 2 because I’m doing it sometimes.”  Kahu

“My goal is to put my reading folder in the right place.  I’ve put myself on 2 because I’m still learning how to do it and sometimes I forget and sometimes I can’t find it.”  Jaydi

“My goal is to move away when someone is annoying me.  I’m still on number 2 because I’ve done it sometimes.  I did some today as well.”  Alex

“My goal is to move away when I’m getting distracted and I’m on 1 because I’m starting to do it.”  Serena

“My goal is to put sheets in my book correctly.  I’m on 3 because I always do it.”  Xavier


Where to next?

We will continue to monitor our goals on a weekly basis - thinking about how we can improve.
We will look into how this value links with some Key Competencies set out in our National Curriculum.
We are looking into 'what makes the perfect friend'.


Saturday 19 August 2017

Exploring Tynker

This week we had a play around with the Tynker app. 

We had to work together we a buddy to complete a number of tasks. It started simple with only one command 'walk' but as we worked through the levels we began to string together more commands to make more complex algorithms. 



This led to us finding a lot of bugs! We needed to work together to figure out where in our algorithm we had made a mistake and debug it. 

Here's what we thought of the new app: 

Bryan - I like how you could long jump and super jump and normal jump to collect the crystals.
Jaydi- The boogie flip and disco was so fun.
Brady - It was challenging not like other games. 
Seb - It was hard because if one wrong move you can get it wrong. 
Oscar - I found it challenging because to try and debug your code and stuff and to get the bugs out was hard. 
Isaac AR - I like the bit with the dancing and i like the quality of it. 
Kaiya - It could be a bit hard with the words and I thought I had it right but I actually had it wrong!
Devyn - I found it easy because you didn’t have to do that much. 
Seb - I like it cos there’s levels and it gets harder as you go along.






Tuesday 15 August 2017

Coders in the Making!

Over the last couple of weeks we have begun exploring some fundamental coding concepts and are learning to think like coders! 

We started off with Kidbot. We had to learn these commands:
One person was the Kidbot and the other was the programmer. We learnt that when you put these commands together it becomes an algorithm. 


We took turns programming our algorithms into our Kidbots and directing them around the classroom, and then the school. 

Kaiya: It was really fun but sometimes my programmer put in too many instructions and then I got confused!
Jemma: Yeah and sometimes they would forget to do stop. 
Kaiya: Or go! 



Next we drew up a grid in the classroom and had to programme our Kidbot to capture the gingerbread man! 



From here we thought about how we could record these commands. We used these simple symbols to write algorithms for our buddies to follow. 




Jyuvana: This was pretty tricky if you get mixed up with left and right like me. 
Brady: Sometimes it is hard to know the number of steps cos sometimes I did 4 steps instead of just 3. 
Devyn: I kept forgetting to do stop and go sometimes and I found it quite confusing with left and right. 

Next we were introduced to the app Beebot. You have to programme the Beebot through the garden and to the flower. 


Leo: Sometimes when I would go forward he would just turn around and go backwards! But if you use the cross he will stop and you can do it again. 
Yohannas: This was a bit annoying and also tricky because Beebot didn't listen to me but I told Mrs Smith. 

Next we took turns to write algorithms for a buddy to direct a creature from one point in the grid to another. We found out that when something isn't correct in our algorithm it's called a bug. We worked together to debug our algorithms so they were correct. 

We started adding obstacles to make our algorithms a bit more complex. 


Where to next?
- Continue to work on left and right 
- Explore Tynker 
- Use Seesaw to share and reflect on our learning as we go. 


Saturday 27 May 2017

Learning through Lego!

This week we were very lucky to have House of Bricks visit Bromley School!
On Wednesday it was Pītau 1's turn to join in the fun.
We were split into teams and spent around 20 minutes at the three different activities.
One challenge was to build a tower as tall as we possibly could!



Another challenge was to build something with a buddy where we could move a domino 30cm without touching it with our hands!  
This was a tricky one, but there were a couple of examples of towers and catapults for us to look at.


The final challenge (possibly the most popular) was to build a vehicle with wheels that could move down the ramp.



It was amazing to see the amount of very different, creative designs that we built!






Where to next...
How might we be able to use Lego to help us with planning our garden?
Can we build on our measuring skills?

Saturday 20 May 2017

Connecting With Our Environment

This week we have had lots of fun connecting our garden inquiry with our reading, writing and mathematics learning. 

Pītau 1 have been very passionate about picking up rubbish around the school. Every morning tea and lunch time there is always a group of children out there collecting rubbish. We decided we have a rubbish problem at Bromley school! 

During Maths this week we took some of this rubbish and began sorting and grouping it. 




Check our our seesaw journals to learn what we discovered! Each group found different ways to sort and we began making statements about the data we had collected. 

Saturday 13 May 2017

An Ideas Mission!

This week we went for a wander down the the Smith Street Community Gardens. As we are looking to redesign our own school garden we were on a mission to discover some great ideas we might be able to reproduce back at school. 

When we arrived we met Willie who looks after things down here. He gave us a tour. 


Click Read more to check out what we saw: 

Wednesday 1 March 2017

Taonga pūoro with Jerome

On Monday, we were very lucky to spend some time with Jerome Kavanagh.
Jerome brought along a range of taonga pūoro (maori instruments), that he shared with us through story telling.

The first instrument we were introduced to was the putaatara - a shell trumpet.  Jerome played different sized ones for us to hear the range of pitches depending upon the size.



Next, we heard a story about how a whale tooth nose flute came about.  Jerome told us that the noise it makes is the sound of the mama whale singing to her baby.

We also heard a story about an albatross wing bone flute and Jerome played a pūrerehua (butterfly instrument) for us too.

It wasn't long before it was our turn to create our own ukutangi (clay instruments).  Jerome showed us step by step how to mould the clay correctly.  He explained that it took him many days of practising to be able to play this instrument correctly.  We had a go at trying to make the sound of the wind with our lips - it was tricky!!













We are looking forward to building on our knowledge of instruments and persevering with trying to play our ukutangi!




Tuesday 7 February 2017

Learning About Our Brains

Over the last week we have been focussing on our feelings and participating in some workshops about self regulation.

Each morning when we come into the classroom and sign in we also check in to show how we are feeling. We are getting really good at expressing how we are feeling. 

We've learnt about our learning brains and our emotional (feelings) brain. Sometimes our brain becomes so full of emotion we aren't able to learn as well and we need to help our brain calm down and relax.

We are learning how to "cross the bridge" from our emotional brains back into our learning brains. 


  We learnt 5 fun breathing techniques and enjoy reading the "I Can Calm" book. We have even started creating some of our own breathing techniques! 


We have practiced some new yoga poses too! 



Looking at the roundabout:

We identified some learning that happens in our L.Brain, some feelings, some strategies we can use to "cross the bridge" and some possible behaviours we might see if we got stuck in our E.Brain. 


When we are in our E.Brain we want to drive the correct way around the roundabout into the strategies. Otherwise... 
"You'll have a crash!" - Amber 
"You might get pulled over by the cops!" - Sonny
In short, we do not want to travel the wrong way around the roundabout.

Today we learnt about making new pathways in the brain when our brain is feeling too full or messy. 


We drew pictures of our L.Brains and E.Brains and how we thought they may look. 

Anarah drew the pathways with a little house on the end of each pathway. Inside the houses were all the different kinds of learning she loves doing at school. 



We watched this great video about breathing and learnt how to use our glitter jars. 


We have been really enjoying learning these new calm down strategies. This is how we have been feeling after these workshops: 

Calm - Kaiya 
Tired - Phoenix
Happy - Seb
Hungry - Oscar 
Excited - Quade
Relaxed - Jaxon
Stretched - Jaydi 

Ask us to show you our favourite breathing strategies!