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'.

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.

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.