What a Week!!!

It is hard to believe that it is only week 1!  The children have been working so hard in class to create a positive, creative, curious and supportive classroom climate.  Here are some of the highlights of their first week as Room 14.

Inquiry:  'The Hero Within'

BIG IDEA:You don't have to be a grown up or famous to be a hero.  Kids can be heroes too.  What does it mean to be a hero?  You don't have to rescue people from a burning building or wear a fancy suit.  Heroes have special  qualities such as honesty, integrity,responsibility and respect,courage and perseverance... I bet our children have many of these qualities already...

Our first inquiry this year focus's on 'making a difference'.  We will be looking at how people work together and work individually to respond to challenges, both nationally and globally.  This week we began by working co-operatively to define 'what makes a person a hero?'  Each group compiled a collection of attributes, personality traits and values which embodied the spirit of heroism.  We used Wordle to publish these ideas as a whole class.

Getting the children to frame the concept of a hero will be important in this inquiry.  next week we will be looking at the difference between a HERO and a CELEBRITY.  Then we will move into researching Heroes of the past and present so that we can get the children to decide how they can be the hero's of the future...

Literacy:  We are beginning the year with Report writing.  This is brilliant because this week an exciting event in the news sparked a whole week of intrigue and investigation.... KING RICHARD THE 3rd's ( a personal interest of mine for years) body was found!!!
How perfect this was for the children to use as the focus for writing a quality report... this will continue throughout the next few weeks.
Ask your child about what they know- you will be surprised at how much knowledge they have!  We will be using a mind mapping tool on Monday to direct our thinking, explore the topic and gather relevant information for our reports.

The intriguing details surrounding King Richards life, crown snatching and death captivated the children... When we ignite their curiosity rich learning occurs...

Building a supportive and safe classroom environment... 

We started the year with an analogy... I took a perfect piece of white a4 paper and told the children that it represented their emotional well-being.  Then i began to say mean things to it.. " You have ugly clothes, your stupid, i don't like your story, you can't play with us today, your not coming to my party, get lost, i hate you"...etc

With each derogatory comment i crumpled and screwed up the paper, eventually throwing it on the ground and standing on it.  Then i unfolded it and asked a child to make it look like the original piece of clean paper.  They couldn't, they were able to get it unscrunched but the lines and scuffs remained.  I explained that our self esteem is like this.  Once a child is upset or hurt they may get through it but the emotional scars will be there forever.  I wanted the children to become mindful of their actions and how they can impact on one another.

The two piece of paper will remain on the board for the rest of the year as a visual reminder to think about your actions.... "Would you want to be the one to create that damage to someone else?"

Swimming:  This term we will be having swimming instruction for the first 4 weeks.  This means that the kids will swim everyday with an instructor.  These lessons will target skill development and confidence building, plus it is great to be active while the weather is being so kind to us!

Plus all of the wonderful, rich discussions about the Treaty of Waitangi and its surrounding issues. And the creation of our own classroom treaty...PHEW! Thanks Room14 for an exciting and intriguing first week back!