Learning Styles 01/11/2010
 
Spellings
logical
intrapersonal
linguistic
kinesthetic
naturalistic

Learning Styles
Today we started looking at different learning styles and what that means to us as a learner. You can take the test that we used to start thinking about this process here. Watch this space for some lessons designed and created by the grade 5 students!
 
 
Welcome back from the holiday, I hope everybody is refreshed and ready for our new unit.

New UOI
The second of this years Units of Inquiry is under the  Transdisciplinary Theme Who We Are, "Understanding how we think and learn helps us to fulfill our needs as learners."

Today students were given a copy of the unit words all mixed up and had to try and create their own Central Idea. There were some great conversations about words such as fulfill, understanding and needs, with some of the groups getting quite close. There will be more details about this unit very soon.

Spellings
Tonights spellings are:
learning
multiple
intelligence
spatial
interpersonal

Holiday Blogs
Well done to many of the students who wrote about their holidays on their blogs. If you haven't had a chance to read any please drop by and leave a comment.
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Unpacking the central Idea
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Creating the sentence
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Spellings 11/10/2010
 
abseiling
Tyrolean traverse
Asia Pacific Adventure
experience
achievement
 
Spellings 27/09/2010
 
Spelling Words 27/9/10

adventure
participate
personal
cooperation
experiences
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Learning 2.010 20/09/2010
 
Learning 2.010
I'm back from the Learning 2.010 conference in Shanghai where I met many great educators and discussed digital learning and all of the implications of using a computer in a classroom. I look forward to sharing this with you at a later date when we have our 1 to 1 meeting.

Tomorrow is our Back to School Night
The evening begins at 6:30 and is followed by a board social at 7:30. Full details have been sent out via FirstClass. At the moment is is going ahead, we will have to wait and see if the weather changes our plans. You can keep an eye on the storm that is close by here. 

Spellings
celebration
dynamite
anniversary
birthday
founding

RRJ
All Reading Response Journals are due next Monday. We will have a special activity and will need them all at school at the same time.
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We need photos of our students parents! This is to get ready for next weeks parents evening. Please email them to me, send them in on a memory stick or bring it into school where we will scan them. We only need one photo.

Spelling Sentences
Today we started our DRA testing. The Development Reading Assessment is one of the assessments that we use to guide our reading teaching through the year and see how students are improving during their time at HKA. This will continue through the week and be conducted at school. I have been very impressed with the thoughtful responses in the RRJ's and look forward to finding out more about each student.

Today's spellings come from our math lessons for this week. Students will also be choosing five of their own.

Spellings
difference
parenthesis
reasonableness
algorithm
consecutive

Newsletter
The Grade 5 newsletter came out on Friday and is available through FirstClass. The students are busy writing a class newspaper and we hope to have the very first issue out early next week!
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Homework Timetable
There is now a class homework calendar up and running on the website. This is to help parents keep a track of what is expected in the class, but to also help any students who forget their homework diary. Students are expected to bring their homework diary home everyday with the activities written into it.

The new RRJ calendar is also included in the homework calendar. This week is flexible, but next week students will be expected to submit their RRJ letters on the day they chose that is mentioned in the calendar.

Spellings
The five class spellings are below. This week sees and interesting range of choices in the class. Well done to Gwen who has chosen a spelling from this morning's mathematics lesson and after double checking its spelling in the reference book, will be learning quotient. We also have people making sure they know words we will be using a lot such as sincerely, which we write at the bottom of each letter of our RRJ.

Spelling words
guidelines
membership
presentation
advertisement
collaboration

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Today we discussed what sort of words we should choose for our five self selected spelling words. We came up with these ideas to consider when choosing words:

interesting
challenging
connected to a unit
unusual spelling
a word that you always spell wrong
a new word from a book you were reading
relevant

Remember on a Monday night you have to complete a spelling sentence for each word. These are your first five spelling words and you also have five of your own. Spelling sentences are due each Tuesday morning.

Class spelling words
communities
individuals
organisation
organise
interconnectedness

Not sure what a word means. Use this website http://dictionary.reference.com/
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Today we talked about class guidelines. We brainstormed in groups then collated our ideas into this list looking for ideas that were linked or similar.  Think about these tonight ready for our class meeting tomorrow when we will choose our class guidelines.

5AB Draft Guidelines
Follow the Learner Profiles
Be principled / be fair / Don’t bully other students / Be honest
Try your best / Don’t be discouraged /
Go to the bathroom at a good time / Make appropriate choices
Bring in your homework on time / Be organised /
Be quiet when other people are trying to concentrate / Respect students, their opinions and choices
Work sensibly and focused
Have fun
Don’t speak when the teacher is talking / Respect the teachers
Treat everyone in the classroom equally
Don’t judge
Don’t laugh at people if they mess up / Encourage other students
Be a role model for the rest of elementary school
There are no mistakes only learning opportunities
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This character will become a class fixture, more details soon
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Yesterday you were given the first spellings to learn, the Learner Profile. Today I had the pleasure of reading some great sentences that used the words in context. Homework tonight is to choose one of the other spelling activities. Tomorrow and Thursday you should choose to do two other activities. The spelling books will be collected on Friday after the spelling test and I will be checking to see if you have done all of the activities. Here are the directions for spellings that we stuck in the front of your books.

Spelling Practice Exercises

1. Write sentences with your spelling words. Be sure to use the words in content, so that you show your knowledge of the word’s meaning. Underline the spelling word in each sentence. (This is Monday's activity).

2. Write each of your spelling words in a list. Beside each word, write as many words as you can using the letters in your spelling word. Example: Friend: fin, end, red, if, fir, fire.

3. Go to the website http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com Use the pull down menu and choose word search puzzle or criss-cross puzzle and make a puzzle with your spelling words. Print it out and solve your puzzle. Cut it out and stick this into your spelling books

4. Write your spelling words 5 times each. Write the vowels in one color and the consonants in another.

5. Sort your words into categories of your choice. Some examples of categories: vowel sounds, spelling patterns, parts of speech.

6. Write each of your spelling words in a list. Beside each word, write as many words as you can that have the same base word or a similar root. Example: Friend - friendly, friendship, friendliness
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Using VoiceThread to create a goals presentation
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