An imaginary camping trip, a giraffe and a big problem!

Week 4 Term 1

The current sign. Is is big enough?
Does it send the right message?

Finding out and catching out!

Some students that were snapped
using the teacher's carpark entrance

It has been all about ticks and crosses this week in our Inquiry. We undertook the second phase of our statistical investigation and between 8.15 and 8.30am we caught out 17 students sneaking through the teacher's carpark, 6 parents zooming in & doing a U-turn to drop off children, and 7 walking parents using the wrong entrance too. This is a big problem because teachers and other people working at our school (including the digger they are using to help build the new junior  toilets) drive in and out of here and it is not safe for people and vehicles to use the same entrance at busy times.

The pictograph we made to make our data
 easy to read and understand.

Presenting our problem to the whole school at assembly

The proud students presenting

We presented our problem to the whole school at assembly today. The four representatives spoke well into the microphone as the powerpoint we all worked on showed our photos, our pie graph and we revealed our problem. It was their first time on stage and they were very confident and proud. 

Now that we have completed the 'Finding out' phase of our Inquiry we move into the 'Taking Action' part of the cycle where we will seek possible solutions, research further, and consult with stake holders by taking those proposed solutions to the community consultation later in the term. It is so exciting to be even a small part of this whole school Travelwise inquiry where each class has taken on a little piece of the puzzle. 

Juanpablo ready to begin!

Starting to learn our school Haka

Listening to instructions, we are all very keen!

Great fun with Harold in the Life Caravan

This week Room two visited the Life Caravan and it was great! We learned about what things we need each day to help us stay healthy and then we each got to take our very own puppet friend on an imaginary camping trip up Mt Wellington.

Going up the stairs to meet Harold in the Caravan

Listening and answering questions with Jenny

We did some great learning INSIDE our classroom too!

Our new number stampers

Masiu and Tale working hard together

Marcel playing our new Numeracy game called ROCKET

Nikki and Jaeda fishing for numbers to 20

We hope you enjoyed reading our latest post, we look forward to your comments! 

Whaea Emma and the Room 2 crew

 

Week 3 with a Pigeon and a Cat

New members of the Room Two Crew

We welcomed Te Anahera back from her holiday and we gained three brand new members to the Sylvia Park School Whanau and Room Two Crew; Imran, Larkin and Wils! Great to have you on board and it is awesome to see that you have settled in well!

Walking towards a safer way

Room one and two have started working together through our Inquiry and our question is 'How do we get in and out of our school safely?' We have been on a few walks around our school and have counted that our school has 6 ways to get in and out and heaps of hazards for us to watch out for. This week we focussed on the entrances on Longford street, there is one we should use because it is for people walking and there is one we shouldn't use because it is where the teachers drive in and park. So we decided to mark the concrete with a green chalk tick if it was a safe entrance for students and a red chalk cross for an unsafe entrance for students. Then we sat and watched from 8-8.30am the next morning to gather data about who used the teachers carpark entrance. It was very interesting. A lot of people were using the teachers carpark entrance to walk through into the school and to drop off children. We counted 26 pedestrians and one cat. We are not sure about the cat, but we have definitely found the problem that we want to solve; How can we get students and parents to only use the safe entrance/s to our school? Next week we move into the stage of our Inquiry where we explore all of the possibilities for a solution.

Our favourite story had a makeover

Our favourite story that Whaea Emma reads us at Inquiry time is 

DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS on YouTube (click here to go to an adaption on YouTube). This week we changed it to suit our own school Inquiry. If the Pigeon was trying to get in and out of S.P.S. safely this is what we would say...

Don't let the Pigeon walk through the teacher's carpark.

Don't let the Pigeon walk down the kindy driveway.

Don't let the Pigeon walk to school without checking the driveways.

Don't let the Pigeon walk in the alleyway without a big person (or pigeon)

As you can see our Inquiry is well underway and so is our learning in Reading, Writing and Maths. Here are some photo's of the Room 2 Crew getting down to business!

Reuben can find the right alphabet pegs to make his high frequency words

Boston writing his numbers to 10.

Larkin ordering his numbers to 20.

Te Anahera locating numbers when her partner calls
them out and then painting over the pencil.

Emma and Imran doing their rainbow words
(going over their High frequency words in lots of
different crayon colours)

Gizelle making Pipe cleaner numbers and
matching them up with tens frames.

As always this week has been fun filled and full of new questions, there is always more to learn and we can't wait for next week!

Have a beautiful weekend
Whaea Emma and the Room Two Crew!

The beginning of our path...

A winning beginning with our best foot forward!

The room two crew are busy getting on with getting on.

Tuesday morning was a nervous time as we all lined up and waited patiently to find out which classes we would be in for 2013, and as the final names were called we headed off together to check out our new classroom!

This week has been about trying to remember all of the things that we have forgotten over the holidays and sharing all of the new things that we have learned during our holiday break.

Our school wide Inquiry theme for 2013 is 'Be the change you wish to see in the world'. This means throughout the year we will be focussing on creating change that will benefit ourselves, our school and our community. We are putting our best foot forward by starting in Term one with a very pertinent issue and that is the traffic and transport issues around our school. We are becoming a travelwise school  in 2013. If we want to get traction we need to take action so we are asking ourselves 'What is our path for change?'

Room Two has begun the 'Tuning In' phase of their inquiry by creating a pictograph each morning of how we get to school. It will be a very exciting term as we take action and create some change.

As we head off into the exciting possibilities of term one we want to make sure you don't forget that Room Two has an open door and we are looking forward to meeting you and sharing all of the awesome things we are learning!

Whaea Emma and The Room Two Crew