Suburban Journey Videos

Term 3 complete

It's a little crazy that Term 3 has come and gone! I'm sitting here in LC5 with furniture all around me and it feels much like the beginning of the year. We've got some exciting things coming up in Term 4 and lots to celebrate from Term 3.

Reintroducing Trudy
This year I have been supporting English Language Learners at HPPS but I am also studying primary school teaching part time and will join LC4 in Term 4 to complete my final teaching practicum. In my previous lives I have been an urban planner, researcher, shelter rights advocate, international kindergarten teacher and international aid and development worker. I have lived in Japan, UK, Netherlands, India, Tajikistan, Cambodia, Vietnam and Australia but I am really excited about being back in NZ and beginning this new challenge.

Music Video Immersion
Lisa led LC4 in a music-video immersion activity using GarageBand and iMovie. The children learnt a lot about storyboarding, camera angles and storytelling. Throughout the activity they continued to develop their collaboration skills and reflected each day on the difficulties they'd had as an individual and as a group, this was to help build their resilience.

Daily film-making reflection and evaluation chart

Here is a taster of the music videos the class created, I'll post the rest of the videos to the blog this week.

AIA Healthy Challenge

Our class is participating in the AIA Healthy Kids Challenge next term.  It's a fun virtual adventure around the globe, led by rugby star Cory Jane and NZ Hockey star, Gemma Flynn.  We all create our own little avatars and each child will receive a free pedometer to count steps in the real world that will move our team around the online race track.  As we reach each new destination, we'll see a video of our class of avatars exploring with Cory and Gemma and getting some healthy tips too.

But we need your help!  We'd love you to get involved so you can support and encourage your child to get moving more often and help us get more entries into the draw to win one of twenty $1000 AIA sporting grants for our school and one of 50 Huawei tablets for our classrooms.  Simply join the Parents Class Team and count your steps to help move your team around the same course as the kids and you'll go in the draw to win a Huawei P9 phone too!    Race against other parents teams, get active with your child and have some fun as well.

• If your child is in Reid's tag list click on this link: Healthy Kids parent support
• If your child is in Nicole's tag list click on this link: Healthy Kids Parent Support

Cross Country
On a warm, clear winters day six LC4 students attended the North West Sports Cluster Cross Country at Huapai Domain for year 5 - 8 students. All of our students really enjoyed the experience and are eager to participate again next year.

The course was challenging but it was great to support other children from our school.
"I liked the muddy parts when you went around the corner from the truck, my shoe got stuck in the mud." Apparently the mud was actually refreshing as it was cold and you'd  have to run through the puddles
"I was wearing my mum's running shoes so I didn't fall over"

"Nervous, but really excited" - Jack
"I felt there was no way I could catch up with the people in front of me, I just had to keep going so the person behind me couldn't catch up" - Aart
"I knew I wasn't breathing properly and I wouldn't get a good position"

Our students definitely want to do this again next year and think with more practise they might achieve better results.

Technology update - Borrowbox & Overdrive
The weather for the first few days of the holidays hasn't been great so if you're on the lookout for some reading for your children try the Borrowbox or Overdrive apps. These are apps that you can install onto a device from the Google App Store or iTunes and allow you to borrow electronic books from the Auckland Public Library system, they have a help page if you need assistance. There are a wide range of titles available including audio books that your child can listen to or follow along and traditional electronic books that don't have the accompanying voice over.

Student Reflections

On the last day of Term 3 we asked our students to complete a Google Reflection Form on the term, if your child hasn't completed this it would be great if you could encourage them to do this. It would only take 10 minutes. Use this link to access the form Term 3 Reflection form.

Week 3/4

The last 2 weeks have been very busy for LC4. Projects have occupied a lot of independent time and have been supported by a number of workshops to assist the children with some great learning, we're looking forward to sharing these with you very soon.


We are also preparing for the next immersion and project phase that will be centred on Effective Communication. Our school curriculum team has been meeting to decide which aspects of the NZ Curriculum we will focus on, what learning the students will cover and what skills they will learn. A key feature of this is the creation of Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions, these can be seen on the Learning Journey walls outside LC4, starting next week. This year we will concentrate on the Health aspect of the Health/PE curriculum, with Enduring Understandings like "Actions, attitudes and behaviours impact and change relationships". The documentation and planning supporting can be seen on the Learning Journey wall.

Fitness and PE workshops
This term we have reintroduced fitness workshops to LC3 and LC4. Workshops are student-led to encourage leadership, organisational skills and ensure that a wide variety of workshops are taking place. Our students then opt into a workshop,  these have included dance/jump jam, 3-tag bullrush, circuits, hula hoops and skipping. "I've liked the all-in-tag and skipping workshops, because it made me feel very warm". There are many reasons to why fitness is necessary, for some it is the actual fitness component, others it is a chance to lead or express themselves, and we have students who need the opportunities to remain active throughout the day and it helps everybody to become more focussed.

On Thursday afternoons we have been taking all students out for PE workshops. Most students go with a Learning Advisor for learning ball skills of passing, kicking and shooting. We also have a group of students that have working along Amy to work on planning their own PE workshops. Please make sure your children have appropriate clothing

Trust License System
The Trust License system has been working well to support learning in LC4. Students are making some excellent choices with their learning and we like the way that it is supporting the dispositional goals for our learners. We have had several students move from the Learners to Restricted License and all of our students have been given something specific to work on to help them work towards the next level.

HPSS Celebrations
LC4 has had two opportunities recently to visit the secondary school. These visits have many benefits for our students and are a special feature of Hobsonville Point School (both the primary and secondary). During both visits we attended student-led workshops/celebrations where they demonstrated their learning from their projects. HPSS students had been learning about making their community safer, so workshops focussed on active transport, disaster preparation, fitness, self-defence and many others. Our students generally like these opportunities and student-led learning can be quite powerful for all those involved, the buzz of what is possible for celebrations was evident when we returned and we hope you'll see greater diversity of celebrations as we reach the conclusion of our projects.

The second visit was to support one of the Learning Hubs at HPSS with fundraising that they were working on for a member of their community. LC4 students had the opportunity to participate in Zorb Football! They loved it! For some there was some apprehension and worry before hand, "I felt like I would throw up because of the rolling...I didn't throw up and it was really fun". The smiles and laughs during and after each game spoke volumes.

Conference notes:

We value the communication with home and the support that families provide children for their learning. You should receive regular updates through the conference note system and these will always have a suggestion for how the family can support learning at home. This term you might have received conference notes from either Lisa or Sarah also, who have both been in LC4 running workshops. Please add comments to the document if you have any questions, comments or it could be something that you have noticed at home that you want us to know about. If you haven't been receiving these or are having trouble accessing them please let us know.

Upcoming events:

Project Celebrations, Wednesday 31st, 10am - 11am

Rippa Rugby 3rd tournament

Amazing Race

               The Amazing Race

By Saxon

LC4 students walking around the Hobsonville Point Wharf area
 during the Amazing Race.

On Wednesday the 8th of June 2016 (I am not sure that the date is right), about half the class spent the morning doing the Amazing Race. In the amazing race, you have to do puzzles (but you might have had a time limit, depending on the puzzle). You had to solve it to move on. In the race you went around the park outside HPPS, bomb point, the ferry and HPPS itself.

At the start, you had to answer a quiz to see who will leave first, second and third. The blue team got to go first, then a minute later the yellow team left. Four minutes later the green team left. The yellow team managed to catch up to the blue team and do the challenge first. The challenge was that you had to find the puzzle peices in the Catalina cafe park, then you had to put them together. Then the blue team managed to leave first and the green team caught up to the yellow team. The yellow team left and the beat the blue team, and did the bike challenge. In the bike challenge you had to go down the course and then get to the bomb point gate. The yellow team were still in the lead.

Tome, a teacher at the high school, awards Amazing Race
certificates to students from LC4

Then they had to do a challenge where you had to find 3 bike parts. The bike parts were a reflector, a wire and a seat. The seat and the wire were on the ground. The reflector was high up but within reach if you climbed up. The yellow team were still in the lead but green were 2nd and blue 3rd. Then the next challenge was to ride on a bike with a glass of water, without spilling much of the water. The last challenge was the the juice pong. In juice pong you had to get 3 ping pong balls in the cup. It was the hardest challenge in the Amazing race. Yellow managed to complete it and finished in first place. Green arrived at the pong challenge next. They completed it but did not come to the finish line. Blue arrived and completed it and ran to the finish line. Green thought they had come 2nd but all of blue’s team came to the finish line before them. The scores were, yellow in first place, blue in second place and green in third. Yellow got a special certificate and blue and green got a normal certificate. Then a 2 people out of the 3 teams got another award for being the best performing out of their team.

Overall, everybody had a lot of fun and learnt about safety around cars and active transport.

Wig Wednesday

Wig Wednesday

By Isabelle

On Wednesday the 22nd of June, 5 students ran an event called ‘Wig Wednesday’, Wig Wednesday is an annual event that schools all around Auckland run, Wig Wednesday is a fundraiser for child cancer.

People donated heaps of baking for the bake sale, we couldn’t even fit all of it on the bench at one time! That morning at school we told the whole school that we will be selling the baking before school, at morning tea and lunch. Five minutes later while we were setting up people started flooding in, fortunately we had just the right amount of change from the guess the jelly beans. We were extremely fortunate that we had heaps of baking for before school, morning tea, lunch and we still had heaps of leftovers for the end of the day that we gave them out for free.

There wasn’t many people who took part in the guess the jellybeans competition, there was only about 10 - 15 took people who took a guess, in the small jar there were 227 jellybeans and in  the big jar there was 396 Jellybeans. We raised about $50 - 60 from the guess the jellybeans competition.

We learnt new lessons all throughout the day, "we were stressed and not treating the customers nicely in the morning because we were disorganised" according to Rylee. After this "we gave out jobs to each other like taking orders, giving change and giving out orders", reported Isabelle. Overall, we thought the day ran quite well. At the end of the day we raised $429.50.

LC4 students counting the money from fundraising.

                                  

Term 3

Welcome back for an exciting new term.

We hope you've all had a refreshing break with your children and had a chance to make some memories. 2016 has been a busy time for LC4 and we're looking forward to sharing some of their highlights via this class blog shortly.

During the holidays we met to make some changes to the LC4 set up that we are sure will improve the experience for our learners. 

Lisa is going to be joining Nicole and Reid in LC4 for part of the day. This means that we will be able to offer more target workshops for reading, writing and numeracy. Our plan is to ensure that there are more student led workshops also, we call these PINs (Passions, Interests, Needs) and there will still be room for responsive workshops that can cover strand maths, spelling, project needs and the like. 

Several LC4 students ran PINs workshops last term for LC1, however, we ran a refresher course for our students earlier this week to remind the class about choosing a topic/idea and planning for the workshop. We've already had several plans submitted and are looking forward to students sharing their passions and expertise with their peers.

Another change we've made is to introduce a Trust License system to cover three key areas within LC4, planning, devices and movement around the school during learning time. The aim of the system is to support our learners to make better decisions in their planning, achieving a balance of device/book time and what they're using the breakout spaces for. We've based the Trust Licenses on a the driver license model, that is, Beginners/Restricted/Full. Already this week the licenses have provided a great source of conversation and has resulted in many positive changes. 

The students felt that we needed to make some further changes as we shared some problems from last term and as a result of the Trust License system. Several of them have redesigned the layout, changed artwork, found places to hang the trust license lanyards, store equipment and work is continuing on the naming of the different spaces and a roster for all the jobs in LC4. Thanks to Lauren, Isabelle, Indi, Louis, Saxon, Jack, Aaron, Rhiannon, Rylee, Martina, Radha, Laura, Lucas, Sari, Natasha,  Anesue, Arman, Myer and Cohen for all your efforts redesigning LC4.

 

4 new students have joined us this term and so we started the week off with some great team building activities. It was a great way to introduce new students to others in LC4 and encouraged risk taking, communication and team building. The reflections afterwards were positive with students talking about the importance of planning, listening to all ideas, allowing others the chance to learn/share/lead and showing empathy towards their peers. 

What an awesome start to term 3!