Making a difference

"Be the change we want to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi

For our Social Studies Inquiry we have been working out ways that we can make a difference in the world.  We have been reading "Pay it Forward" by Catherine Ryan Hyde in class and through reading this story we learnt that it is possible for one small person to make a difference.  

We brainstormed ways that we would like to make a difference and in groups the students began their inquiries.

Ways we are making a difference in P2:

Making treats (Rocky Road) to brighten teachers day.

Making woolen baby blankets and hats to give to new born babies in the Maternity ward.

Creating a book of brain breaks for our class.

Making a presentation on Global warming using stop motion to upload to YouTube.

Teaching others a new skill - Juggling

And just finding ways to show people we care by making loom band gifts or cards.

I have absolutely loved teaching this unit in the last term of the year.  What a wonderful way to show the values that we have been working on all year.  

Athletics Day!

Wolf Workshop for Volume.  

Students had to create a 3D shape to match the given volume.  This required lots of team work and planning.

Our school was on duty last week and we got to sit on stage for Assembly.  Of course we were displaying our "P2 styles" in front of the school.  What wonderful role models.

Athletics Day was a huge success. We had no rain and our Puarenga Students were fabulous!  

So Proud to be Puarenga!

Halloween Mufti Day

Today it was Mufti day at school and the students had the opportunity to dress up in either Mufti, Halloween or House Colours.  It was such a fun, colourful day.  Even the teachers dressed up!

We had a very hands on day full of creativity and team work.  The class were challenged to create a wall display with a halloween theme that shows what they learnt at Life Education yesterday about the dangers of drugs.

The wall space was used and then the rest of the room was decorated too.  The students worked well together and I look forward to sharing with Bernie (our Life Ed teacher) the display they have created.  

Awesome P2!  You Rock!

Weaved Fish and LIfe Ed.

It has been another fantastic week in P2!  We have started reading our novel "Pay it Forward" by Catherine Ryan Hyde which ties in perfectly with our Inquiry this term of Making a Difference.  All students have come up with exciting and thoughtful ways to make a difference in our class, community, country or even our world and are working towards putting their plans into action.  From making woollen hats for new born babies to creating an animated video to inform about Global Warming, to creating a booklet of ten minute games for our class to use as brain breaks.  Its all happening and the excitement and enthusiasm is catchy. I have even started making hats and baby blankets myself over the weekend.

Matua Hori was very patient with us as he taught us how to weave fish out of paper and then flax.  I must admit, even I struggled.  We are going to practise our creative skills more with "Creative Ten" every Thursday.  This is something I have taken from an idea I learnt about at ULearn.  Pure reativity time where students are able to just have a little bit of fun while challenging themselves and reflecting on their efforts.  This week we made accessories for a person in our group and then they had to model them around the learning centre.  

Weaving our Fish

And our accessories.... oh, we do look so fabulous!

We are also lucky to have Bernie here in the Life Education truck.  This week we learned all about how our brains work.

Term 4, Week 1

We have started using the Library more effectively after noticing that we are getting lazy and spending our time in the Library on our laptops.  We are reading digital books but we are missing out on the experience of the Library.  Each week I will be setting the class a new challenge.  This week the students had to research something beginning with B and find at least two facts from at least two different sources.

Both myself and Mrs Forge (our lovely Librarian) were excited to see the students using the Library with so much enthusiasm.  I loved seeing all the books out on the desks and listening to the quiet discussion about what they have learnt.

Following on from all my learning about UDL at ULearn,(the conference I attended over the holidays), I have introduced a few new things into the class. 
1.  Daily Goals for myself and the students.  I introduce them at the beginning of the day and then we reflect on them at the end.  If it is a difficult goal that we don't feel we have achieved we revisit it until we achieve it. 
2.  Traffic Lights.  The students now have a traffic light sign in front of the desks with a little velcro car that can move to each colour light.  Red means - Please help me Mrs Hay - I am stuck.  Yellow means, I am going to give it a go, but when you have a moment please come and check I am on the right track.  Green means I am all systems GO, no worries here.

Creative Ten - I have introduced ten minutes, once a week for a creative challenge.  This week we made woven fish - Ok we attempted to make them, we need more than 10 minutes for this, ha ha.

My favourite part of this week however, was catching up with some students who have left our class to go and live overseas.  The whole class chatted with Ray in Manilla, Philippines on Wednesday via Google+, it was awesome.  Poor Ray, we woke him up at 5am, but I am sure it was well worth it for him to catch up with his whole class.  Then we received an email from Charlotte in Australia that same day so we read her email over the projector and everyone sent her an email in return.  We are going to try and set up a skype date with Charlotte sometime in the next few weeks.

This week we also participated in #Connected Rotorua - Pass the Blog.  Check out our addition to this page:http://connectedrotoruaschools.blogspot.co.nz/2014/10/p2-mokoia-intermediate.html.

Puarenga Tabloids

Mokoia Intermediate left for Devon (Taranaki) on Wednesday. Puarenga learning centre was down one teacher and about a third of the students. We decided that we would have our students run their very own Top Town type games for the rest of the school.

This was a three day inquiry process

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Day one:

Students elect a manager and vice manager - these students are in charge for the three days. All group leaders to report to the managers at the start and end of every session.

Students to opt into which group they want to work in for the three days.

Options:

- Media (Reporting, photography, video)
- Activity (Deciding and organising the events)
- Planning (Timetable, groups and all organisation aspects)
- Marketing (Making posters and flyers to advertise to school, contacting businesses and parents for prizes)

Once all students were in a group, each group elected two leaders.

Now our leadership team was complete.

These leaders had the responsibility of guiding the team and reporting to the two event managers.

Groups began the planning process.

We looked at previous Top Town events to give stimulus for ideas.

Day two:

Continuation of the planning process, finalising how the day is going to run.
All groups working with each other to ensure all aspects were covered and that the deadline would be met.

Day three

Event set up
Practice run through

Whole school assembled to be briefed and the events began.

Students PMI in groups and individual reflections in class.

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Pros

- Seeing students step up into leadership roles
- Completely run by the students
- Ran smoothly on the day
- Students had fun and all were involved
- Planning group had covered all bases and stood out as being exceptional
- Problem solving
- Communication
- Active engagement for majority of students
- Year 7s led and well as year 8s. Year 8s responded well to younger leadership
- Students proud of the event


Cons/Improvements

- Didn't run entirely smoothly - early on organisation was under pressure
- Event managers were tied up with the minor issues instead of being the total overseers
- Needed a more structured time table/map for where each group goes next
- Behavioural students pushed the boundaries
- Very stressful on teachers to let go of the reigns and allow the students to make mistakes and fix them by themselves (huge learning curve for me!)

PB4L City - Mine Craft

Our Class were supported by the P3 students today with our first real lesson in Minecraft.  Our main goal of this activity was to develop a digital etiquette and ensure our school values are also

represented online, while also creating a thriving city.  As a team our students worked in a shared server with 2 other classes.  It was so interesting to listen to the conversations they were having.  Learning without even realising!  Wonderful!  Thankyou to the wonder Tuakana Teina of our year 8 students in P3. You are awesome!