4/5 Nichols' blog

 Hi all,

Yesterday, our last day before the Easter break, 4/5 N had a science day centred on the (in)famous Mentos and cola experiment.

Next week I will share some students’ scientific reports and recounts of the experience. For now, a little viewing to pique your interest. Enjoy!

mentos1blog

mentos2blog

mentos3blog

 Hi all.

As promised, here are a couple of clips of our recent paper blogging session. If you turn the sound up to maximum you might be able to discern a few students’ comments, but it was a pretty quiet session. I will endeavour to post photographs of the paper blogs later this week.

paperblogclip

paperblogclip2

 Hi all

 We’d been working on place value understanding for a week or so, and today it was time to test things out with some addition. By the end of the first lesson, twenty students correctly solved a “super sum” that went into the ten millions, and involved multiple trades. I guess that’ll do.

Over the past week everyone has designed a blog on A3 card with a student chosen topic but teacher chosen features such as a title page, avatar, post and comments. Today we ran a paper blogging session, where all the blogs were laid out and students could “surf around” and comment using post-it notes. It went so well, I will try to upload a few pics soon.

We have also started looking at the discovery of Australia, beginning with a critique of a map circa 1480 and a brief look at Europe. Next stop – the Ottoman Empire and the Age of Discovery.

I think that’s about it for now. Don’t forget to keep checking on Story of the Day, and look out for the paper blogs…some of them are really special.

Oh, and you might want to keep tuned as Easter comes around, as we are planning a pretty cool science experiment. I don’t want to give it away (but it involves Mentos and cola).

Thanks for reading

Hi all, this is Mr Nichols.

The third week is drawing to a close, so I thought I’d better catch you up to speed.

This week we have been gathering some baseline data (testing).We have had a break from daily automatic response (speed math) and spelling program to make time for this, and I will be glad to get back into our normal routine next week. 

We have been drilling our 3 x tables with some people making phenomenal improvements. The same can be said for our work with analogue time, though I can’t take all the credit. (Thankyou to those students who ran small groups or one on one tutorials.)

We have also completed our first major task. A  collection of photographs provided the stimulus for a narrative challenge. An unstructured drafting stage was followed up with a prescribed editing process to ensure that everyone produced work that they are proud of. This is the benchmark we are using to self assess our work. I have created a new page where we will share our stories very soon.

And we are still exercising hard in daily fitness – I was particularly impressed when nearly everyone pumped out 30 squats!

I think that’s about it for now.

Hi all, this is Mr Nichols.

We started school last week, and I have to say it is nice to be back in the swing of things.

I am enjoying getting to know my class, and initiating the way I like to do things.

We have established alot of new routines, such as our Success Points, spelling program, automatic response and our fire drill sequence. We have practiced most of my favourite on-board games, completed our first “boot camp” style exercise routine and even squeezed in a little science practical I called Playing with Fire.

Over the long weekend I have made some improvements to the blog. I have added links to my “approved websites”, and created a page for each student to work with.

So, I guess now it’s time to show the class what I’ve been up to…

Hello all, this is Mr Nichols.

This blog is a bit of an experiment. This entry, my first one ever, is a test run.

When school resumes, we (the class and I) will determine the sort of stuff we want to share with the world. We will negotiate roles and ways of making this blog a part of what we do.

While I don’t know if we will be blogging daily, weekly or infrequently, I am excited to see where this opportunity takes us.

Until next time…