Anzac Day....and world peace doves!

To finish off our week of Anzac Day activities, we read The Red Poppy, written by David Hill and illustrated by Fifi Colston. This beautiful book  talks about showing compassion to one's enemies, treating all people with dignity, and focusing on similarities between people rather than differences.

We reflected on these ideas and how we can act in ways that create a more peaceful world both now and later as they become adults. We talked about buying power and I told them the story of my friend who only buys second-hand, fair trade or home-made things and why.

We finished by making these world peace doves (from a BLM activity). On the dove the students had to write how their actions show peace. On the tail they wrote an acrostic for ANZAC Day and on the wings they wrote values that lead to world peace. The last part fits perfectly into our RE unit which is looking at Christian values. According to the directions you'd punch a hole in the top and string them from somewhere but we think they look great stuck up on the door!

I work for world peace when I show kindness and respect. I work for world peace when I am truthful and honest. I work for world peace when I show kindness to others. I work for world peace when I buy items that haven't been made by people who don't get paid as much or slaves.

Love, justice, happiness, gentle, patience, honesty, generosity, fairness, respect, faith, kindness, wisdom, special, loyalty, help, hope, love, faithful, fairness, truth, beautiful, encourage, strength.

I am so lucky to work with these students each day!

Anzac Day read alouds, graffiti wall and not-quite foldables

I posted the other day about our ANZAC Day book display. This morning we had our school ceremony. When returned to the classroom we read Mark Wilson's absolutely brilliant book My Mother's Eyes. I had not read it before today and it's quickly jumped up to the top tier of my favourite picture books for older readers list. (Another fabulous book is Norman Jorgenson's In Flander's Fields  - scroll down to find the reviews - which I read every Rememberance Day). The ending brought tears to my eyes even as I was reading it to the children! There was so much for us to discuss with regard to visual literacy, and also inference as we are never told explicitly how the story ends but the students use the clues to work it out. On Thursday during library I will read another picture book, The Red Poppy. There is a great interview with the author on this website. I am really looking forward to reading this one together!

During literacy rotations we have a reading group. Up until this now this has been mostly guided reading focusing on analysing the structure and textual features of persuasive writing (as this appears on The Test which hits up half way through Term 2). This week the students are able to choose from a wide range of picture books and non-fiction texts on Anzac Day. I included a copy of a speech given by a soldier at our Anzac Day ceremony and the ceremony booklet. The students were able to partner read or read individually. During the last ten minutes they filled out poppy-shaped graphic organisers responding to these questions.

Here are some responses. The students love reading what others wrote.

It's very interesting to see which type of text they select to read.

Here is a picture of the whiteboard 'graffiti wall'. The kids really love being able to use the whiteboard markers to do this! From my perspective, I love using literacy activities that truly engage the students and help them delve deeper into the meaning of Anzac Day!

Sadly, I don't think we'll have time to write any poems as we are out of the classrom for 1.5 days this week due to Anzac Day itself and interschool sport. Not to mention specialists and the ceremony this morning. Valuable though all this is, there's never enough time to accomplish everything I would like to try!

Reading our way to ANZAC Day

Next Wednesday is ANZAC day. Our school is celebrating with a whole school prayer and ceremony on Monday morning so on Wednesday evening I put together an ANZAC Day book display in our foyer/breakout space for the students to choose from. I will post some more photos next week but in this space we have two whiteboards close to the floor. On each one I wrote What does Anzac day mean to you? and the students have started replying. I love reading their insights.

Next weeek, during Literacy Rotations, the students will be able to choose one of these books to read during their reading session. In the last ten minutes I think I will ask them to respond with a circle map on a poppy cut-out which we can then display. Each morning I'll read one of the books aloud to them. On Friday I hope to finish by having the students write cinquians which we will publish as an e-book.

Round Robin multiplication

On Tuesday night I was reading someone's blog (I can't remember who!) and they had linked to Sherrie from Middle School Math Rules and her round robin one step equation. I loved this idea!
I immediately adapted it for use in our classroom. It turns out it was perfect for revising algorithms for double digit by double digit multiplication.

The kids worked in threes with students using one colour for multiplying by ones, one colour for multiplying by tens and one colour for adding together. At the end they used rounding to check for reasonableness.

I extended some of my girls by asking them to try 532 x 47 after they finished four or five examples of the 2 digit by 2 digit. A great introduction to next week's lesson on the same!

Some of my students mastered double by double digit multiplication a few weeks before the holidays so I gave them a challenge: three digit by three digit. Two girls worked together to figure out how to tackle the problem on the left. We talked about the strategies they used then I asked them to write an explanation which you can see here:

At first we weren't sure if there were one zero or two zeros so we thought there might be a pattern like if you multiply by thousands there will be three zeros.

I ♥ that the girls figured this out! We then talked a little bit about why there is a pattern but I don't think they've really made the connection to place value yet.

What a valuable activity! It gave support, success and confidence to those students who have not yet mastered the skill; it provided revision for the students who mostly remember how to solve these problems but not yet consistently; and it offered scope to extend the students with a great understanding already. Thank you Sherrie for sharing!

Giveaway at Runde's Room!

I have read blogs for years and there are two blogs that I have followed faithfully for a few years, Bluebird's Classroom and the Cornerstone for Teachers. I have recently started reading more blogs which inspired me to start this one. One of my favourites is Runde's Room, especially her Math Journal Sunday posts! After I found it, I actually went back through the archives and read the entire blog through!

Mrs Runde is celebrating her first blog birthday with a giveaway. It's an amazing prize - the entire contents of her Teacher's Notebook store! Wow! Go over and join in :)



Last Sunday Mrs Runde posted a foldable on multiplication. We started making a similar one this week and once we are finished I will post with photos! It made me smile because even though we are extremely lucky and each student has their own laptop, the students loved taking out the scissors and doing a 'crafty' activity in maths. So much fun!

New Look Library

 We had a great first day back at school today. The students came into the room before the bell to put their laptops away since we have whole school assembly in the hall on Monday. I had been looking forward to the start of term as I am so excited about the academic work this term but when I saw their bright and happy smiles, I realised I was even more pleased to see my wonderful students again. 



When they entered the room they all stopped and stared at our new library! Inspired Stephanie from Teaching in Room 6, I finally went out looking for suitable containers on the holidays and found these green and pink buckets. I sorted the books thematically then designed, printed and laminated labels. Up until now, the books were in a cupboard as I ran out of time to organise them when we moved into our new classroom this year. Our school has an amazing library so we put a few books on display but didn't set up a classroom library.




Each category has both fiction and non-fiction together and a range of levels. The very short and simple books are in a bucket called Easy Reads. Other categories include Sports, Music, Poetry, Geography, Ancient and Medieval History, Other History, Fantasy, Movies, Realistic Fiction, Horses, Animals and more.




The students were especially excited to see the bucket for A Series of Unfortunate Evemts as several had seen the movie but never read the book. It made me smile to see that Anne of Green Gables was chosen by one of the girls as I adore all the Anne books and reread them every other year or so.


How great (and actually a little surprising) that the kids were so excited about the new library. The best part was hearing different people say, "I want to read such and such a book!". To finish off with, here is a picture from part of our reading area. There's another couch on the left hand side. The students love to curl up here with a book during reading!

During term one, my students loved practising their multiplication facts using Partner Games. These are just very simple games mostly involving dice and playing cards, inspired by the ones found on The Cornerstone for Teachers. I also made a Go Fish game and some simple board games.

I wanted to develop some more games that reinforce and revise a wide range of maths concepts. I'm very lucky and teach in a classroom that's 1-1 laptop but the students just adore playing with manipulatives and partners. After being particularly inspired by Laura Candler's maths stations, I spent a fair portion of my Easter holidays putting together over twenty new games.

Students will only need to bring along their grid books and pencils. All the other equipment is included with each game included very detailed instructions and solutions. This makes it so simple for students to get started straight away or to play when they've finished their set work (or if they've already mastered multiplication facts).

There are three pictured here: a game from Fraction Frenzy, Factor Race and a laminated copy from a BLM on money. Some activities I laminated so that students can write on them with whiteboard markers whereas other sheets were slipped straight into the sleeve protector, especially if they didn't have additional equipment. This reduces the use of non-reusable plastic.

I have decide to give students a Must Do/Can Do grid listing the different games. It includes space for them to reflect on the activity (even if it's as simple as writing Easy, Medium or Hard). This grid is a digital document that they'll store on our Cloud.

Can't wait until school starts back next Monday and I begin introducing these games to the kids!

Multiplication Facts - the plan for next term

A major goal of mine this year is that all students will leave my class fluent in their multiplication facts through to twelve. We are making great strides in this area already. Over four minutes have already been knocked off the class average time.

I gave the students a pre-test during the first week of term. 50 questions, ten minutes maximum. One girl started the year on 37 facts correct and a time of 5:57. After ten weeks she had improved her accuracy to 48 and her time to 2:12. Another girl went from 36 correct to 37 and improved her time by almost six minutes. Our class standout story was a girl who knocked over seven minutes off her time while going from 43 correct to 48. Wow!

Next term I plan to work with all the students who are still take over four minutes. On Monday I will give the students in this group a pre-test in a particular table. Those students who have great recall in this table will continue on with their partner games and computer work to improve speed. The students who don't have great recall will work with me during the week using the Math Mammoth Multiplication book as a guide.

I hope that this will really help the students continue the amazing progress they have made over first term.