Mr Kriese Classroom all the way from Texas!

Recently we have had some amazing comments and connections with Mrs Kriese and her class from Texas, United States of America! We've loved hearing from her and her students who have left a whole lot of questions and feedback to us on our blog, mainly about our Lamb and Calf Day and what we eat for lunch! You can check out her students and their amazing work here!

France compared to New Zealand

We're been learning about New Zealand in comparison to France here as we're working with CM2 from Brindas School in France. As part of this work in class this week we looked at collaborating on a Google Slide with a group of four students from our class. We had to learn a lot about France and then learn some information about New Zealand and where we live. For some of our students it was the first time that we'd worked using Google Slides and the first time we'd learned about France!

France compared to New Zealand

Lunch Eating in New Zealand

This awesome short video created by Harry From Room Three is about what and how we eat our lunch at School in New Zealand. We are looking at answering Miss Nicholson and her class who are from the Shetland Islands.

IMG_2160 from myles webb on Vimeo.

A Special Visitor from the United Kingdom...

 Today, it might be the holidays here in New Zealand, but we received a special visitor to Auroa Primary School - a 'Flat Stanley' which was sent to us by our friends from Classroom 7,8 and 9 from Hopwood CP School in Heywood, United Kingdom.  You can click on the link to their class blog here!   We will be collaborating with them when we come back to school this coming week.

Mr Webb took some photographs with Piri the Pukekohe, the Auroa School mascot.   We also tried to take some photographs with Mount Taranaki in the background, the major local landmark, however the clouds didn't co-operate, although we will address this once school is back next week.  We've got a list of questions that we are going to work through as we complete collaboration in the classroom.  You can click on the link here in the meantime.

Video for Mrs Yollis from Taranaki, New Zealand

This week the Auroa Primary School Kapa Haka Group has been producing a series of videos about games that we've been learning to play in Kapa Haka for our Maori language program led by Mr Tai.  You can see some of our Matariki (Maori New Year) videos and material here.

We posted early this week and we had some fantastic feedback almost straight away from our Blogging Friend, Mrs Yollis in Califorina.   Mrs Yollis is very famous, as she has a class page thats had over one and a quarter million pageviews! Mrs Yollis wonderful comment was this:

   
One of the things that Mrs Yollis asked was to pronounce the words again so that her students from the USA who want to learn the Maori hand game.

Today we had a small group of students who went and filmed a follow up video to their original post.  We thought about Mrs Yollis request and made sure that we concentrated on speaking clearly and slowly so the students could learn the game properly.   This is the video created by students in Room One, today for Mrs Yollis.

Maori hand game from Myles Webb on Vimeo.

Buddy Maths with Room Eight

BuddyMaths12014 - Video Maker

On Fridays for the next few weeks the students from Room One are very lucky to be working with a buddy Maths classroom, Room Eight. We are helping the students of Room Eight with their counting, addition and subtraction. They are helping us to understand learning styles and strategies better and to be reflective learners. These images are from the first session which took place in Room One on Friday 25th July 2014.

Highlighting some fanatic Rm1 Holiday Work

Thank you for your visit to our class page. Currently students in New Zealand are on the second week of their two week break between term two and three. Our students will be returning to school on Monday 21st of July for class as normal. In the meantime theres some fantastic work from our students to highlight in the meantime. Emilys Blog continues to go from strength to strength and soon she will reach the 7,000 pageviews mark. You can keep up to date with her fantastic postings, including her review of the New Plymouth Phantom of the Opera here.

We've been successful during these holidays with our Basketball team winning the Langton Cup, a local competition you can read a report about it by the tournament MVP (Girls) Isabelle here.  We've also had students completing work independently in the holidays.  Have a look at Alyssa's review of Frozen here.

Gemma played in the Taranaki Development A Team - you can read this recount of her tournament here.

Alice has just returned from holiday in Fiji.  While she was there she took a number of photos and has since created a slideshow with some amazing images from her time away.  You can click on this link to view her work.

There are also some other fantastic Auroa Primary School Class Blogs Ongoing.  Mr Spice has just celebrated a fantastic achievement - 15,000 page views this year! Room Eight have posted some great pictures from the snow, which you can see here.  Mrs Ericisson Class produced some outstanding examples of our Ako, Repurposing.  You can see their amazing planter boxes here.

To those of you on holidays, in New Zealand or in the Northern Hemisphere about to experience a new school year, please don't hesitate to drop us a line or get in contact shortly.  Look forward to seeing you next week.

Is this Auroa Primar School Room One? Take Two

Our friends from Nexus International School in Singapore have tried again. Following our Skype call and conversation they completed an initial two dimensional map. We gave them some really detailed feedback on their maps and under the leadership of Alyssa we gave them further directions. Thats lead to their maps of Auroa Primary School, Part Two. This video is from their wonderful class page.

Spring Lambing in England

Today in class we spent the morning block constantly watching and looking at material from our blogging friends in England from A Room With a View, Class Two. One of their students, Edward, and his family are in the midst of their Spring Lambing. In New Zealand we're currently moving towards Winter, as we're on the other side of the world. Auroa Primary School is located in Taranaki in dairy country. We have about 95% of our students who are involved either as the owners of, or workers on, dairy farms. Edward from Room With A View posted about lambing, and while our class are involved in dairy, there are a lot of similarities between what he does and our students do on a regular day. Our class viewed Edwards film, at least half a dozen times, and then brainstormed and took notes about what Edward does during the morning and the evening. We then compared that to what our students do during that time - we were surprised by the similarities.

We asked Edwards teacher, Mrs Mongahan, permission to use his video on our site:

Auroa Primary School: Modelling in Minecraft

This week we've started a new unit of work on Geometry.  As part of this unit and also a tie in with our Unit Studies 'Relating to Others.
We're looking at creating two dimensional models of classrooms and then a three dimensional model.

The purpose of the two dimensional model is to create a model to scale, for the three dimensional model we're using Minecraft.

Were going to post the results here on our blogs so you can see if they're correct, or need to be refined.   We started the process today by contacting schools and people that we've been networking with, and asking questions about your classrooms.   The first part of the process is the questioning.  Once we start getting some answers we can start the mapping process.   Thank you so much to those of you who have already indicated that you would take part in this process.

Auroa Primary parcel from Russia

We've had some amazing collaborations so far this year with some wonderful classrooms around the world.  On Wednesday afternoon we were excited to see that a package had arrived for our class all the way from Russia, from the students from 'Learning Fun in the Classroom' and their wonderful teacher Lyudmila Golubeva

Earlier in the year we'd sent a package to the students from Auroa, Taranaki, New Zealand to Siberia, Russia.  Just last week we received a package from our friends at 'If Only the Best Birds Sang in Ireland'.  Our students didn't know much about Siberia but there was so much wonderful gifts and information in there that we feel that we have learnt more already.  An amazing gift from a fantastic educator and a great school.  Many, many thanks.

FromRussia2014 - Video Maker

Package from Ireland to Auroa Primary School

Earlier this year to start off the school year Mr Webb, Room Ones teacher sent some packages to different countries around the world.   One of which was sent to our friends at "If Only the Best Birds Sang' in County Wicklow, Ireland.   Yesterday much excitement was had in class when students discovered that we'd received a package back! 

We brainstormed about Ireland and found out that some of our students knew a little about the country. We have about ten students in the class out of thirty who have Irish ancestors   We knew that Brian O'Driscoll was about to play his last test match for Ireland.   We weren't sure about the size of Ireland compared to New Zealand but we did some investigations and found that they are quite similar.

We also opened the package and loved what we found inside.  Part of our classroom is having a display about Ireland built by the students, and we will post about that when we finish it, which will be in time for St Patricks day here in New Zealand.

We'd like to thank the teachers and students from our very favourite Irish blog, If Only the Best Birds Sang for their incredible gift and if you've not visited their site we strongly suggest that you do.


Ireland2014 - Video Maker

Auroa Primary School Collaborating Worldwide

We've been very excited by the collaboration that we've been developing with Mrs Kriese's Class from Austin Texas. This has come as part of our involvement in the Global Blogging Challenge which was from Mrs Crain in the USA.

 This term we are looking at 'Relating to Others' and its been fantastic to receive feedback and network with students from other countries. Our students have only recently started their individual pages but already three have past the 1,000 page views mark.

One of the best parts of the collaboration has been for our students from rural New Zealand to expand their knowledge as digital global citizens.  Prior to our collaboration with Mrs Kriese class our knowledge about Texas was very limited.  Some of our students even thought that New Zealand (as a country) was bigger than Texas (as a state) in terms of population and size, we now know that this is not the case!   This coming week we're going to be completing our investigation into Texas, continue to participate in the Global Blogging Challenge and look forward to continue our networking.

Howdy, Texas to Auroa Primary School

Today we received a message from class and students from Mrs Kriese's Class Blog in Texas, USA. We've connected with them as part of the Global Blogging Challenge run by Janine Crain.   Its the first time we've had a class from the USA comment to us this year and as a result we had a discussion in class about Texas and what we knew about Texas.

Riley P was able to discuss information about Texas from watching Hana Montana, the movie, that people in Texas wear Cowboy hats.   There was also a discussion about Spongebob Squarepants and a character who was from Texas who rode Bulls.   Unfortunatley for our students thats where the brainstorming end.  We couldn't really recall anyone from Texas or where it was in the United States of America (North, South or East) and we shall start an investigation shortly.  In the meantime this is some of our knowledge...

Howdy, Texas - slideshow

Auroa Primary School - Comments from USA!

This morning the students of Auroa Primary School were very happy to find a significant number of visitors to our class page and individual student pages from the United States.   Even more wonderful was that many of the students from the class, Mrs Reuters Grade Six Class

from Germantown Wisconsin had left our students some fabulous feedback on our students blogs, some detailed quality comments.   Being a day ahead of the world as we are in New Zealand we received these comments Saturday morning, so students will respond either in their own time in the weekend or on Monday when we return to school.  Thank you Mrs Reuters and students for the phenomenal collaboration and thanks so much for your wonderful comments.
You can follow the link to their wonderful class page by clicking here, and the students individual pages are then listed on the right hand side.