Miss T's Classroom.

Try the clip for more photos.hand-colours_0001Today we took the paintings of cool colours and warm colours and turned them into works of art.  We cut our hands out of the warm coloured sheet, patterned it with pastels and then pasted it onto the cool colour sheet. They look rather wonderful.

Today Daniel shared with us his enjoyment of the Super14 Rugby competitiion. He is a Crusader fan and especially admires Dan Carter because he is such a great role model.  Daniel had created a wonderful poster to show up to date data on the competition so far. Thanks Daniel.

Today Daniel and Stella received an award each at school assembly.  These awards were for their writing.  I enjoyed reading both their personal experiences, I hope they will publish them here after they have proofed and polished them. Two young authors with potential. Well done both of you, I look forward to reading more of your work.

Yesterday we visited Te Papa.  At 12:30 we had a tour of the Monet exhibition, led by some education officers.  It was very informative, we were shown Monet’s learning journey and art exploration through his works.  I came out far more knowledgeable and with far greater appreciation of his work. Monet was very interested in exploring colour and light.  He would paint the same scene through the different times of day.  He used to get up very early to paint, before you or me. Anyone remember what time?

I also picked out which ones I would like hanging up in my home!  Well we can dream! 

We also visited anywhere in the museum groups wanted to see, led by fantastic and patient parents.  Thanks parents, we really appreciate your help.  We couldn’t take cameras into Monet, but there is a video clip of a few students exploring other parts of the museum.  te-papa

Piano Rock is a 1950s childhood story.  Written by the award winning children’s author Gavin Bishop.  Piano rock is about  Gavin himself, who moved from Invercargill when he was three, and grew up in Kingston, by Lake Wakatipu. Full of ups and downs, cold winters and hot summers.  Doing all sorts of fun activities such as catching eels, building huts and riding to school on the next door neighbour horse, Chum.  Recommended for middle school children and over.  Over all comments, a marvellous story that gives every reader a tingling feeling inside, right from the first page.

stellamb4

Today we practised our throwing and catching skills.  See some of the action in the video clip.

throwing-and-catching_0001  Click just to left of this.

This week in many schools in New Zealand we are doing PAT tests (Progress and Achievement) in such things as reading and Maths mainly. Also a STAR reading test.

And so that’s what we have been doing. The students do the test, usually about 45 minutes, then the teacher enters all the data online, and all the answers that the students chose. Here Stella helps Miss T with the job!        

Then the teacher presses a button that gives some basic information to guide  teaching.

All the information from all the tests has to be looked at, plus the individual testing we do over the year, for Reading and Maths. It gives a broad picture of where each student is at, how they are progressing. The teacher takes into account too, what they know from their experience and observations. It’s a very busy time for teachers, so that’s why the blog has been a little neglected this week.

If you are a parent, leave a comment or question, if you would like to know any general infomation about these tests. If you are a student, perhaps you would like to leave a comment about how you feel about these kinds of tests.