Resolution Room

My name is Clare Gow and I am delighted to be the Resolution Room teacher for 2018.

Resolution Room is made up of Year 2 and Year 3 students. We are a class of 19, with just 7 boys and 12 girls.

Term three was action packed for Resolution Room. We started each day with Te Reo. We can now say how we are feeling, what day it is and what the weather is like in Maori. If it is a sunny day we would say “He paki te ahau o tenei ra”.

We made our own analogue clocks and each morning we used the calendars and clocks. Miss Gow said a time to make and we moved the hands to make that time on our clocks. We also made our own class calendar and put our names and birthdays on it. We can order the months and know how many days are in each month.
 
Kieran brought in a “mystery maggoty cereal” and we started a mini inquiry about pantry moths. We have the cereal box in our class and we watch the moths lay eggs which then turn into larvae and then into moths. This is their life cycle. Pantry moths are very sneaky and love dry food. They are hard to get rid of.

This term with our school focus of Social Sciences we have been exploring South America. We studied Iguazu Falls and then the Favelas in Brazil. We learnt about Machu Picchu which is the lost city of the Incas. We asked questions and then we did our own research to find the answers. Machu Picchu was built and abandoned hundreds of years ago and it is an amazing place that they built it on top of a mountain with no tools or machinery.
 
At the beginning of the term we did speeches and poems. It was our first time ever
doing a speech. We had to write about something that was special to us. In our speeches and poems we had to speak loudly, clearly and with expression.  

Adventure Room children taught us a new maths game called Risk. We like it because we do the hundreds, tens and ones and sometimes even the thousands! We also like the game called Greedy Pig which is also about place value. We play these maths games before we do our PR1ME maths each day to warm up our brains.
 
We have started a Gymnastics unit. We have been focusing on our balance and holding our bodies in still but balanced body positions. Some of the positions are hard like front and back support. We also have these cards that we warm up with when we have to quickly get into the position on the card and hold it for 5 seconds.

Some of us went and performed at the Cultural Festival at Morrinsville Intermediate. We sang a few songs including Ka Pioio and E O’tua.

Week 8 was Book Week and it was so much fun! We had a book swap where you brought your books from home and you could swap them for a book from somebody else. We were put in teams for a treasure hunt and we had to run around the school and answer questions about books we had read in class. We had an author called Stu Duval come and visit us. He taught us how we can make letters and numbers into amazing pictures—like “S, 2 dots, a prickle and a line” can draw your dad. It was some of the best drawings we have ever done. He told us a funny story about Captain Pudding and Lamington Lil and we all laughed heaps. It was fun on Wednesday when we dressed up as a book character and Grandma McGarvey was our teacher for the day!
 
Seesaw
This year I will be using an Online Learning Journal for Resolution Room called ‘Seesaw’ which will allow students to share their learning with their family members. I have just created a ‘Resolution Room 2018’ page. 

Wheelie Wednesday—on Wednesday’s your child is allowed to bring a scooter, skateboard or rollerblades to school, covered shoes and helmet are essential.
 

---

​At lunchtime some of us like to do planting and gardening with Mrs Austin. We like to grow things and look after them because it makes our school environment look beautiful.
 

​In Term 2 the focus was on "The Arts". We learnt about music and how many counts were in some music notes. We investigated hot and cold colours and mixed primary colours to make secondary colours.

We all practised very hard singing our songs and learning our dances for the whole school production. We looked fantastic on stage in our costumes.

Harold from Life Education came and visited us and taught us how to be kind and how to make friends.

We also went participated in the Rugby Netball fun day in Morrinsville with many other schools. We had a lot of fun and for some of us this was the first time to play these sports.

In Autumn the Gingko tree looses its leaves and we get to make mounds of leaves and romp in them.

At the beginning of the term we did some ​self-portraits of ourselves. We learnt about an artist called Modigliani and drew self-portraits like his. They look awesome on our wall!