Strength and Gentleness Challenge

It all started with the presenting!!!
Everyone had evidence of their Home Learning challenges today so they could get them signed off towards the badges which will begin to be presented at assembly tomorrow!
So today we heard about:
Jayden's research about sharks,
Hannah's visit to an elderly couple,
Tomin's visit to Veegaland theme park in India,
Kaleb's T-ball and softball certificates,
Kent's karate belt,
Lauren's fairy cartoon character book.....
Tomorrow we're going to be really proud when Charlotte, James, Matthew, Michelle and Hepzibah go up to recieve their awards.
The rest of us are going to be working really hard all weekend to reach our targets over the next two weeks

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What's Your Special Place?

Treasures, fishy, massive, bright, amazing, brown, relations, interesting, bricks, fantastic, different, planet, shops, environmental, lots of colour, friendly cosy, warm. downhill, big, clean, precious, windy, warm and peaceful, family, my home.

So... what's your special place? For Grahame Sydney it's probably
usually dry and hot
Central Otago
delightful
in his imagination
full of nature always sunny
realistic
a house ... take a look! Visit www.grahamesydney.com

Hi there
We're back to school for a whole new term. Our learning this term is going to be around OUR STORIES.... stories about ourselves and the people in our community.
We're going to begin work on the Jubilee Badge on Superclubs. Its a badge of the Queen's crown which requires knowledge about Queen Elizabeth and the Commonwealth.

Our first task (which we will need YOUR HELP with- is to write a story about what happened an the day we were born. This can be about ME! or other events which happened in the world on that day.

After the Event

Wow... that production was exhausting.
When we thought about it, we realised that we had learned a whole lot about ourselves and our learning through our work on the show. We also learned new skills: like dance steps, choosing suitable music for dancing, working out how to create a dance and how to make it look really good on stage. We also learned that if you want to make something look really good, you have to practice and practice and practice- and all that practice taught us persistence!
We'd like to share our BIG EVENT

learning wall with you.... take a look!

Production Coming Up in Just Two Days!

We have been practicing for the Production with Sara- she helped us get ideas and moves. She makes sure we get them right too! These photos show how hard we've been working. We are taking the chances we have - cause you never know when you might get to be on the BIG STAGE. Man- learning these steps has been really hard- but we WILL get them right on the night!
Come to our show and see just how amazing we are ...and post a comment so we can KNOW how much you liked us!

Celebrating the World Cup in Wellington!

A couple of weeks ago we took a trip to explore Wellington- to see the view visitors to the city might get.
We've included lots of our photos in a powerpoint that we're going to show in our part of the St Francis Xavier school production on Thursday evening.
We'll be welcoming the South African visitors to Wellington with songs, music and dances. Come and share in the show!

Home Learning Checkpoint

Congratulations to these wonderful people who have "checked off" achievements towards their Year 4 Home Learning Challenge.
A1: Share a book about a family adventure - Owen
A2: Create a new maths game and teach it to our class - Angela, Elaizo, Michelle and Charlotte
A4: Join Bookbusters (we went 12 times!)Michelle and Hannah Robinson.
A5: Special Research Topic ( Technology) Elaizo
P1: Join a soccer team for a term - Lauren
Join a rugby team for a season - Nasser and Miharo
Join a dance group - Suvin
P3: Do a family fun run (Butterfly Creek Midnight Madness) James
P4: Improve your swimming skills and swim a whole length of Tawa Pool - Miharo, Hannah and Michelle
S6: Join Keas and Cubs - Charlotte
S13: Design your own challenge (drawing)- Charlotte
E1: Learn to play a musical instrument and practice regularly - Kent




Our NEXT CHECKPOINT will be next Friday, 9 September.

Exploring Wellington

Exploring Wellington

Yesterday Room 7 went on a trip around Wellington. We saw a helicopter, a penguin, some statues, a very old cable car. Along the way we walked past the Beehive, Cenotaph, two cathedrals, a wharewaka, Botanical Gardens, the Prime Minister's house, lots of cute little old houses and narrow streets. We played in three different playgrounds and checked out some great playspaces. `We rode on the cable car, the train and did LOTS of walking!

Term 3 in Room 7

These days our class is a big change. Fraser is back from his travel adventure in Canada and we're looking forward to lots of exciting learning experiences too!
Our class this term is going to be learning about fractions.
Home Learning is going to be very challenging- we can earn credit for the activities we've been doing (like learning a musical instrument, going to Bookbusters, playing a team sport or attending children's liturgy). We will also be able to take on new challenges like tidying up a beach, organising games for younger children at school. Big Air is THE BEST! We'll be going there each Wednesday to improve our gymnastic skills. And watch out for our amazing School Production later in the term.
We'll be updating our blog every Monday, also using it to show you our work. So stay tuned for more exciting news!

It's Jump Jam Time!

Everybody at St Francis Xavier has been getting outside for exercise each morning. We've been amazed at how often the rain stays away at 9 am so we can have our fun aerobics session!

Term 2 Learning

This week in Room 7 we are learning about how rivers flow. We know that the water cycle recycles water from clouds in the sky, to fall onto the land as rain, travels through rivers to the sea till the sun comes out and evaporates the rain back into the sky as clouds. The clouds are shifted over the land by wind and drop their rain over the hilly land.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/riversandcoasts/water_cycle/rivers/index.shtml

A river is a bit like a slide - here's a link to show what we mean.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/riversandcoasts/rivers/change_river/pg_14_flash.shtml
The upper course of the river is speedy- the water there crashes and tumbles over the rocky rapids. Erosion breaks rocks off mountains into "V" shaped valleys which the water in the river makes deeper. We saw a huge rock sitting in the middle of Wanganui River. It had been pushed there by the crazy water. You can see this on You Tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u3xjj_5uyM

Steam Train Comes to St Francis Xavier!

The day the steam train came we were all surprised to see real steam coming pout of the smokestack
Michelle and Hannah get to do this at home!

School Cross Country

All the hard work payed off! We had a fun day at our school cross country competition. A number of students went on to qualify for the Interzone competition which will be held on 21 June in Wellington.

Changing Water into a Liquid or a Gas

Yesterday we found out things about water- you can turn it into steam or ice by changing its temperature!

Using Doubles and Halves to make Basic Facts RELATIONAL!

Today we learned how to use doubles and halves to find the answers to multiplication tables we don't know. You can go "up the line" or "down the line" to make the tables easier. So..... 8x7 becomes 4x7doubled... or 2x7 doubled and doubled again.

We've also been learning about SOLO and this way of learning is also RELATIONAL because
Shelly: "We're putting all our ideas together"
Miharo: "The numbers are the same, but with different names"
Elaizo: "It lets us use different times tables to find the answer"
Paul: "When you use the doubles and halves you really double the whole number".
Ellie: "They're kinda of the same equation"
Matthew: "You can double one of the numbers and half the other number".

OUR CHALLENGE is.... "to be relational for our Home Learning", said Dominic.

HOW MANY COMMENTS CAN WE GET???

Home Learning Update

Home Learning at St Francis Xavier school is intended as a positive link between home and school, enhancing the children’s learning. Current educational research tells us that activities should support the children in developing independent attitudes towards study and managing their time effectively, as well as acknowledging the many and varied interests families are engaged in out of school time.
Each term, teachers work with the children to create a list of seasonally appropriate, topic related activities. These activities reflect the special character of our school community, are holistic and child-centred.
We believe learning should be positive and challenging, full of rich tasks set in meaningful contexts. We want to include the variety of social, cultural and recreational activities our families are engaged in during the course of each week. We believe that this is where the children of our school community build a solid foundation towards New Zealand Curriculum’s aspirational goal of lifelong learning. Our GREEN Home Learning challenge for all children in the Middle/ Senior Syndicate (Years 3-6) involves practical family activities, daily basic fact practise, reading and spelling activities. Of course, we are very happy for you to replace or supplement the programmes we write with the children, with other family interests or activities.

Camborne Walkway

Last week we had an outing to Camborne Walkway in Paremeta as part of our Outdoor Education week. We practiced the skills we had learned: knowing how to take care of ourselves in the world outside our classroom. With careful attention to our health and safety, we planned our trip, packed appropriate clothing and food, took public transportation and kept on walking till we reached the end of our journey. We found out that even when you feel weary, you just have to keep on going to reach your goal. We discovered some unexpected surprises and had a lot of fun!

Sharing our Strength and Gentleness Superheroes

Visiting Te Papa

Our Visit to Pataka

White Hat is for Gathering Information

We've been doing some work at thinking. Today we buddied up and made up a story about a character we were pretending to be. We had to interview each other- we were able to fake the facts but we had to find out interesting things about our buddy's character.

Then we put the facts on out white hats- they're white because the white hat's for finding the facts. If you read the white hats on our Thinking Wall you'll discover some rather fabulous characters!

On Monday we're going to see if we can put the rest of the photos together into a photostory.

Today for your comment we'd like you to leave a question we could use to get more information about our characters. REMEMBER THE CYBERSAFETY RULES: no names or personal details on the internet!

BASIC FACTS!!!

Today we did basic facts.
Lots of people made flash cards - eight people are bringing them home to practice
Nasser and Kaleb tested each other on times tables.
Owen did his big test and now knows how to use the basic fact ladders.
James found a new way of using his flash cards to learn 10 basic facts at once!
Hepzi and Angela write their questions down from their minds.
Dominic and Jayden were drawing their numbers to help remember their facts.

SO..... for home Learning we are going to ...
practice our facts with our families.... then post a comment about how we did it!!
Ha ha... we'll know who does their work today!

Cathy from Caritas

Today Cathy came to visit us to help us learn more about Caritas. Caritas helps people who are poor and need help with things like getting food, water a roof over their head. During Lent the children at our school give money to help other people. Caritas takes our money and use it to help people in places like Samoa (tsunami), Christchurch (earthquake), Tanzanir (learning to read and write), Nepal (growing food) and South America (clean water).

Earth, water, fire and air are important for us to survive.
Our food comes from the earth: The bread comes from the wheat that grows from the ground. The meat and cheese come from animals which eat food from the ground- and the vegetables in the hamburger grow from seeds- in the ground too!
Did you know that humans are 70% water! So it's really important that we have clean water to eat!
Fire keeps up warn and gives us light. Lighting fires can pollute the air though- and people can get sick.

We prayed a prayer from St Francis. It was about looking after our world for the future- if we don't look after our world, there won't be enough clean water, air, food and heat for us to survive.

Welcome to Room 7 2011!

Hi there from all of us in Room 7 at St Francis Xavier school.

We've been doing LOTS of tests: like STAR, basic facts and spelling. Our testing has shown us what we need to learn so now we have some goals for this year.Lots of tests

We swim for life! We've been having swimming lessons at Tawa pool. We go on the bus to Tawa pool every second day. Some people talk a lot...

We learned that St Brigid lived in Ireland. St Brigid's cross is a cross made of straw. It reminds us of Jesus and our work at school. The Brigidine Sisters started St Francis Xavier school.

Today we went to Mervyn Kemp Library to borrow some books. We need to take our books back before 29 March (of we'll have to pay a fine!) We also looked Wellington City Libraries internet site. You can get information about books or famous people, Homework Help, search for books through the catalogue, reserve books or find out about clubs like BOOKBUSTERS! ((2 of us are already members and 7 more people want to join!). Take a look at the Library's website through this link: Wellington City Libraries