Buddies

We went and helped our buddies today with some messy craft. It involved cutting up pieces of colour from a magazine and then pasting these onto their design. Since year two couldn't be involved today, we had a chance for year 3 to share some of their buddies with year 4. Everyone worked really well and were very encouraging and helpful to the year one class.

Below is an overview of the buddy session from Abigail:

Today, at school, we got to meet our buddies. As an activity, we got to help our buddies finish their mosaic. All we had to do was cut out bits of magazine or glue it on. I had two buddies, Mia and Olive. But since the year fours didn't have their buddies with them, I gave up Olive to Millie. I didn't choose to give her up, but Olive wanted to do it. And so I only got to help Mia :( . I only got to stick a few pieces of magazine on until the mosaic was quite full. So Mrs Butler got her another mosaic. When the small bell rang, Mia wouldn't let go of the magazine. When we finally got it off her, she crawled under the table and wouldn't come out until the recess bell rang. 

Buddy Hat Creations

Last Friday we began our buddy hats. Most of us remembered to bring in crafty bits and pieces to share with our buddies. We had coloured eggs, stickers, glitter, feathers, ears and more. Some of us carefully placed the things we brought exactly where we wanted them and others chose a more creative method of putting glue down on their hat, throwing bits and pieces at it and seeing what sticks. 

We have ended up with some masterpieces that will be worn with pride. Tomorrow we will be finishing them off ready to walk with our buddy class next week.

The best part will be the chocolate eggs that we also get to eat afterwards!

Half way through...

Week 6 and an introduction to a new comprehension strategy - questioning. Good readers use questioning to help clarify their understanding. We played a game as a class where we read short paragraphs and had to ask questions to unlock the door to the castle. We went room to room asking and answering questions to unlock doors and find more information.

After our game we worked with a partner reading articles and using a question chart to create questions about the articles we were working on. We have to wait until tomorrow to share our work as we had to rush and pack up so that we could meet our buddies for 'Clean up Australia Day' in our school. We worked with a buddy to pick up rubbish in our designated areas. Many hands make light work and before you knew it the playground was spotless!

Number groups and then some HSIE where we looked at some of the wars that Australia has been involved in. We talked about World War 1 and how the landing in Gallipoli was a part of this war. We also looked at the Vietnam War and discovered which countries were involved. We visited Google Maps and explored the different places that we had spoken about. Some of us wanted to know why we would be involved in wars of places so far away from us. We spoke about the British Empire and how in WW1 many Australians felt a strong connection to the mother country (England) and wanted to not only fight for the 'Britsh Empire' but also for Australia.

The afternoon was spent looking at persuasive texts and planning out our arguments for convincing Mrs Taylor to let us sit next to a friend in class. We then had to elaborate on these arguments. This week we will look at using a hook as an introduction to our exposition. We talked about using a hook to grab the reader's attention and listened to examples of different hooks. Eg. Beginning with a question, an exaggeration, an idiom, onomatopoeia or by painting a picture. 

We finished a very busy and productive day with some graphing and chance work. 

Tomorrow we need to finish our penpal letters and send them to the school we have formed a partnership with in Shell Cove. There have been some very keen children asking about what is happening with our penpals and I've finally been able to say that we're going ahead! Very exciting!

Friday Flies By

A few Friday firsts this week! We had our first buddy time with 1L and 2S, our first 3-6 assembly and our first PSSA games of the season and year! 

What a great end to a wonderful week!