Bug Club

                                   

  Welcome to Bug Club

We have Bug Club up and running at Amesbury School.  http://home.bugclub.com.au//MyPasses/login

This is an online reading resource that is similar to Mathletics.  Every student has their own personal bug club page with books at their level , interest or books that link to inquiries.

Teachers load reading books that are suitable for individuals onto their personal bug club page.

Students log in, choose a book from their library and can read it.  Click on the picture of the bug to practise comprehension.

Earn awards with the more reading and comprehension you do.

Teachers can monitor progress and areas of achievement and need.

Children can work on this during school and also at home.  Anytime, anywhere!

Teachers will send home or email children's log in and password shortly.

Happy reading!

Hooray 4 Holidays Homework

Home learning

Need something to do in the holidays? Check out Harakeke's Hooray 4 Holidays Homework wiki for ideas! Click on the "Home learning" words above to go straight to the wiki.

Be safe and joyful over this holiday break!

Timetables, Personal Contracts and Workshops

You may have looked at our timetable on our touchscreens in the mornings and wondered what it all means.

At Amesbury School we often learn through inquiries. Out of these inquiries come writing, reading and maths tasks that children need to do in order to answer their inquiry question or to explore and understand an essential understanding. At the moment our timetable has inquiries taking place at 9:30am. During this time children are working through the "Amesbury Learning Cycle" around their chosen inquiry. Children are learning in an integral way that involves a variety of curriculum areas to achieve understanding, a personal response and practical wisdom.

Our current inquiries include "Joy" and "Beauty". We are inquiring into what "joy for learning. joyful living" means and exploring what is beautiful. During these inquiries and the written tasks that take place we identify particular skills that children need to learn. We hold specific writing, reading and maths workshops that cover the skills needed. On our touchscreen timetable it will say "inquiry work" which covers all these things.

After morning tea the timetable says "Workshops and personal contract". For children who are still 'learning to read' guided reading workshops take place, as well as any other specific writing workshops that are needed according to the needs of the children and the inquiry. Personal contract time means that the children then work independently from their individual timetable. This includes tasks that are compulsory and some 'you choose' tasks that all evolve around individual learning goals. There are always teachers prompting, challenging and supporting the children during this time. The afternoon involves different maths workshops.

As children are all doing different workshops, inquiries and tasks on their contracts, it is difficult to show on one timetable what is happening during the day for each child. However they all have their own personal contract - which is an individual timetable, that they plan in the morning with visual pictures. As they complete different tasks and workshops they reflect on them and move the visual picture to the other side of the contract. This also helps them know where they are up to in their day and contributes to self management and having ownership over their learning.

Visits to Early Childhood Centres

As part of our transition to school programme Koru hub teachers have been visiting pre-enrolled children at their Early Childhood Centre. We get a chance to build relationships with the new children, to talk to their teachers and to have them show us their portfolio.

We have taken the opportunity to take Amesbury children back to their Early Childhood Centre to visit their previous teachers and friends.

Sara, Vivian and Jack got to see their teachers and friends at Churton Park Kindergarten, and Echelon who will be starting at Amesbury this year also got to know us all better. And above is Mike visiting Ha-Yeon at her childcare centre. She made him a beautiful crown!

Peer Teaching in Maths Problem Solving

Problem Solving in an integrated context: A group of children in a maths workshop were presented with a written maths problem around survival. This proved to be a challenge to the children as they were stumpted as to what they needed to do. After a discussion around what 'altogether' means, the children were able to recognise that they needed to add numbers together to find a total amount. A number of strategies emerged that showed a wide range of thinking. These included:

• Drawing all the objects and counting them from one (takes a very long time when the numbers are large)
• Adding all the tens together, then the ones together, then adding both of those sets together
• Starting with the biggest number and counting on from that

Children explained their strategy to each other and they were recorded (whiteboard and window). Seeing children model strategies is much more powerful than listening to a teacher demonstrate and explain from the front of a room.

Another problem was posed with the following strategies being used:

• Counting all the objects from one
• Counting on from the biggest number
• Rounding up to the nearest ten, adding the second number, then subtracting the amount that was rounded up (adding with ten is an easy and quick strategy)

During a follow up maths workshop children were given another written maths problem. Without any prompting children were able to analyse what the problem was asking them to do and they started using different strategies they hadn't used before, from being exposed to them from the explanations given by the children.

The power of peers learning off one another was very evident here. Child led learning in a minimally invasive way proved successful. A new strategy was not 'taught' but explored and practiced without teacher direction. Also the need to base maths problems in real life contexts was evident. The world asks us to first figure out how to solve a problem before actually solving it. Being faced with numeric equations limits our ability to problem solve in the real world.