India from the air…

As you probably know our new theme is “A village in India”…but this represents a fantastic opportunity to find out more about the country itself !

There are some incredible images available – some of my favourites are images from Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s extraordinary collection of photographs entitled Earth From Above – check the link below. There is a side menu that allows you to choose a country – they are all amazing but the ones from India will really help to start you off getting an idea of the country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Planet 10 !

Must link to this site (at last) – it comes highly recommended by our class. You will need shockwave player to play (TOP TIP! Our school technician tells me if you have problems with shockwave you should make sure it is properly installed alongside flash player and java…it has worked for me in the past!) Many thanks to A (you know who you are! ) for this recommendation – we have really enjoyed using it so far!

 Create your own planet…Lots of areas to complete – physics, chemistry, biology, orbit and launch!

Let the simulation play a while to see what happens… can you create the perfect (and not-so-perfect!) world…

Finally, congratulations to all those who are keeping up with mathletics – thankyou for bringing in your certificates – they look great on our wall!

 

Getting stuck on your Learning Journey

Using the learning journey today it has been a real privilege to notice what strategies we have and are prepared to use in class when we get ‘stuck’ with our work. I am thinking of the ‘Stuck Poster’ again and the different ways of behaving when we get stuck. If you are feeling like you get ‘stuck’ a lot this year….GREAT! J Why? Well, an anonymous but excellent quote I read recently says:

“Be thankful when you don’t know something, for it gives you the opportunity to learn.”

So GETTING stuck is wonderful…STAYING stuck is not so much! I really want us to ask questions like, “What do I do when I get stuck?” this year. So what do you do? Look at the picture and think about this carefully.

I would like to focus on the green chap near the bottom right of the poster today. Notice how he is using his eyes and ears? In our learning today we focused on using our classmates in a useful way. We used our eyes to notice who was managing their learning well…we used our ears to listen when they explained their learning to us.

We are missing out on a really important resource when we are not using each other’s talents to learn. Of course it is nice to spend time chatting with our class-mates, but we must notice the difference between relaxing with our friends and working with them. Remember there are 30 teachers in our classroom, not just one!

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Starting a “Good Morning Work” section on the writing blog…we will use this in class. Click the writing blog link on the right and then on the Morning Work Category to get to the latest….see what you think!

 Lastly, many thanks to those of you who have commented on the blog in the last few days. If you have not done so yet, check the poster in class for the details you will need and have a go yourself. We need your ideas and feedback…get involved!

Recognise the icon for 4b Comments? See you tomorrow!