Getting to know Room 7 at Frankton

This term we are very excited to be working with other Year 3 students from Frankton School. We are going to be researching in groups with some Frankton and some Vardon students our 'I wonder' questions about the Olympics. We will spend the term researching these and then presenting our findings in a collaborative way, hoping to meet up face to face at the end of the term to share our learning.

We sent Room 7 an email to let them know about Room 11 and Vardon School. This is what we sent;

Dear Room 7, Frankton School

We are Room 11 at Vardon School. We have 18 people in our class and we are a mix of Year 3 and 4 children, we have nine boys and nine girls in our class. We have people that are ICT leaders, Year 4 leaders and Enviro Agents in our class.

We have a Star of the Week each week. If you are the Star of the Week they get to do things for the teacher like getting the notices from the office and they get to sit on the couch. On Friday at the end of the day we write nice comments to the star of the week and we put them into an envelope for them to take home and read.

We have special netbooks in our class. We can go on our blogs on them. We are only allowed on the favourites bar for wet lunchtimes. We use our netbooks for maths, reading and writing. We like to go on games that help us remember and learn new maths.  In Room 11 we have a class blog. Everyone in Room 11 has their own blog as well and we have our class thinking blog ‘Oh the thinks you can think.’ We also have blogs for Techspertx (ICT experts that meet every Wednesday) and Enviro Agents (who meet every Tuesday who look after the school environment). We have blogs so that we can save our learning in there and other people (friends and family) can see our awesome work and leave a comment. We like having blogs because we can look back on our learning and reflect on how much we have learnt.

We have an ICT suite at school that we go to every week next to our library.

This term we have started a bookworm race. We are excited to read lots of books so that we can move spaces and see who the winner is. We have a notebook that we record the date and how many pages we read and a little bit about the story. This term we are looking forward to performing our big school production. We are also excited to do some learning with you about the Olympics.

Some highlights so far this year have been going to Waitomo Caves in Term 1 when we learnt about Change. Learning about Sound we enjoyed doing our performance to parents and the Middle Syndicate with our Sasa and making our own instruments to make a band.

Other cool things that we have at Vardon are a school Disco at the end of every term.  The Middle Syndicate go to Ngaruawahia at the end of the year to celebrate our hard work and it’s like getting a medal for all our hard work. Every second year the Middle Syndicate have a camp where we stay out on the field in tents.

From, Room 11 (at Vardon School)

We were super excited when we got our email reply from Frankton and found out more about them. Here's what they sent us back;

Dear Room 11, Vardon School

We are Room 7 at Frankton School. We are a Year 3 classroom. We have 24 children in our class. We have welcomed two new members to Room 7 just this week! We have 12 girls and 12 boys in our class. We also have two Enviro Agents, and we get to take turns as ICT leaders within the classroom.

We are a Virtues School which means that we learn about the different virtues that we can use to help us at school and at home. We also have a classroom metaphor that links in with our ‘food theme’ which is “the virtues are our ingredients for a successful year”. We then have a Super Baker of the Day who has shined their virtues the most for the day. They get a Virtues certificate, a trophy and medal for the day and they get to choose the sound of the day.

We have a classroom blog that we share as a class. We like to share with others what we are learning at school. We also love to watch educational videos and play learning games. We enjoy listening and reading stories on Tumblebooks. We also have an ICT Suite in our school that is just down the hall from us. There are also extra computers in the library.

This term we are focusing on how to be an information detective and what it means to be a researcher. We are looking at the investigation process and learning how we can follow this process to learn about the things that we wonder about. We are also interested in learning about different ways to present the information we have collected with others.

Our highlights this year have been our classroom assembly in Term 2. It was a Michael Jackson themed assembly. We love to listen to music and watch music videos. We also held a Year 3 Matariki Art Exhibition and each classroom got to go and walk around the different classrooms to view the artwork. We then raised money which will be spent on resources for the Middle Syndicate.

From Room 7 at Frankton School.

We read their reply and discovered that some things were the same, some were similar and somethings were completely different about our two schools and classes.

We found that they are a virtues school and they have 6 more people in their class then us. They only have Year 3's in their class but we have Year 3 and 4. Things that were simliar is that we both have Enviro Agents but they have 2 and we have 4. We both had ICT experts but their experts sounded like they were class experts but ours go to Techsperx meetings and share back to the class as well as being helpers in class. The things that were the same were we both have class blogs and go to the library and ICT each week.

We look forward to learning more about Frankton and working with Room 7 during the term.