This week Milky Way class has continued enquiries in the transdisciplinary theme how we organise ourselves, with the central idea being that people share responsibility in order to achieve a common purpose. The current line of enquiry is: we all have responsibilities.
Related to this and last week’s collaborative reorganisation of the school library, Milky Way have begun discussions regarding the purposes of their work and how they worked cooperatively to complete the tasks. The class has been divided into groups of three for further discussions to conduct interviews for video recording as their summative assessment for this unit. Each group comprises an interviewer, an interviewee, and a camera-operator and additionally, students will have the chance to rotate through each of these roles. The actual recording sessions will begin as soon as possible.
In English, the class is doing well in their new list of Dolch sight-words (52 words), additional to recognition of a substantial list of occupational titles with each being associated with a simple definition. In their practice of handwriting students have composed original sentences using combinations of the Dolch-sight words and written three each with some spelling and punctuation assistance. The ‘coincidental vocabulary’ list continues to slowly grow. Regarding individual reading, students are showing initiative and responsibility in dutifully selecting library books they feel are appropriate to their personal abilities for ‘take-home’ reading each day. They are without exception, doing this unaided. Level assigned RAZ books are also being changed daily and in the coming week students will be given another opportunity to advance their level by employing ‘running records’ in one-on-one assessment.
In mathematics the class is continuing to use number lines for addition and subtraction where any given number line will start arbitrarily (including in the negatives) and extend sufficiently that it can be utilised for all assigned sums and differences. The students are continuing to enjoy length measurement in (predominantly) centimetres. In the coming week additional units will be given more attention.
Milky Way continue to enjoy their daily morning exercise program and their routine, while suitably tailored to include all students is being varied to maintain enthusiasm. More technical focus on muscle anatomy and stretching technique is also being gradually introduced. These will continue indefinitely as weather permits.
