What fun in week 8!

This week has been a lot of fun mixed in with a lot of learning.

Firstly, our production dance is coming along nicely.  The Room 5 students have been working really hard to learn and memorise the tricky steps that make up their dance.  They have been developing and refining their knowledge of rhythm and timing, along with further developing their knowledge of performance dance.

In maths, we have been learning how to work with fractions, switching between improper and mixed number fractions, and adding and subtracting common and uncommon denominator fractions.  We will continue to build on this learning next week.

During our writing time earlier in the week, we wrote articles for the newsletter about the fantastic events of the week before (Dance Splash, the All Blacks visit to Greytown, and the Jazz Music Concert).  Noah's, Mei's and Willie's articles were chosen to be published in the newsletter.  In writing these articles, the students had to match their language and structure to the purpose of their writing, while considering how much information to include.  They also had to write these  articles succinctly so they would fit in the newsletter.

On Thursday, the students in Room 5 turned their newsletter articles, into news reports, suitable to be read on the evening news.  To do this, the students had to firstly consider the difference in the language that each piece of writing would need, then consider how much of the original information would be used in the news report.

Once written, the students were then required to read their "news" in front of the camera and a "live studio audience".  This task was met with varying amounts of nerves, but fairly equal amounts of enthusiasm.

Knowing how to write for a specific purpose is an important skill that students need to have in Year 7 and 8 - as is speaking in front of others.  While writing and creating these news reports, the students were learning how to present and structure their ideas to meet a given purpose; create content that is relevant to the specific learning task by including only carefully selected detail; and to select and use language that is appropriate to the topic, audience, and purpose.

They all did very well and enjoyed creating something different.

Click the photos below to view the videos.