Room 7's learning journey

Our class started our learning journey in the middle of Term 3

The first thing Room 7 did as a class was to draw a picture of what they thought 100 years ago looked like in Edgecumbe - which could have been about the school, the town or the surrounding areas. We shared and discussed these pictures with each other and what their thoughts and ideas were.

The children then filled out a graphic organizer asking about specific things like 'transport, fashion, games and school' 100 years ago. Here are some examples of what some of the Room 7 children thought:

Next, our class went to the school's Office foyer to look at old photographs of what Edgecumbe Primary school and the surrounding areas looked like 100 years ago and photographs of a few decades ago. We discussed these before heading back to class.

Trying to talk about 100 years ago at first was a little difficult so Whaea Lesa thought if the children worked on what they already knew and what they could observe now, when the time came to compare the 'Past' and 'Present' , things would be easier.

Here were some of the aspects we discussed starting with 2014 and then we compared these with living in1914 and then with 1954 later on:

• Clothing we wear to school or wear anywhere
• Technology we use at school
• Technology we use at home
• Games and toys
• Education and School
• Food
• Transport

We talked about:

...then we talked about...

We spent a few days talking about and revisiting:

• What kinds of things do Room 7 children learn about?
• How do we learn?
• What things can 'help' us learn (Switch Ons to learning)?
• What things can 'stop' us from learning (Switch Offs to learning)?
• Our SMARTs and how we can use these to gain knowledge and information
• What kinds of activities help us to learn in Room 7?

While we had been focused on discussing using technology in the classroom and in other places, our children also started another graphic organizer activity all 'About Me'. This graphic organizer asked the children to look at:

• Their favourite colour/s
• Their favourite type of games and hobbies
• Their favourite TV programme or movie
• Their favourite book
• What clothes they wear to school
• What sports do they play?

We also created self portraits to go with our graphic organizer 'About Me' and a speech bubble explaining 'Who they would like to be like when they get older'.

We then spent time discussing how technology is used today - in our classroom, at home and anywhere else.

Technology in the Classroom

The children observed, the types of technology used in our particular classroom were:

• The laptop
• The class computer
• The internet
• Our class wikispace that shows our learning all through the year because Whaea Lesa has uploaded photographs and videos of our learning and of our activities
• Internet websites we use to practice reading, writing and maths
• The projector to show things on the big screen
• The speakers when plugged into the laptop
• Whaea Lesa's cellphone she uses to take photographs and videos of our learning
• Whaea Lesa's cellphone she uses to record our ideas and what we think using the microphone
• Whaea Lesa's cellphone we are allowed to use to take our own photographs of the things and the art we have created in the class or when we have seen something outside in the playground
• The CD player to listen to music and to play CD stories we can read along with and listen to
• The DVD player inside the laptop so we can watch movies
• Whaea Lesa's printer so she can scan our work or print our work off

Here's Isaac's cellphone:

Technology in other classrooms in our school

• Ipads in Room 6
• Classblogs like weeblies in Room 4, 6, 11 and 14
• Televisions that are hooked up to the teachers' laptops to show learning or to help learning
• Cameras, CD players, DVD players
• Facebook - some of the older classes use Facebook to post their thinking, discussion ideas and learning

Some of the other comments used were:

"We use technology to makes things easy for students to find out information when we don't know something and we can find out".

"I can play games on the computer to help me get better at maths and reading".

Clothing we use everyday

Transport we can use today

We began by talking about the different types of transport anyone could use.

Then we looked more specifically at the types of transport we can come to school on or in:

We also looked at the kinds of games we play today. The children listed these things:

• Rugby
• Ripper rugby
• Soccer
• Marbles
• Hide and go Seek
• Climb the trees
• Play at the playground
• Four square using a ball
• Hopscotch
• String games
• X-Box games
• Playstation games
• Computer games
• PSP games
• Minecraft games
• Internet games
• Ipad and ipod games and apps
• Leap Pad activities
• Board games
• Card games
• Dice games
• Building things like lego towers

After learning about what is was like to live in our world / town today and what it is like to come to school, Room 7 began to look at life 100 years ago.

Living 100 years ago

Here is our brainstorm of what we thought living 100 years ago was like.

Clothing 100 years ago

The children knew clothes didn't look like the clothes we wear today. Here are some of their ideas:

• They were black and white
• The boys wore shorts and long shirts
• The girls had to wear dresses
• The clothes are old looking and heavy
• They didn't have nice clothes like today. They are colourful.
• They made their clothes from the curtains.

Transport 100 years ago

Before we looked at photographs of different types of transport from 100 years ago, the children drew what they knew first.

After looking at and discussing the different types of transport people had in the 'old' days, the children began to realize that coming to school on a scooter, on a car or motorbike was not so common. Room 7 children began to see that coming to school was usually:

• Walking to school or anywhere
• On a horse
• On a wagon or cart or carriage
• On a bicycle if the children were lucky to own one

Room 7 also discussed what it was like to go to school. We used photographs and books to help us talk about what we thought going to school 100 years ago was like. We read parts of stories that talked about what the teachers were like, what things they learnt about and the activities the children might have done. Room 7 children automatically compared 'school life then' to our 'school life today'..and they agreed, our children like coming to school today!

Whaea Lesa showed Room 7 a black and white picture of children standing outside a school. Some children seemed to be almost crying and many others were not smiling. The caption below this photograph talked about how children were assembling outside for the teacher to talk to the children but some children had been punished because they had been speaking. Some of our children also thought, they were very upset because:

• It might have been very cold outside
• The photographer took a very long time to take the photograph and the children had to stand very still

Here are some of Room 7's ideas about school 100 years ago:

We then compared these aspects:

What was it like living in 1954?

This involved getting Room 7 children to look closely at photographs and to decide if they belonged to 1914, 2014 or 1954. The children had to decide if the photographs displaying fashion, transport, technology, education belonged in 1914, 2014 or in 1954. They all had about 3-4 photographs each. When the children had finished sorting their photographs, we then spent time deciding 'Yes' it stays or 'No' let's move it. Children had to provide a reason for their answer.

These two had a turn by themselves.

After our discussions, children then had an opportunity to record their learning in a rubric. We had been slowly filling this in over a week as we discussed photographs and information. Here are some examples of our rubrics showing our learning and thinking.

Room 7 were given graphic organizers to complete at home for 'Homethink'. One graphic organizer involved asking Grandparents what it was like when they were young.

The other graphic organizer was for the children to ask their parents what it was like when they were young.

This is what our topic wall and classroom environment looked like:

This belongs to Zoe and her Mum. Zoe's Mum was once part of a Marching Team!

Our Art - Making T-Shirts

Before we began work on our t-shirts, Joshua from Room 8 (Rhys's older brother and who was also in our 'Discovering Edgecumbe' story from 2013), came to talk to our class about making t-shirts especially about the design process. He talked about the logo board our whole class had made last year that was then turned into a logo print on the front of our t-shirts.

Our White T-Shirts

The Design Process

First, the children had to create a 'design' for their t-shirt. Whaea Lesa and Whaea Niki preferred if the children had done this at home with their families but if this was a little difficult, children were allowed to work with Whaea Lesa and Whaea Niki at school. Whaea Lesa used the laptop to help find images the children liked. The children had to have already thought of colours to use that wouldn't disappear on their t-shirt because of the dye.

Here are a few of the t-shirt designs that were created:

Here is Zoe's t-shirt design. Her family helped her to create this design and she was the first person to finish in our class! Her design took a few days to complete.

Here's Rhys's design. Whaea Lesa helped him find images from the internet but Rhys already knew what he wanted.

Here is Jamie's t-shirt design. Jamie's family helped to create this design.

Preparing and Dying the T-Shirts

Room 7 looked at lots of photographs from the internet about how to make different tie-dye patterns using rubber bands, how to apply dye and what the patterns might look like on other material.

We used the most easiest technique by attaching rubber bands to the t-shirts before they were ready for dying. Whaea Niki withdrew 2 - 3 children at a time to prepare their t-shirts by tying rubber bands onto the t-shirts before they could wash them with water.

Washing their t-shirts in water.

Then the children dyed the t-shirts.

When the t-shirts had sat in the buckets for a few hours, the children got them out and washed them alot under water. They then had to spend time pulling all the rubber bands out!

Whaea Lesa had to reverse all the designs before she could print them on the printer. Whaea Lesa did make a mistake but brought this print to school to show Room 7 what happens if she forgets to reverse the prints, especially the writing - they get ironed onto the t-shirts but the writing comes out backwards!

Whaea Lesa then ironed the 'correct' prints onto the backs of all the t-shirts.

The Finished Products!

Pencil Drawings - our Photo Album

Another art activity was creating pencil sketches and drawings using photographs to help us. Some of these pictures were of horses, of cars or of people from 100 years ago.

Our Dance and the Music We Listened To

Our class learned the words to "It's a long way to Tipperary" and "Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B".

Our dancing music was to "Boogie Woogie". Every Brain Break session, our class practised the dance steps to this song for about 10 minutes.

On the Jubilee Friday, we presented our songs and our dance to the Junior Syndicate Assembly in front of the other junior classes, parents and visitors.

Here's that song again!

 

Our Reflections about our Inquiry Study

Finally, our class completed a P.M.I graphic organiser so we could think and reflect about 'what we thought about our inquiry study'. We discussed some of our ideas first, filled in the different parts of the organiser and then shared our thoughts when we had all finished.

Here are some examples of Room 7's reflections about our inquiry.