Samantha's Food Chain Learning Story

Learners: Christian, Sadeen, Samantha, Richard, Divya, Shreya     Learning Coach: T.Dillner           Date: 22.7.15

Learning Area: iExperience - Science (Food Chain)

Learning Observed

At the moment, the learners in LH1 are looking at Animals and their various features. Today’s session was looking at the Food Chains that are formed by NZ plants and animals - both native and pests. The learners had to examine a set of animal pictures and come up with a system of organising them according to who would eat what. They had to transfer the name of the animal to a strip of paper and connect them to the animal/tree that would eat them, eventually forming a chain. Christian, Sadeen, Samantha, Richard, Divya and Shreya worked collaboratively to strategise a way of organisation. They assigned each animal a strip and laid the photo on the top. When they had established the bottom of the food chain (invertebrates), they matched up the rest. When a tree/animal had been incorporated, they removed the photo to eliminate it from those that remained. Their final food chain was showing the relationship between invertebrates at the bottom of the food chain to feral cats at the top.

Evidence of learning

Working together to create a method to classify the animals in the food chain.

Key Competencies/Vision Principles

Collaboration was the main focus of this task. The learners in this group worked well for a majority of the time they were given. They did work together to figure out how to group the animals, and mostly worked together to create the chain. There was some stress at the end to get it finished on time though. (Participating & Contributing and Managing Self). To complete the links in the chain, the group had to work out the connections between the animals by thinking about their needs, physical size/shape, and diets (Thinking).Their chain showed some of these connections as it was not completely straight, it had extra links added in on the sides.

Next Learning Steps

Continue to independently focus on collaborative behaviour: How do we speak to one another? How do we make sure everyone has a turn? How can we involve people who could contribute more? Find reading material/research that could inform them of different food chains e.g. marine food chains.

Samantha & Komal's Summarising Learning Story

Learners: Samantha & Komal     Learning Coach: T.Dillner           Date: 24.7.15

Learning Area: Literacy - Summarising

Learning Observed

Samantha and Komal are in the Kites learning group and selected to attend a workshop about summarising the main points of a story. Earlier in the week, we used the story called Scattercat by Lynley Dodd for another piece of learning and the girls chose to revisit this book for their summarising Capability Task. When we were working as a group, we talked about how summarising is using questions that start with who, what, when, where, how and why. In the videos below, Samantha and Komal try to use these prompts to ask each other summarising questions about Scattercat. They collaborated together to interview and film each other as evidence of their learning. Samantha and Komal displayed that they have developed their capabilities of summarising a text by asking and answering the questions they provided each other - I hope they can practise this at home!

Evidence of learning

Next Learning Steps

Ask questions that your buddy hasn’t already asked you. Use the chunks in the word to help you sound them out. Try and challenge yourself to answer the summarising questions without looking at the story book. Practise doing this at home with a parent, sibling or friend.

Samatha's Mathematics Narrative Assessment

Learner:    Samantha (mm)                                                 Date: June 2015

Learning Area: Maths - Strategy                             Learning Coach: John Dyer

Learning Observed

Samantha has been working hard to develop her capability in Maths. In this photo she is working collaboratively to solve division problems. Samantha is moving from using material to imaging objects in her mind. When faced with the problem of sharing 24 into 6 groups, she understands the idea of sharing as division and equally shares the correct number of counters. Samantha is now moving on to use her times tables knowledge to work out the number of groups in a set and is moving away from the need to use materials. She works well in groups and individually as asks for help when she is unsure of what to do next.

Evidence of learning

Samantha collaborates with Norah and Gracy to solve a division problem.

Key Competencies/Vision Principles being demonstrated

Thinking - Making sense of information, experiences and ideas. Using language, symbols, and texts - Making sense of words, numbers and images. Managing self - knowing when to lead, when to follow and when to act independently. Relating to others - Interacting effectively in a range of contexts. Participating and contributing - Being actively involved in school and the community Curious Collaborative Connected Capable

Next Learning Steps

Continue to develop basic facts knowledge. This will include quick recall of addition and subtraction facts to 20 and recall of multiplication facts for the 2, 5, 10 x tables. In time, this will progress to the 3, 6, 9 x tables, the 4 and 8 x and finally 7 x tables.