Thursday 30 January 2014

Establishing routines through our treaty

As we discussed our learning goals, we discovered that we needed a way to ensure that we were each on track to achieve our learning goals.

We looked at ways in which other groups of people ensure that each person is working together and helping others with working towards their learning goals. With Waitangi day coming around on the 6th of February we talked about the Treaty of Waitangi, the purpose of this treaty and how it was implemented. Lots of brainstorming and discussion took place in the last few days days.

After thinking about the information included on the Treaty of Waitangi we decided that in our class we wanted to include two other key items missing from the Treaty of Waitangi; celebrations (for abiding by our treaty) and celebrations (for abiding by our treaty).

Using our learning goals and criteria, together we wrote our treaty:

Room 12's Class Treaty

Article the First: Our Purpose
We the members of Room 12, agree that the main purpose for coming to school is to learn; we want to learn not only to read and write but to make the right decisions. We think that making the right decisions means not only thinking about our learning but also about our health. We can help each other by giving feedback and this will help our learning, helping each other is one of our main learning goals. We would like our learning to be fun. We think we need to develop our listening ad research skills and do lots of discovering.

Article the Second: Values
We believe that the most important values in our learning community are respect and tolerance. If we remember to show respect we will get really good at relating to others. If we can get on positively, this will help our learning.

Article the Third: Positive attitudes and effective learning
We know we are remembering these values if we:

  • are inclusive,
  • work to understand other people's beliefs and cultures,
  • listen carefully to other opinions and points of view,
  • take care of other people when they are hurt of sad,
  • help peers with learning in a positive way,
  • remember to follow the rules for sharing, taking risks with our learning and celebrating our achievement in learning.

Article the Fourth: Celebrations
We agree that if we are 'caught out' as an individual displaying these values within the classroom, we will be celebrated with Star of the Day or Star of the Week and hopefully the Dice of Glory! If we as a whole class are consistently displaying these values throughout a period of time, a marble will be placed into our celebrations jar which, once full, results in a class agreed reward such as; a whole block of art, a block of outside activities or ice blocks for the whole class.

Article the Fifth: Consequences
We agree that everyone in Room 12 has the right to make an "I" statement if the classroom treaty is broken or to ask for the assistance of a peer mediator . People who stop learning will need to reset their goals. If interruption affects learning, a first warning (yellow card) will be given to the time waster. Persistant time wasters will get a second (orange) or third (red) warning. If this happens, they will spend time in the Thinking Room with Mrs Johnston and will need to fill out a thinking sheet to explain how they have interrupted learning and this sheet will go home to parents. Physical harm to others will result instantly in the red card warning.

If third warning happen three times, parents will be asked ti come to a parent conference at school to discuss the disruption to learning.

In addition to this, for our safety, swinging on chair will result in two warning before our chair is removed from us for a period of 5 minutes.

We agree to review our class agreement and re-sign it at the beginning of each new term.

Signed this 30th day of January 2013, by all the learners in Room 12, EPS.

In the next few days each of us will sign our name on a piece of paper which will be placed on the wall to show our agreement to the treaty.

In addition to this we also have our "Baa Baa Baa Ram" who sings and dances for us when it is time to pack up. We must be sitting on the mat by the time he finishes singing. In this picture is also our marble jar which already has 4 marbles in it!



We were all very excited to set up our 'Wise Helpers' job chart too. We brainstormed all the jobs that need to be taken care of in our classroom and volunteered for the jobs we thought we would like to take care of.



In Room 12, we feel that with each of these processes in place we are now ready to focus on our learning!!

Getting to know each other!

Kia ora kouto and welcome to Room 12's blog for 2014!

It is very exciting to be starting the new year with such a wonderful group of learners!

Over the past few days we have been working together to learn about one another; our variety of cultures and beliefs,  to enable us to relate to one another in a way that creates a positive and supportive learning environment.

Our focus has been on our learning; what learning is, what learning looks like, what learning sound like, what learning feels like, what helps our learning, what stops our learning and what our purpose is here at Elm Park School.









We used our ideas to create a display book which helps to remind us of how we can get the most out of our day together as learners.



As a classroom, we decided on a set of learning criteria for room 12 to include in our display;

  • Help each other.
  • Try our best at each task.
  • Listening skills displayed.
  • Discussion on topic, otherwise we are silent.
  • Focus on our learning.
  • Ignore distractions.




We also set a whole class goal to enable learning within room 12;

Our learning goal is to respect one another!

We then each set our own individual learning goals for term 1, the things that would help us to best learn each day.

As the year progresses we will continue to update our learning journey through our blog. We hope that our visitors will feel free to make comments and ask questions to help us reflect on our journey.

Welcome once again and keep coming back!