Week 7 term 4

What is learning?
Ten weeks have past since we started talking about what learning is and thinking about what learning is and also reflecting on our learning with Mrs. Mitchell

When I started talking and thinking about my learning this is what I thought learning was:

I think learning is when a person or a group of people work together or alone to work something out or learn eachothers opions.

Solo Taxonomy has been is very useful to us because we would have never been able to improve in our learning if we didn't have some steps to follow and to show us what we needed to do to get better.

I really liked making the rubrics together and using these. In our learning, first we established a rubric. The next step was going and doing the work. Lastly we self assessed our work. We went and discussed our work with Mrs. Mitchell and talked about how to improve our work. We repeated these steps over and over again until we were happy with our level of thinking. Solo Taxonomy helps us to develope skills that will be very useful in all our learning in the future.

I am glad that Mrs. Mitchell has taught us about Solo Taxonomy because

• We now know how to improve our work.
• We know how to self asess our work.
• We know what to do to get to the next level of thinking

I feel like I am thinking and talking more about learning and I have never done this before. I like the symbols because they help me think about the kind of thinking that I am doing. I also now know how to use a rubric to help me plan my learning. I feel great.

Solo Taxonomy in 4M

Using Solo Taxonomy we have been learning about how to develop new skills to get to a level where we can predict and use these new skills in the future to help us with our learning. Solo Taxonomy also shows what level we are on and what to do next with our learning. Solo Taxonomy also helps us to know how to work independently.

I think predicting is trying to figure out what to do next and what's going to happen next and what to do about it. Predicting is useful like when you are a cop you and you are on a speed chase and your trying to figure out where the criminals going to go and how. Predicting is looking into the future and trying to do something about it. You can also predict what your goal is for the future.

We then had to write a report choose a topic and write a question and then had to walk around the class and ask people the question and collect info on it and tally it and put the data in a bar graph.

I predicted that Edward Cullen most going to be the most popular characters.

My predictions were wrong Bella Swan was the most popular not Rob.

Week 4 Tuesday 27th October

This week Mrs.Mitchell asked us about how Solo Taxonomy helps us with our writing and other work. Solo Taxonomy helps me by showing me where to go next and what to do to get to the next stage of thinking or showing what I understand. The rubric also helps me to understand the details that I need to include in the topic I am working on. The parts to Solo Taxonomy are: Preconstructional, Unistructual, Multistructural, Relational, Extended Abstract and each part or level has its own sign or symbol. Rubric tables have all the signs from Solo Taxonomy and have rows where you write the success criteria or what Mrs. M is looking for at each level of thinking or working. When I wrote my Cinquain poem the first time I ended up on a lower level of the rubric that we created and then I used the rubric and wrote how I could fix up my poem and after that I ended up on Extended Abstract the highest level of thinking and working.
Mrs. M calls this WTN and we have to read our writing and decide on our level using the rubric and then we can check with a friend and then we talk to Mrs. M and then together we decide what I have to do to improve my writing. I like this because I feel that I am getting better at writing and I know what to do to get better.

Reflection on what we have learned today in 4m.

Today in class we learnt how to use Image Chef and copy and paste our poems onto our blogs. Image Chef is a web 2.0 tool. I learnt how to find the embed code and copy the
embed code and download it onto my blog. I like using different e-tools to show my work and what I have been doing in class.

Using Image Chef to create my poem

Using Image Chef to create my word

ImageChef.com Flower Text

Using Image Chef to create my poem

ImageChef.com Poetry Blender

Our learning Week 8 Term 3

We discussed what learning is and we all shared some ideas about what learning is. We came up with some ideas and then we put these together and made a definition of what we think learning is.
We said that anyone can learn something new and that there is an endless amount of resources that people can use to learn from. Overall we came up with that learning is taking in new knowledge and mixing it with what you already know and thinking about it t create new knowledge.
I used Image Chef, a new web 2.0 tool to make a poster for our class so that we can all talk about our learning each day.

Week 7 Term 3

What is learning?
I think learning is when a person or a group of people work together or alone to work something out or learn each others opinions.

How do I know that I am learning something during a task?
I know when I am learning during a task because I am taking new knowledge into my brain.

How do I know that I have learnt something after I have completed the task?
I know that I have learnt something after the task because I may have had a different opinion about the subject before and now have a new opinion.

What could my teacher do to help me decide what I need to do next in a task? Mrs.M could help me by looking at my work and tell me how I need to improve my work and what to do next with my learning.

These are the ways I like to learn the most...
acting
discussing
drawing
and dancing

Term 2 reflection

This term my goals were to try to get 50/50 in my basic facts test and improve on my speed and acurracy. On the last basic facts test I got 50/50 and my time was 3:52 seconds, well around that mark. For my other goal which was singing I didn't do very well on that because I haven't got around to it yet but when I go to singing lessons I think my voice has improved a whole lot. For my basic facts test I have been practicing with our tables chart at home and that has been really good. For the whole 6 months my learning has been really good I have learnt a lot about plants this term.  It was very fascinating. I feel that I have improved on my hand writing and my typing on the computer because I have been typing sentences on the computer and gone on some websites that are about learning how to type. My typing is really fast now. Next term I want to work to record sound and put movies on my blog and I think that will be really cool.This year I have made some really good friends and have now joined a lot of sports clubs in Townsville. I have made a lot of new friends at the sports clubs. Next term I want to improve  my spelling age. At the start of the year I thought that this year was going to be the hardest year of my life because all of my friends wouldn't be there and I thought I wasn't going  fit in with the others but when I got to my class on the first day everyone was so nice and once I got into the year ,so this year I think that I would want to stay at Townsville Grammar for the rest of my school years . Everybody is so NICE!!!!!  

My visit to the Palmetum

On the 14th of may 2009 4M went to the Palmetum and I went with my mum and some of the kids in my class were in that group too.The first environment we went to was the seasonally dry savannah and our group had to sketch 1 tree and 1 mini beast or animal I sketch some fan trees and a ladybug. Claudia, Anna, Jess, Brendan and Adam's sketches were really good aswell and Brendan drew a really good parrot. Then we went to the dry lands and we saw heaps and heaps of cactus's and it was really hot like a desert. Then we had a look at the Rainforest and the wetlands and the canopy was sooooo! cool. We went to the Palmetum because we are learning about plants  and different environments in our class and we thought it would be a great and a fun way to learn about the different pants and environments. My favourite part was when the desert was really hot and the rainforest and the wetlands were cold but not freezing cold.I learnt that the leaves on the bottom of the forest floor are much larger and wider than the leaves on the trees on the top of the forest roof I also learnt that the top of the roof of the rainforest is called a canopy. The trip to the Palmetum was really fun.

The end of term 1 2009

This term I learnt Indonesian with Bu McNamara and we learnt how to say a heap of stuff. We also learnt how to count as well.
The really interesting thing that I learnt this term was how creative Mrs.Mitchell is. I mean the back of our classroom has so much colourful and artistic stuff on it.
This term I enjoyed our cultural afternoon tea where both the year 4 classes shared their culture with everybody else and both classes made hats that represented their culture and there was a heap of food there as well.
Next term I want to do a "So you think you can dance challenge" because we have already done a writing one and I think it would be really fun as well.

My learning in week 9

In 4m we have been learning about Cyclones.
This is what I have learnt about Cyclones. Cyclones are very powerful rotating storms.They have very strong rotating winds,rain, thunder and lightning.
Cyclone winds blow in a spiral around the centre called the eye. A wall of thunderclouds called the eye wall surrounds the eye.
Long bands of rain clouds spiral around the storm.
We have also been learning about the history of Townsville which goes back to 1770, when Captain James Cook sailed through,coastal features like Cleveland Bay, Cape Cleveland and Magnetic Island. In maths Claudia, Brendon and I have been doing different maths to the rest of the class. My learning is important because I may need it in the future. . We have been reading a story called BOY OVER BOARD and it is about a family from Afghanistan and they want to move to Australia for a better life but are having hard time getting there. The next step for my learning is to study problem solving in maths. I also want find more things about Australian animals.

Term 1 2009

I am a Year 4 student at a school in Australia. This is my blog and I will show my learning for this year.