Inspired by Henrico

We loved having Ties's dad talk with us today about his life as an author and editor; as part of Book Week. He impressed us with the number of books he has written and the number of words he writes each day! The first sentence of a story is the most important; Henrico shared some great examples and got us thinking about how we can hook the reader in more effectively. My favourite part was when he shared an extract (thanks to Google for the translation) from his latest book. We could all relate to his story from Fed 22nd. Thanks Henerico, we were inspired!

Yum!

What a spread! We very much enjoyed the morning tea put on be the PTA to reward us for getting our Spellathon money in so quickly. Definitely worth the effort!

Project Rudolf

Project Rudolf on PhotoPeach



Today 20 Year 7 students from Beckenham and Opawa Schools worked with ambassadors from the electronics industry to create programmable 'Rudolfs'. They selected and assembled components, soldered, trimmed, connected and programmed their creations. What a fabulous day! With one ambassador to four students, there was always help at hand and the students were fully engaged and highly motivated all day. Many thanks to Catherine from 'Future in Tech' for organising this day.

Rebuilding Beckenham In Progress on PhotoPeach



We are one week away from presenting our ideas for Rebuilding Beckenham and we all still have a lot of work to do. Here is a sneak preview of what we are creating. Do you have any feedback or suggestions for us? (Other than that we have made a few spelling errors!)

The Great Book Swap

As part of Book Week all Beckenham students are encouraged to bring along up to 4 books from home that they have finished reading and would like to exchange for other great reads. Books are to be dropped off in front of the library before school by Thursday this week. The more people taking part, the greater the selection of books; so check out your bookshelf at home and get involved in the GREAT BOOK SWAP.

Making safe choices with legal drugs.

Today in DARE we looked at legal drugs such as Panadol, antibiotics, sleeping pills, wine, RTDs and cigarettes. We had an interesting discussion on whether cigarettes should be made illegal; most of the class were sitting on the fence. Then we broke into groups and looked at how legal drugs could be used safely and how they can be misused. The picture above illustrates one group's thoughts. Have you got some more ideas we could add to this chart?

Athletics Training

It was all about about run, jump and throw on the field this afternoon...

Thinking Accessibility

Today Grant came along to talk with our class about accessibility considerations we should keep in mind when doing our urban plan for the 'Beckenham Space'. He gave us lots to think about. So we can get a better understanding of some of these issues, we are each going to spend three hours in a wheelchair over the next couple of weeks.

More Skilled Skippers

Those with extra beans add spins and twirls!

Jolly Jumpers

One of the most popular fitness activities in Room 19 is long rope skipping. The triangle skip requires coordination, timing and teamwork. We have mastered this with three jumpers in three ropes, our next step is to master six jumpers in three ropes.

So just how important is technology to us when we learn?

The graph speaks for itself! We are very engaged in our learning when technology is one of our tools.

Writing with keys rather than pencils.

This term Room 19 have been exploring using the laptops as a writing tool. This graph shows the impact we think technology is having on our writing. We have offered a number of reasons for our positive view, these include: we can write faster, it's easier to revise our writing,  it's easier to focus, spelling errors are identified and it's more fun.

Seeing what we read

In Room 19 we have just finished reading some great novels. As we read we asked questions and discussed the story to get a better understanding of what was happening. We were also creating pictures of what we thought the story would look like. Here's one take on 'the Barrier' from Emily Rodda's book 'Finders Keepers'