It is great to walk round town and see your posters up in shop windows. The next step in our campaign is writing media releases for local newspapers. Jess has contacted a number of newspapers and they have agreed to publish articles on our project. This morning we are focussing on writing these articles:

• Taihape Times - photo, no word limite (Teri & Becca)
• Straight Furrow - photo, no word limit (Ari & Josh)
• Ruapehu Bulletin - photo, no word limit (Cody)
• CountryWide - not too many words, photo (Cassie & Marika)

Before the writing began the students brainstormed how their articles could be structured:

• Good title
• Paragraph 1: Grab readers attention, relate to the readers' life
• Paragraph 2: Who, what, where, why, when, how
• Paragraph 3: Facts about the project, facts about pollution, what readers can do to help
• Paragraph 4: Conclusion, quote, summing up
  

Getting the word out there...

It is great to walk round town and see your posters up in shop windows. The next step in our campaign is writing media releases for local newspapers.

Jess has contacted a number of newspapers and they have agreed to publish articles on our project. This morning we are focussing on writing these articles:

• Taihape Times - photo, no word limite (Teri & Becca)
• Straight Furrow - photo, no word limit (Ari & Josh)
• Ruapehu Bulletin - photo, no word limit (Cody)
• CountryWide - not too many words, photo (Cassie & Marika)

Before the writing began the students brainstormed how their articles could be structured:

1. Good title
2. Paragraph 1: Grab readers attention, relate to the readers' life
3. Paragraph 2: Who, what, where, why, when, how
4. Paragraph 3: Facts about the project, facts about pollution, what readers can do to help
5. Paragraph 4: Conclusion, quote, summing up

River Monitoring

River Visit

On Friday the students continued to improve and add to their blogs. They are now ready to start sharing ideas with people all over the world! Please do visit the students' sites and leave a comment.

We spent the afternoon exploring the Hautapu and found some interesting things - will leave it up to the students to explain!

Now the work begins...

Hello class

Great work last week deciding on your issue – today we are going to start thinking about what exactly you want to do and achieve this term…

Block 1:

• Check school email and update blog
• You should now have two posts - intro post saying what issues we considered and the second post describing what issue we chose and why we chose it.
• Put a site meter on your blog (log in to http://www.sitemeter.com/). This page will give you detailed instructions for adding the meter. It will appear as a small green icon at the bottom of your site.
• Check out your classmate’s blogs
• Develop Project Plan – what do we need to do??? -- GOALS --

Block 2:

• Continue with project planning
• Start allocating tasks
• Begin making contacts in community
• Depart 12.00 for town. First stop is the information centre… then on to the stream!

Block 3:

• Exploration of Hautapu Stream
• Return to school in time for buses – possibly time to update blog

A Great First Day

Hi Class,

I was really impressed with your enthusiasm and work ethic on Friday. You all worked really hard - both in creating your blogs and involving yourselves in the debates we had.

Your blogs look great - I have added the links to the right-hand side of this page - check them out to make sure they work!

So, after much brainstorming and some heated debates, you decided on a Taihape issue to focus on for this term...

...cleaning up the Hautapu River

I am looking forward to next Friday!

Hello Class!

Congratulations class - you followed the correct link!

I know this is the first class you have ever taken that has been called 'Leadership and Communication' so I completely understand if you are a little perplexed and perhaps curious about what you are going to be doing every Friday in Room 23...

If you hadn't already guessed, a big focus of this class is going to be computers and the internet. But you are going to be using this technology actively - you are not going to be passive readers: you will be creating internet content and communicating with people all over the world. Alongside this will be lots of teamwork and many class discussions - this is a small class and we need each of you to participate 100%.

Before we re-group as a class, here is a brief overview for each of you to think about...

What are we doing this term?

As a class, we will select one issue that affects our community (‘community’ could be Taihape Area School, Taihape, Rangitikei, New Zealand…) The most important thing is that the issue is something you feel affects your life personally.

You will work together to create an action plan to do something about this issue. You will research this issue (search engines, interviews, emails, wikis, podcasts, libraries...) and then do something about it...

You will record your personal work on your own blog and as a class we will create and contribute to a class wiki. You will also need to do your own networking to get other people around the world to contribute to this.

Seems like a huge task! - What are we going to do today?

Learning Intentions for Today:

• I will consider our 'class goal' for the term and how this relates to me
  
• I will learn how to create a blog
  
• I will learn how to write a post in my blog
• I will participate in class discussions and use the internet to research possible issues that our class will focus on this term.

Success Criteria for Today:

• I can create my own blog and write a post for it
  
• I can consider our 'class goal' for the term and how this relates to me
• I can participate in class discussions and I can use the internet to research possible issues that our class will focus on this term.