A writing tree?

Have you seen our writing tree in Room 10?  Here it is if you haven't!

 

 

We have been thinking about growing into 'Level 2' writers.  There are a few 'surface features' to work on.  These are things like spelling and punctuation that help our readers enjoy our work easily.  We have put these up the top of the tree.

The 'deeper features' are down the bottom and there are LOTS of them!  They are like the roots of the tree and they make our writing 'strong'.  These are the things that really make our writing interesting and make you want to read more.

Please ask us what our goals for writing are because we are practising talking about our learning!

Mr Mollard

Wasn't it awesome to see Mr Mollard at school last week?  I think we all enjoyed the rugby game on Thursday...even if the Cornerstone team lost.  I'm sure it was very different to the rugby team in India that Mr Mollard works with!
At assembly on Friday, he talked about their life in Delhi, India.  It is SO different to Palmerston North!  What did you think about Charlie and Oli's school?  Did you see things that were the same...or different?  Maybe we could ask Charlie and Oli to tell us what they play at playtime in India!  That would be interesting!

Our fish are named!

At last the voting is finished!  We have chosen names from all the suggestions posted in and the winners are...

• The red fish is Ferrari (thanks to Nate)
• The yellow fish is Sunny (thanks to Abbey)
• The blue fish is Anakin - (thanks to Asher) but there was a lot of votes for Pingu (by Ben G) as well! 
• The orange fish is Nemo (thanks to Loisi)
• The black fish is Coke (thanks to Abbey - you have great ideas!)
• The greeny / grey fish is Hopper (thanks to Nate).  We had an awesome runner name too - it was Stormy.  Guess who thought of that?   Abbey again!

Thanks to everyone for your ideas.  Just remember to keep feeding our fish too!

In the 'Olden Days'...

We have some questions to ask you!  We are thinking about what we do at school NOW, but we would also like to find out about what school was like for our parents and grandparents.  We would love to hear your answers please.

To write your answer, look down the right hand side of this page for "In the Olden Days" and click on the link there.  A 'Post-it' wall will pop up and you can leave your answers there!

These are our questions:

• What were your favourite games at school?
• Did you have sports gear to use at playtime?
• What did you have in the playground to play with?
• What did you do at playtime on rainy days?
• Did you have games in your classroom to play?
• Did you wear uniforms?
• How many children were in your class?

Please choose a question and leave us an answer.  Thank you!

Alliteration!

We have been learning about alliteration in our writing time.  That is when the same letter or sound is used at the beginning of some words that are written together.  Here are some examples that we made up:

• Kayla is a cool Kingdom Kid.
• Rally Reuben raced robots.
• Awesome Abbey ate apples.
• Clever Caleb can catch cats.

Later we read the story "The Pout Pout Fish" and we found lots of alliteration in it too!  It helped us to see how authors use alliteration to make their writing interesting.  If you can, have a look at that book and you'll see what we mean!

Can you make up some alliteration to share with us as a comment?

More Mixed Up Stories

There is a book that gave us the idea of making 'Mixed Up Stories'.  We have the book in our room at the moment, so we have made a story from it to share with you.

It says:
Cinderella
was laughed at by ducks
and discovered a huge pile of tresure that had been stolen by
an apple.

We hope you enjoyed another crazy mixed up story!

Do you know Daniel?

We have been reading about Daniel in the Bible.  He loved God and prayed to God all the time...even when it meant he was going to be thrown into the lion's den!  That must have been so scary!  His friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego also choose to do what God wanted...and they were thrown into a fiery furnace!  It was really tough living in those days!

Daniel and his friends made the right choices and tried to be good for God.  What can WE learn from them that we can do at school and home?

Another handwriting goal!

Hannah has a goal to make her writing the same in all her books.  Here is a picture of her handwriting book (left) then her reading book (right).

 Do you think Hannah is achieving her goal?  Do her books look the same?  Please add a comment to tell her what you think!

Handwriting goals

Leighton's goal for handwriting is to add sloping to his letters.  Here is a picture of his handwriting.

How do you think Leighton is doing with his goal?

Vernon's goal is to get better at the size and shape of his letters.  Here is a picture of his handwriting.

Vernon stills thinks he can make his 'i' a bit bigger.  What do you think?

Olympic Sports Festival

We had an amazing time at the Olympic Sports Festival last Friday!  There were SO MANY kids there...
We had a great time learning about different games and how to play them.  We could play some of those games at school too!  I wonder what your favourite sport or activity was?  Can you leave a comment and tell us?  What did you like best about the day?

Maths Week

Remember that this is the only week we can use the Maths Week website!  Log on to www.mathsweek.org.nz and put in your user name and password for heaps of maths fun!

Our fish!

We have had a couple of great suggestions for names so the yellow fish will be called Sunny (thanks Abbey for this idea) and the red one will be Ferrari (thanks Nate).  I wonder if that means the red one is a fast swimmer?  We'll have to wait and see...
By Mrs Sutherland

Mixed up stories

We love a book that has mixed up stories in it...so we decided to make some ourselves!  Here is one by Kayla.

Her story says:

The snake
got a scooter which he loved
and sat on the chair that belonged to
the jail.

Each part of the story is on a different colour so we can choose different ideas to put together to make new stories.  Here are some others we made today:

Abbey's story -
A cat
made a wooden boy
and bought some food for
a magic bean stalk.

Hannah's story -
Hannah
was captured by the police crew
and had to wear handcuffs when she was put into
a shark.

Jada-Arielle's story -
The book  monster
had tiny, cute babies
and took them to her house to show
the dump.

You can see some of them end up very silly...but they always make us laugh and enjoying reading!

Help us name our fish

We thought it would be fun to give names to the fish down on the right hand side of our blog.  Would you like to leave us a comment with some ideas?  We will collect all the ideas and choose the ones that the most of our class agree on.  Have fun!

Science Fair - Room 12

This was the project from Room 12 that we liked the most.  These are some of our thoughts about it:

• It was good that they made a bow and tested it (Hannah, Reuben H)
• I liked how they made one bow tougher than the other one (Kayla)

We also thought of some more things that make projects interesting:

• you need pictures because that's how you can see how they made things (Kayla)
• pictures make the boards colourful too (Jada-Arielle)

When we got back to Room 10, we made a list of the things that are important when you do a Science Fair project:

• You need a good idea
• You need a cool title
• You need lots of pictures and colour to make it interesting
• You need to make sure your face is not in the photos
• It helps if you can show what you made

Science Fair - Room 11

Isn't this a cool Science Fair project?  It was our favourite one when we looked in Room 11.  These are the things we liked about it:

• the title is colourful (Loisi)
• the Lego kit would be very handy because it splits Lego and that can be hard to do (Nate, Abbey, Ben G, Reuben H)
• the bucket on the top is cool (Leighton, Amon)

We thought it was a very interesting idea and that is SUPER important for the Science Fair! (Abbey)

Show you care!

Last week we had a magician come to do a show at school.  He told us it was not really magic...it is just tricks that fool our eyes!  El Gregoe was very clever and we loved the animals he used in the tricks too.

As well as having fun, we learned some very important lessons about bullying.  Bullying is NOT ok at anyone's school.  We need to care for other people and think about how they are feeling.  Being kind by choosing the right words to say and the right things to do means you can have a 'Bully free zone' at your place.
El Gregoe told us another thing - you might know this saying, just like we did:
Treat other people the way you want to be treated 
or as we say it -
Do to others as you would have them do to you.


Have you got any ideas to help us make the right choices and care for people?

Harold was here!

All of the school had a turn at going to the Life Education truck in the first 2 weeks of the term.  Harold is a giraffe and he is the mascot for the Life Ed programme.  Room 10 had a great topic called 'Space Invaders'.  What do you think that would be about?
'Space Invaders' was about how our body eats and uses food for energy.  It made us think about what we eat and if it helps us to be strong and healthy and smart.  We looked at our lunches boxes and talked out the food we eat.  We made a food pyramid to help us think and labelled as much food as we could in Te Reo.  It was a real challenge but we are pleased with the learning we did.
How do you think we went?