A monster wrote me a letter

In Team Maunga we have been learning about letter writing.  We had a shared book called Monster write me a letter.  Then Maureen called us over the loud speaker to say that we needed to come to the office to collect something. 

And it was a letter from our very own school monster.  It hangs out in Maureen in the office.  We wrote some great letters in return and learnt how to start a letter with a greeting, explain or praise something, then ask a question before finishing off with an autograph.  We thought it was very similar to writing a blog comment.

We sent the monster a couple of letters back and were lucky that he replied again to us.  We had great fun learning to write letters.

Watch this space for Explain Everything examples explaining the process of writing a letter.

Last week our shared book was called Dog by Fran and Leon Hunia. Miss Stewart showed us how Dick Frizzell illustrated the pictures. We then made our own class book and we were the illustrators! Nakita helped us record our stories so we could share our learning with you.

'I can see' stories

Lately in Team Maunga we have started extending a simple sentence as part of our weekly writing.  The children are able to take this to a variety of different stages and ALL are able to succeed and challenge themselves with it.

Some children work on using the simple sentence to tell their story.  Some children add simple extensions, and others are now working towards elaborating on one idea.  

A child from our 'Accelerated Writing Group' shows how a simple I can see sentence, can be created into a magical piece of writing.  She was so excited to share this at our school assembly on Friday and is eager for this to be included on our blog.  

This is also a great example that we can use as a rewindable learning moment with the children next week as we work on our next simple sentence.  Well done Nicole.  Great stuff!

Elgregor Show

Last week we all enjoyed watching the Elgregor Show at school.  We loved seeing all the different parrots and birds that he had.  His show was all about how to be a good friend and what to do if we are being bullied.

He talked to us about how that 'the coolest kids are the kids that care', and that 'we have the power to make a difference'.

During the show Semore the Dinosaur talked to us about using our WIT's.  Walk away, Ignore, and Talk to someone, if we ever experience bullying.

Here are some pictures of us at the show.

Elgregor Magic Show

This week we have been trying to use Explain Everything more to create and share our ideas for writing.  Here is an examples of how we have used it this week.  Keep watching out for more examples.

This is a recount that Stella wrote about going to the Elgregor Magic Show.  She was very motivated to write about this because she was chosen to be a helper during the show.

Stella was really excited about her work as well because she knew she had included all the elements for recount writing.  She had her Introduction, Body and Conclusion (we refer to this in class as a hamburger).  What made our class even more proud of Stella is that she did this independently and only had some support in publishing this - mainly because she initially tried publishing in Pic Collage but soon discovered that you couldn't record it.  

Great learning all around.  Well done Stella.

Welcome to Room 4!

Last Friday we had our first assembly. All the kids spoke so well in front of a large audience to share their learning. Here are two items we shared in assembly. In the first video we are introducing ourselves in Te Reo with our box selfies we made. The second video is a movie we made about getting ready for school. Harvey and Kaelan shot all the footage independently! Keep an eye out on the blog for our sequel - 'Learning Time.'

Mesiah's Reading

Mesiah has been learning to point to words as he reads. We are so proud of his amazing reading last week. Keep up the great work Mesiah!