Learning beyond expectations.

This week we have had a couple of students choose to do additional creative work, and it has been such a busy week with shows, assembly and fire men visiting as well.  Here are a few that got finished and are ready to share with others.

This is Kaye-Lani's.  She has spent 2 weeks getting this ready to share.  She got inspired to write her pepeha (which we had been discussing in class).  She brought it in to share with us and when we suggested that she record it on the ipad, she went away super excited, and created a stop motion.  She was super proud of herself.  We however said that this was by no means finished.  She then had to go back and research her Tongan pepaha so she could also include this.  This has been something Kaye-Lani has been very shy about within our class.  After the suggestion was made, she was still very apprehensive, so we tried to enlisted the help of her brothers ... In the end, we just rang home.  Kaye-Lani's mum was fantastic to chat to and within a few days Kaye-Lani bounced into school carrying her Tongan version of her Pepeha.  She shared it with us, and then added it to her Explain Everything.  She was very excited to share this today as part of our school assembly.

This is an amazing example of a student using writing to bridge not 2 languages but 3, not just English and Te Reo but also Tongan.  Seeing her now sharing her understanding of all 3 language in class as well as in this Explain Everything has been PRICELESS!!!  Well done Kaye-Lani and your family.  You guys ROCK.

This is Nicks, he is learning to use his imagination to create different stories, about a range of different things.  He has used Lego to create a scene, and has then been able to use some Lego ships and other creations to create a stop motion story.  When Nick had finished making the stop motion movie he then started learning how to record the oral story that goes with his stop motion movie. 

We can't wait to see the sequels Nick.

Plant Report Publishing

This week we broke into 2 groups for publishing.  One group published their work by hand to go up on our writing wall, and the other group published on explain everything, so we could share these examples and help us to reflect on our learning.

This weeks writing has focused lots on how we write reports, as a topic to focus on we looked mainly at plants and herbs.  The children really enjoyed going out each morning to gather herbs from our school garden.  On friday we painted some concrete blocks with the words Kawakawa on to support Team Awa's gardening as a thank you.

We talked about reports needing an introduction, followed by information specific to what it is the report is about, and then a conclusion.  Here are some of our finished publishing examples for you to enjoy and comment on.

Abby

Kaelan

Kaye-Lani

Liam

Nakita

Olivia

Ollie

Parani

Prayz

Riah

Looking forward to seeing your comments.

Te Ra O Te Wiki

This week we have been learning the days of the week in Te Reo.  We have been learning the actions to go with it to help us remember.

So...

To help us remember the days of the week, we created a short movie that we can replay to help us.

Mrs G got Matua to help us work out how to convert this into a Matua/Whaea Says (like Simon Says) game which we hope to present at our assembly in Week 2.  Thank you Frank, Liam and Cheyne for volunteering to take on this role in our assembly!  It is a big one.

Here is the words that we will be using to help us practice our days of the week (as well as other actions that we use in our classroom on a daily basis).

Fourth Installment of Stop Motion Movies

Yes!  Here we are again.  The children in our team had great fun making these and are so eager to share.  We hope you enjoy.  Please keep commenting and adding your ideas and thoughts.  See if you can work out what these stop motions are about.

Grace, Waiahi, Ollie

Kaye-lani, Ivy, Ross

Heidi, Felicity, Calla

Riah, Levi

Stella, Nakita, Sienna G

Found Poems - Get NZ Writing

Here are some examples of Found poems that we created.  We looked them up and decided they were a bit like blackout poems.  Below are some examples of what we came up with.

To make them we had to start with a piece of text.  We decided that rather than using a newspaper we would use some of the story we had focused on last week.  And why not ... MONSTERS are ALWAYS a fun topic.

Second we spent time finding and circling key words that we liked in the writing.

Next we found words that would link our key words together.

Finally we spent time blacking out the rest of the words on the page.  

Maia                               Parani                           Ruby

 Kayelani                        Sara                         Charlee

 Liam                             Aiden                           Stella

 Laylah                            Olivia

What am I?

This week in class we have had a shared  book called Tails and Claws.  It gives you clues about an animal and then it tells you what it is.  So in writing we have been doing something similar. 

Everyone has created some fantastic work.  The focus has been on adding adjectives to add even more detail to our work.  Some of us have moved onto publishing because they were so fantastic.  

Initially we published some for our walls.  

Then some of us decided to publish using explain everything.  When we published on explain everything we decided that we wanted to use 2 different slides.  One for our clues and one for our answer to make our work more interesting for people watching it.  When we had put all the writing in, we recorded ourselves.  The finished work is what we are most proud of.  You can see a few examples below the pictures of our initial slide set up.

Watch out for more examples coming VERY SOON!!!

Milk in Schools

We had a visitor (Tracy) come to our school to share with us the importance of folding our milk cartons properly so they can be sent off to be recycled into some really cool things, including; books, roof tiles, desk tops ...

We then wrote stories about this.  Here is one Dakota has put into an explain everything presentation for you.  Also here are some photos of us practicing our folding in the afternoon.