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!

Greedy Cat Reading Work

Today the Boogie Boarders were using Explain Everything to help them learn.  Check out their amazing work that they wanted to share with everyone.

Maths Statistics Inquiries.

What a busy start to school we have had in Team Maunga.  Mrs G has been working hard to establish new routines to make using iPads in our class easier and while she was doing this she discovered some Statistics work that we had wanted to share (but it got lost in our old system).  So here it is

Children came up with ideas/topics to ask questions about.

Laylah continued on with finding out about how much plastic is brought to school in peoples lunchboxes.  This showed that in Team Maunga we don't bring much 'plastic rubbish' to school, with many children in Team Maunga not having any rubbish at all.  She found that in Team Awa there seemed to be more rubbish and in Team Moana there was LOTS.




So in Team Maunga we have decided to set a CHALLENGE!

We want to Challenge the other teams to beat us next time we do this survey.  Lets reduce our rubbish and keep our school looking fantastic!

Water Safety

This week we were really lucky to have Tracey come to school to teach us water safety. 

Our favourite lesson was huddling together in the life jackets. We were learning how stay together if we fell in the water. Another goal was to try and float on our back and turn in the water onto our front without touching the bottom! Ask your kids to show you the 'mushroom' shape at home. This shape helps us float to the top. 

Next time we will learn how to float on our back and alert for help with our hand. 

New Class members

This week when we arrived at school we had a 8 new team members.  This was very exciting for everyone.  Nakita and Mrs G brought in some Tadpoles that had been caught on the farm where they live.  A number of them already had legs (so are known as froglets.  One was almost a frog when it arrived. 

When they arrived we had to find some rocks in our school grounds that could be used in the tank.  We then washed this carefully before adding the tadpoles (and froglets) to the tank.  We came up with some awesome inquiry questions to research about frogs, where they come from, how they hatch, what they eat, How much they weigh and many more.  So watch this space for an update on what we learn.

Later in the week we had one almost frog that loved jumping around, so just in case it tried to jump out we went searching for something to pop over our tank.  We came back with a lovely hair net used when people are cooking at our school.  This was perfect!  After school Mrs G took it back to her house to release it back where it came from (as we have heaps more to watch).  Mrs S has a tank that she is going to set up in Room 4 as well so there will me more opportunities for Team Maunga to learn and talk about frogs.

Word Works Starts

This week we started up our 3 Minute Frenzy.  On Monday we had a chat about what a 3 minute frenzy is and how they could practice at home or at school for Wednesdays 3 minute Frenzy Launch, however Wednesday got so busy that we had to cut our session short.  This was very disappointing for a number of children who had been practicing in their own spare time, so so instead of doing it Wednesday we did it on Thursday.  Here are the 4 'Word works stars' for week 3.  Two children are year 2, and two are year 1's.  This is amazing stuff.  Ms F and I can't wait to see what you can achieve by the end of the year!  

WATCH OUT WORLD here comes OHAEAWAI KIDS!

Team Maunga 2018

Welcome to our Blog for 2018.  We hope you enjoy watching and commenting on our learning Journey this year.

Counting on practice

Today a group of children were learning to explain to others how to count on in Maths.  They worked in small groups and would take turns drawing cards, adding pictures to their explain everything document, and then recording how they would solved it.  This will be a rewindable learning resources that they can use themselves and for when they take workshops for others in the class on this topic.  Keep watching our blog to see other examples of this over the next couple of weeks.

Well done, Charlee, Harlem and Nicole.

Assembly Song

Here is a cool movie that we created for our class assembly.  Thanks to Nick our Sound man  who made this movie possible and to Jake and Shiah our recording experts. We hope you find it as fun to watch as it was for us to make!  

Also special thanks to Rico and Louisa from Team Moana who came over on Friday morning to learn how to use iMovie on the iMac with Mrs G.  The results are amazing.

Greats and Grans

Here is a movie trailer that Emmanuel and Laylah made using IMovie.  Videos used in this movie were recorded by Jake, Jayme and Mrs G.  A great team effort.  

Team Maunga's other movies for our school movie competition

Here are 4 more movies that we created for our school movie competition.  They are all about our trip to Auckland.  Our movie judge suggests that we send our movie trailers to the establishments we took them about, as he thought they were fantastic.

We used iMovie on the ipads and constructed trailers as they are an easy way for us to learn about storyline, and inserting videos/images into movies.

Thanks for watching

Our Magic School Bikes Movie

Here is a movie that our children have been working on in class.

First we all talked about what we wanted our movie to be on.  In term 3 our topic was on "up up and away", and many of our children had been interested in finding out more about space and rocket ships.  So the class decided that this was a good topic to do a movie on.  

Next we used little sheets of paper to make up a story board where we could draw the scenes that they wanted in their movie.  Next students found images (that were free to use, share and modify) that matched these story board scenes.  We even took some images using our green screen and a rocket ship that we borrowed from Paihia School.  Thank you Paihia school for loaning it to us so that we could use it.

After we had these images stored on our iPad, students recorded each other on bikes in lots of locations around our school, and then we did something that was very unusual.  Children then had to ride their bikes around inside (in front of our green screen).  This was very exciting for all - and seems to be the main highlight of making this movie for many.

Finally students were recorded telling their facts.  These they had to reaseach themselves, and the practice so they could say them loudly and clearly.  When all the recordings were done, children took turns working with Mrs G to assemble it on the iMac.

 

September Reading Certificates

Wow lots of Reading Certificates for the month of September.  The first 3 certificates (in green) are 120 nights reading.  This is outstanding.  Well done everyone!  Keep up the fantastic reading.  

Bus Two's Auckland Adventure

Here are some photos and videos of bus 2 from our trip down to Auckland.

MOTAT educators took us into their flight classroom to learn about drag, lift, air pressure, weight, and thrust. This linked really well back to our Term theme 'Up, Up, and Away!' Our kids were excited to see experiments we had done in class for our science fair built on in the MOTAT flight classroom. We then got to catch the tram to MOTAT's main building, for more hands on interactive learning. A big hit was the Sunlight exhibition as you can see in the following link.
Bus 2 at Motat

Bus Two then headed off to the Zoo. Dave and Erin were amazing educators. After we had our orientation talk, we got to wander around with our groups exploring the zoo. We meet back for a BBQ dinner, set up our beds, then Erin played a true/false animal game with us. After dinner we had a look in the store room where they keep all the animal food. Erin gave us a close up look at a frozen rat, ew! There were definitively interesting foods and spices we did not expect to see, like coffee and curry powder! After the store room we covered our torches in red cellophane, so we didn't hurt any eyes (animals or humans), and Dave and Erin took us around for a night walk and talk.

After such a full day of adventure it didn't take long for our amazing kids to fall asleep!

The next morning after we packed up Erin took us on another educational tour as some of the animals were let out into their enclosures. Check out the following link for our zoo sleep over photos and see if you can spot the Team Maunga monkeys.
Bus 2 at the Zoo

Our next stop was Kelly Tarlton's. This was always a big hit with the kids. They took us into the classroom where we got to learn and touch treasures from the sea. They also showed us the video of how Kelly Tarlton's was built underground. We then got to explore around with our groups. Click on the link to see the kids exploring.
Bus 2 at Kelly Tarlton's

Thank you all for your support and help with our trip, from fundraising to parent helpers.  As you can see on their faces the learning opportunities and experiences were really well appreciated by our tamariki.

Make sure you check back on our blog for the iMovie trailers the kids made of the trip.