Get NZ Writing Package

In Team Maunga we have been learning lots about writing letters and postcards this term.  This was leading us up to sending a package to a school in Stratford.  Here are some images of us getting our package ready to send.  Remember to ask us about what we should include in a Letter or Postcard (or ask us about how we use WETA for letter writing / Postcards.  For more information on this please look up other posts on this topic.

Preparing the postcards and messages.

Taking photos to explain the rock we included in our parcel

  Revisiting statistics work from the beginning of the year to work out how many siblings we have altogether.  We loved using Tally marks to help work this out.

 Researching who could lick their elbow (not all children have photos here so ask your child if this was them).

Working out who our tongue rollers were (again there were more children than we have images of here so ask your child about this).

 

 Sealing the package and Posting it at our Local NZ Post shop.

THANKYOU SO MUCH FOR THIS AMAZING EXPERIENCE WAREHOUSE STATIONARY!

My Worm Farm

The Wind Surfers (reading group) have been having fun with their reading.  Their reading goal is to read fluently the words on the page and to follow each word.  They are getting pretty good at it.  As a result we decided to recreate the worm house story with photos of us making one.  We invited a group of Maunga Iti learners to join us.  Our Boogie boarder reading group who use iPads lots helped to make these look and sound amazing.  Well done Everyone!

  

Learning about letters and postcards

Here are some examples of writing work we have done in class around letters and postcards.  We were really lucky to have a monster write us letters that we got to write letters back to.  We also were writing letters to send to a buddy class in Stratford, and Easter bunny wasn't to far away either.  These provided us all with motivation to write letters, below are a few links to work and things we did to help us develop great letter writing skills.

This Explain everything was something we did right at the start of us learning about postcards.  We were learning where things went on a post card and the types of things we could write for both a letter and postcard.  Well done Nicole.

This is an activity we did as part of our shared book.  This helped us see how letters are great not just for writing but also for reading too.  We had great fun doing this Explain everything.  Well done Sage.

Here is an example of a letter that Stella wrote to the Easter bunny.  As you can also see we discussed what things would make our letters better as a class, and Stella was able to take her writing away and pop it into an explain everything to record what she will do next to improve her letter writing.  This was a great reflection process for all children.  Well done on your presentation Stella.

By Stella

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.