Class of 2015

Here we are... we made it to the end of the year. Happy Holidays everyone. See you again next year.

Skype Interview

We interviewed Matt. He has written a book and talked to us about the writing process. He has taken 3 years to write the book. He had to re-read it to edit the punctuation and spelling. He had to re-read to make the story make sense and use more interesting words. Now he is sharing it with others who to help him make the story even better.

Just like us! We use the same writing process. We all shared our Christmas stories with Matt. He was amazed at how good our writing and picture plans are!

Chocolate Maths

One whole block of chocolate.

Shared into groups of two and four..

and then into halves...

and into quarters

and then ... into our mouths! Yum!

A Special Treat

This week we had a visit from Riccardo. He brought an inflatable football pitch and we had great football fun.

Inflatable Football from Annette on Vimeo.

Kapahaka Visit

Avonhead School kapahaka group came to visit. We sung a welcome waiata and enjoyed their performance. Afterwards we had kai! What a great way to end the day.

Here are some short clips of the performance.



Avonhead kapahaka visit from Annette on Vimeo.

Swim Safety

Keeping ourselves safe in water was the message for our last day at swimming. We found out it feels very different if we are in water in our clothes - we feel heavier and it is VERY hard to get out of the pool!
We must always swim between the flags and stay where an adult can see us! Slip, Slop, Slap!

Swimmimg 2015 part 2 from Annette on Vimeo.

Swimming Week 1

Phonological Awareness ... and alien words

We have been learning to listen for the sounds in words.
We can make 'alien' words with the sounds we know. They just don't make any sense!
We worked in groups to work out which words were real and which ones were alien words.

A Long Term Project

We are polishing stones. They start as rough, plain stones.

It takes four weeks to turn them into smooth polished ones. We can't wait to see what they look like!

'St' week

We made sneetches with stars on their bellies... it doesn't matter what type of sneetch you make - all sneetches are special.

Have you ever heard a teddy's heartbeat? We have!! We listened to heartbeats through a stethoscope. How can a Teddy have a hearbeat without blood to pump? There must be a trick here somewhere!

Time Travel Machine

This term we have a time travel machine in our class. We are writing about things in the past and the future.

In the future, what will we be? We have videoed our ideas (thanks Mrs Ritchie).
Here are our '"When I grow up" stories.




What will it be like living in the future?
We looked at some ideas from a cartoon made 50 years ago... The Jetsons

We designed our own future cities.

Cooperative Maths

We are working in pairs to make geometry posters. We used rulers to help us make the sides of our shapes straight.

Lukas and Max are using a very big numberline to find out the answers to equations.

Last day treat

We have been learning about words that start with 'Spr'. We decorated some biscuits by spreading icing and adding sprinkles!

Step 1: Get the paper towel, knife and biscuits.
Step 2: Spread the icing

Step 3: Add the sprinkles

Step 4: Eat and enjoy!

Read, read, read

A quiet moment,,,,,,,

Crown Patterns

Here are the crazy kids from Room 17 making crowns.


We made these crowns after reading a big book called 'Carla the Crocodile goes to the King'. We have been learning about patterns in maths so we used shape punches to make patterns on the crowns.

Where the Wild Things Are

We have been building a 'Wild Thing Forest' from the wonderful book Where the Wild Things Are.

We are adding our pastel and paint wild creatures as they are finished.

Max said, "Let the Wild Rumpus start!"

ESOL Kites

Jayden, Isaac and Wincent made these incredible kites at ESOL class. We went outside to watch them fly.

Thomas was sick on the day the kites were finished. We look forward to seeing his kite as well.

Wearable Arts

Team Moana showed us their wearable arts masterpieces at the latest school Assembly. We had our turn at being creators in Developmental.
Project Runway here we come!!

Teen and Ty

We are learning about 'teen' and 'ty' numbers.
We had a class challenge to circle the 'teen' numbers green and the 'ty' numbers blue. We only made 4 mistakes. When we tried again another day we only made 1 mistake.
Next time we are aiming for 100% correct. Fingers crossed!

Zoo animals - can you guess what they are?

We made our zoo animals on the iPad app Explain Everything. We have put these pictures into a movie with the song "Daddy's Taking us to the Zoo Tomorrow". We can watch our movie when we sing the song.

Painting

We practised making different shades of green - ready for the next set of paintings! But first we will add the daffodils to our Spring in Hagley Park pictures.

 Some of our next paintings: The Canterbury Plains and Southern Alps.

Place Value

This week we had fun with the new place value equipment. The Papura Stars maths group made the numbers from 10 to 20!

Surprise Visit

Mr Griffiths brought a helium balloon to our class. We had turns jumping up to try and catch the ribbon.... because it was maths time we graphed how many jumps we took to catch the balloon!

X Week

Not many words start with X! We learned about X-rays and Xylophones.  We had songs and stories about foxes this week because fox ends with X.

Matching the x-rays with the pictures.

We don't have real xylophones so we played musical patterns on glockenspiels and we wrote stories.

We went to the music room with Mrs Ward. We got the xylophones and then we walked back to class. We got to play the xylophone. It sounded very nice and it sounded mellow on the keys. We made beautiful music with the keys then we put them in the piles.   

Milla

I am going to the music room with my friends and we all have xylophones.  

Zayne

We went to the old hall to get xylophones. Then we came back to class. Then we played the xylophones and we did lovely musical notes and then we did story writing.

Oakley

Glockenspiels from Annette on Vimeo.

Fox weaving - looks great but it is quite difficult. Thank to Mrs Koster who helped us!!

Cricket Coaching

Andrew and Theo came to teach us cricket skills... we played a speedy version of the game. It was great fun!


Cricket from Annette on Vimeo.

Painting - Hagley Park is Daffodil Park

We have started on our next painting. We looked at a photo of the daffodils in Hagley Park.

Stage 1. Paint the sky and grass. Mix blue and yellow paint to make a great colour for the grass. Try and make the grass look like it is growing - short up and down brush strokes. How should we paint the sky?
Stage 2. Paint the trees. Notice that the trunks are the widest part, then the branches and then the twigs. Notice that the trees are not all growing on the horizon. Some of them are closer and seem bigger.
Stage 3. Go on a daffodil hunt at school to see what they look like up close. Use cardboard strips to make the stems and leaves of our daffodils.

Next Week - paint the yellow flowers.