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Showing posts from 2013

Buddy Class Writing

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We have been having fun learning with our buddy class - Miss Suze's Superstars.                                           Today we read a book together and then wrote our own books. We are learning how to use speech marks in our writing.

Our Buddy Class

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We have joined with Miss Suze's Superstars in Room 3 to do some buddy reading. We are lucky enough to be able to share our fabulous reading skills to help others. It also lets us practice reading with our storytelling voices.

Our Pumpkin

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In Room 14 we have been growing our Atlantic Giant Pumpkin for the pumpkin growing competition. We have been trying to water it everyday and check that no bugs are eating it. We also to look to see how it is growing what changes we notice over time. These photos were taken three days apart. Do you notice any difference?

Artist Visit

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Recently we were lucky enough to have a local artist come and visit the Totara Team to explain some different art techniques. This was a very interactive experience and we were able to try out these techniques as she was talking about them.

Cross Country

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On Friday the 6th of September we had our school cross country. Ready to race! We trained really hard and all of us completed the run. Running Hard Some of us even placed in the top six and will go to Interschools to represent Hamilton East School. Racing to the finish We all had a lot of fun. Thank you to all our friends and family who came down to cheer us on. Well done Room 14!

Our Writing Blog

In ICT during our Orchard time we have been learning about writing on our own blogs. We have used our own personal blog to publish writing about our senses and our weekend news. When we logged into our blogs we chose an avatar picture to go with our names. We then chose the background to our blog and we were able to choose lots of different styles to make it personal. Once we had set up our blogs we started to write our first posts. We have been using this blog as a tool to help us publish our writing. You can find a link to the blogs on this page under the Literacy links. The title is Our Writing. We hope you enjoy reading our stories.

Les Mills School of fitness

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On Monday we took part in the Les Mills School of Fitness. We did lots of activities to do with fitness. These included a warm up dance, aerobics, team relays around a circle, star jumps and burpees. We thought it was really, really fun and we're all looking forward to doing it again next Monday.

Using our senses

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In Room 14, we have been working on using our senses in our writing. After looking at a model of the writing, we used an image from a book to produce our own piece of shared writing. This book was No David by David Shannon. Click on the photo below to view our collaborative writing.   This model was taken from The Writing Book by Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey.

Paradise

Two weeks ago it was sign language week and we began learning to sign and sing 'Paradise'.  Paradise was written by Waimarie Smith from St Peter's School in Cambridge.  She won this years 'Hook-Line & Singalong' with this song.  As it is New Zealand Music month we have been learning this song and are going to sing it with the whole school this week.  You might see us on the MENZA website singing it.  Here we are practicing: MOV00976 from Ham East on Vimeo .

Creative writing using random words.

Stu Duval showed us how we can create imaginative stories by choosing three random words and then creating an interesting story from them.  The secret was to have some music playing to inspire us and to make sure we included the 5 'W's' (Who, What, When, Where, and Why).  Here are two of our stories using the words, 'dinosaur, kitten and chair'. --> The Kitten’s Dinosaur Chair Once there was a kitten named Dinosaur.   She loved her dinosaur beanbag.   Sometimes she nibbled on it as well.   One fateful day she nibbled on it too much and then it exploded!   BOOM!   Because it was such a big noise the people in the house came to see what it was.   “What happened?” asked the people.   Dinosaur was all right but the chair wasn’t.   Dinosaur was sad. One of the people in the house said, “Don’t worry.   We will get a new one.”   But nothing could replace that chair. By Ruby Kate The Kitten’s Dinosaur Chair Harry the kitten had a dinosaur chair and he
Stu Duval came to our school today and taught us a little about cartoon drawing. He also told us a wonderful story which he first drew in chalk pastels. Here are some of the pictures we took. Can you guess what the story is about?Stu Duval on PhotoPeach

Experimenting to see how we can reflect light.

Last week we had two wonderful students from Rm 11 help us with our experiments.  Here they are showing and explaining how we can change the path of the light by using mirrors to reflect it. MOV00939 from Ham East on Vimeo .

The history of Light

This term we are finding out about light. First we decided to look into the history of light. Right at the beginning of time we only had the sun and stars to provide our light. As time has gone on we have found ways to use fire to help light up our world and we have invented light devices - the light bulb, touches, etc. We found this wonderful website to help us understand how light has evolved.  Click on the link below to see.

Reading

We are reading journals to support our procedural writing. We look at what we will need, make sure we have everything and then follow the instructions. Look what we have made MOV00811 from Ham East on Vimeo .

Procedural Writing

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We are learning how to write using the procedure genre.  This is our first attempt explaining how to clean your teeth.

Fresh Bean Curry

We have had a few people ask us for the recipe to our bean curry after tasting it at the school harvest festival.  Here it is.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. FRESH BEAN CURRY Ingredients: ·       1 handful of freshly picked green beans – chopped ·       1 medium onion – chopped ·       2 medium tomatoes – chopped ·       2 cloves of garlic – pounded ·       ½ tsp cumin seeds ·       ½ tsp mustard seeds ·       ½ tsp turmeric powder ·       ½ tsp curry powder Method: ·       Heat the oil in pan and add onion. ·       Stir until transparent and add pounded garlic ·       Add tomatoes and cook until disintegrating ·       Add spices ·       Once well mixed add chopped beans and stir well (with salt to taste) ·       Cook to taste (ie whether medium or well done)   We prefer well don (soft beans) Serve with roti (flat Indian bread or rice)

Beans

This summer we grew tomatoes, lettuce and green beans in our garden.  The last lettuce was harvested a couple of weeks ago.  Last week we picked a big bag of green beans and a couple of tomatoes.  We were all asked to talk with our families and come up with some favourite bean recipes.  On Friday we cooked our beans up in the two recipes and tried them out to decide which one we like the best.  One recipe was green beans with apple and walnuts coated with honey and toasted sesame seeds. The other recipe was  a green bean curry which also used two tomatoes.  The winning recipe would be the one we would use this week for the school Harvest Festival. The two recipes were very different from each other.  We tried them with roti.  The winning recipe was a curried green beans recipe that Isikeli brought in.  Take a look: Green Bean harvesting and taste testing on PhotoPeach

Throwing and Catching

Throwing and Catching skills with Sonja from Ham East on Vimeo . Sonja, from Project Energize, came and showed us how to throw and catch.  We videoed some of the lesson so we could share her knowledge and tips with you.  She taught us catching and throwing skills and introduced some new games to us so we could practice what we had learned. We also wrote some stories about our lesson. This morning we went over to Dawson to learn to do ball skills. I laughed with joy. When you throw the ball and clap it is so hard to do. Catching balls and throwing, this was the best day of my life. But catching and throwing at the same time, now that’s hard isn’t it? I kept on trying with my catching. First we had to do our muscle arms and point to the target. When we threw we had to point to where we were going to throw. I think Sonja is a great Project Energizer Teacher. I like her working with us and I felt happy. My lips were curled up like a curled up caterpillar. When we were t

Showing and Not Telling

This week in writing we are focusing on showing and not telling. We have been trying to describe feelings without naming them. Here are two of our stories.   Scaredy Cat   It was a hot day with my cat. My pet and I moved our legs into the house. I put my hands around my cat and then I lifted my soft hands up. I put the edge of my lips up. The dog came sneakily through the big door. The dog jumped up as high as it could. The cat trembled. My poor cat! It went off my hand, from my thumb all the way to my palm. My hand blasted open. I said, “OUCH, OUCH!” I ran as fast as I could to my mum. “Mum, Mum, I need some plasters because my hairy cat scratched me”. My mum put the plaster on me. She asked, “Are you alright now?” I said, “Yes” and then I had a great time with my cat. By Isikeli  My Cats   One day my cat had kittens. Her face was all scrunched up. She meowed a mysterious meow. The kittens were shivering. Their faces were scrunched completely in a mess.

Turangawaewae

We have been learning about each other, our similarities and differences.  Today we made a video to show some of the things we have done. Blog Entry - Turangawaewae from Ham East on Vimeo .

Our Spelling Mountain

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We practice our spelling everyday. On Fridays we find out how many words we have learned and if we can move up the spelling mountain. This is what our mountain looked like at the beginning of the term. Look at how it looks now . . .   Look who is currently the King of our Mountain. I wonder who will join him next week . . . . and how long it will be till someone climbs off our mountain.

Kapahaka

MOV00706 from Ham East on Vimeo . It has been such lovely weather that our team decided to go outdoors to practice our waiata in the shade of lovely trees.  Here we are singing our school song

Portraits

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We are so proud of our portraits. They are all finished and proudly displayed in the classroom. We have made them into a book so you can have a look. What do you think?

Portraits

Portraits on PhotoPeach We have begun our self portraits.  We are using black and white portrait photographs which we are covering.  It is hard searching through all the magazines to find the right colours for our faces, hair, features and the background.  Once we have found a picture we rip the picture into tiny pieces and glue them on our photograph.  We are finding all sorts of interesting pictures that have the colours we need.  We have only just begun but they will look awesome when we have finished.

Writing

We are learning to plan our writing to show a beginning, middle and end to our stories.  We only allow five minutes to plan so we have to quickly sketch our ideas down and add a few important words to help us.  It is important that we sequence our ideas and so we number them.  Only then do we begin our stories.  We write on every other line to allow us to edit our writing. When we have finished we read our writing to make sure it makes sense.  Then we reread it and fix up any punctuation and underline our spelling tries.  After we have checked our spelling tries and corrected them using a spellwrite dictionary we read our story one more time.  This time we check that we have said everything we need to and not rambled.  We add in, or cross our unnecessary ramblings.  We also change any words we think we could substitute with a clearer word. We are learning lots. Writing on PhotoPeach

Swimming With Wendy

Wendy came to visit us and help us with our swimming. She Showed us how to kick properly and now we are practicing to kick from our hips without bending out knees. Swimming With Wendy on PhotoPeach

We are all the same

MOV00501 from Ham East on Vimeo .

2013 Class

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Our class for 2013 is already hard at work. This week we designed and wrote our class treaty. First we did an X-Chart to find out what we wanted our class to look, feel, sound, and think like. As we are part of the Totara team we decided to make our treaty look like a Totara tree and we have signed a leaf and added it above the treaty to to say we will try our best to follow the agreement. Have a look at our treaty.  Can you see us sitting under the Totara tree at school?   Our treaty says: To make our class a fun and busy place where we can all learn we agree to: ·     Respect each other, our environment, our school, and ourselves. We will use these important thoughts to the best of our ability so we have a most successful time at school. We broke down what we think 'respect' means and came up with thi s: Respect When we Respect each other we: ·       u se manners ·       are kind and we care for each other