Minibeast Designs

As part of our topic work with Room 17, the children have been designing their own minibeasts which they are going to make next week, using a variety of materials. Here are some of their designs!

Itchy Insect Art

I'm sure you will agree that our Mosquito and Sandfly art has turned to be fantastic!

Reading Superstars!

Well done to Ben and Ben, the first 2 children in the class to read for 40 nights, and earn themselves a Reading Reward!

Minibeast Kahoot

We had fun today doing a Minibeast Kahoot with Room 17! It turns out that the kids have actually learnt and remembered a LOT - which is always great to find out!

Monarch Caterpillars

Thanks to Claudia we have Monarch Caterpillars in the classroom, and we have been enjoying watching them munching away at the Swan Plants, going for little walks around the classroom and then (sometimes!) coming back to the plant to make a chrysalis. We can't wait for the Monarch Butterflies to emerge!

The Snail and the Whale

We are looking at WOW words this week. Wow words are words,  phrases or similes, that POP out of the page, making our writing interesting and exciting to read and stopping the reader from falling asleep. As part of our Wow words focus we read The Snail and The Whale, which is a fantastic story full of amazing descriptive vocabulary.

These are the descriptive sentences that the children wrote about why the other snails should also climb on the whale's tail:

James C: The snails should go on a spectacular adventure, so they can see the exciting things that he saw.

Grace: The snails should go with the whale because they would get an amazing, magical view of the big, blue world.

Kate: The snails should go because they might want to see the dangerous animals and the flaming volcanoes.

Emmy: I think that they should go because they can see the shining water and the slippery, soft dolphins.

Makai: I think they should go so they can see the amazing things that they haven't seen before, like   what their friend the tiny snail saw, and instead of being slow and not traveling much, they can go fast around the smooth, blue ocean, in the wind.

Insect Art!

Not the obvious choice for an Art project, but I promise that when these sandfly and mosquito art works are completed, they are going to look fabulous!

Triathlon Superstars!

Congratulations to these superstars who took part in the Weekbix Tryalthlon in Nelson at the weekend! Room 16 are all very proud of you.

New student in Room 16!!!

We were surprised to see this new student in Room 16 this morning, sharing the Star of the Day chair with Ben!

Writing Animal Reports

This week we have been continuing with our writing focus on reports. The children have been learning how to make and organise notes by watching a short clip about an animal. Then they used the notes to write a report using subheadings like Habitat, Diet, Appearance and Facts. They wrote this report in their books, as it is important that they write with a pencil and paper as much as they do on the laptops. It's great to see them being able to use all the different working areas in the classroom and awesome to see that the children understand that sometimes the best place to work is in their own place, away from distractions!

Kowhai Singing :-)

We love getting together for singing as a syndicate!

MVI 1580 from c on Vimeo.

What does good writing look like?

This year we will be thinking about what good writing looks like and what each person needs to do with their writing to improve it and make it even better. Here are some examples of great writing!

Thinking through a problem!

I love that you can see clearly how Ben is THINKING through this equation! Maths is all about being able to talk and explain what you are doing and Ben is an expert at this. Even when he thinks he is wrong, he keeps thinking about it, until he figures out what to do.

maths from Naomi on Vimeo.

Hexagons Maths Group

Making up your own written word problem for an equation is actually a very good test of how well you understand the equation. Kate and Drew did a really good job with this one!