I....Parnellius!

Today we started our calendar art.  We are doing paper mosaics for Christmas.  We think they look pretty neat!

This afternoon we went into the hall with room 14 and we had blankets.  2 people had to pull a person on the blanket.  We pretended they were chariots and we had races.  Room 11 won 3 times, Room 14 won 5 times.  At the end Thomas, Alex, Cameron and Morgan pulled Mr Miller and we won that race.  It was fun and good exercise and quite tiring.  People were screaming so loud because they were so enthusiastic!

Hooked!

Today we have been busy writing speeches.  We learned about 'hooks'.  A hook is when you say or write something that makes people pay attention and want to find out more.  It is called a hook because when you fish you use a hook to stop the fish from escaping.  In writing you use your words to stop the reading from escaping! 

We also talked about our Greek projects.  Most of us have decided on what we are going to do and many of us have started our research!

We have also been learning about fractions.  We had to solve problems like...There are 20 children on a bus and 1/4 have red shoes.  How many have red shoes?  It was a bit tricky at first but then we remembered that the bottom number in a fraction means 'cut the total into this number of groups.'
 20 cut into 4 groups is 5.  So 1/4 of 20 = 5 
Simple!

Greek Projects

Today Room 11 spent lots of time rehearsing for our assembly.  We all enjoyed sharing our work and we did a great job reciting our poems.  Sadly we didn't have time to sing, 'The invertebrate song.'  Ah well, maybe next time.  You can see the powerpoint of our poems below....

NO HOMEWORK FOR 2 WEEKS!

Well, not quite.  We are going to create projects about some part of the ancient Greek civilization that interests us.  We have each taken home an instruction sheet that explains what to do and how our projects will be marked. They are due in Week 10.  So to give us a chance to make this, there will be no spelling or reading homework (because we will need to do lots of reading and correct spelling when we make our projects!)

Cross Country!

Today was cross country.  Lots of us found it very hard but we didn't complain we just tried our hardest.  Especially well done to Alex, who finished 2nd in the year 3 boys, and Rici who finished 5th for the girls.

Next Monday we are having our assembly at about 2pm.  We will be sharing our art and poetry.  We will also be singing one of our favourite songs from last term....The Invertebrate Song.

In case we have forgotten, we can practice it over the weekend by clicking on the link below

Kiwi Kapers!

Today we went to Kiwi Kapers.  We really enjoyed listening to all the different instruments.  It was really good to see all the dancers, especially because Xanthe was one of them!
We all had a different favourite part, for some of us it was the drumming, others liked the Zumba and some liked was the flute and harp duo the most.

 In the afternoon we went to see the intermediates technology projects.  They have been learning about different 'Laws of Physics' and have made marble tracks to demonstrate things like gravity and friction.  We also saw the model waka they had made.  We thought they had done a really good job and we cant wait till we're in year 7/8 so we can do the same!

Finally, Room 11's blog is 100 today!  This is our 100th post and we've also had nearly 6000 visits from family and friends all over the world.  WOW!

The future is now!

Next Monday we are going to be hosting the school assembly.  As part of this we will be sharing some Haiku poetry that we wrote about ourselves and displaying some pictures that we have created. 

The poetry and the pictures are both to do with what we would liketo be when we are older.  Here are a few of our pictures.

Week 6

This week we will be continuing with our speeches.  By now we have all chosen our topic so ask your child about theirs!  We are researching our topic by thinking of questions that we want the answers to.  We can continue to research at home by asking parents questions about our topic but we must remember not to write the speech at home.

For spelling this week we have looked at how you change the 'y' at the end of some adjectives to 'ier' or 'iest'.  This is the list of words we came up with.  We were even able to spell made-up words correctly.  For example, if we saw the word 'Ploothiest' then we knew how to spell, 'Ploothier' or 'Ploothy'!

y	-ier (better/ more)	-iest  (best/ most)
Yummy	Yummier	Yummiest
Crazy	Crazier	Craziest
Funny		Funniest
Silly	Sillier
Spiky	Spikier
Naughty		Naughtiest
Chilly		Chilliest
Happy		Happiest
Angry		Angriest
Hungry	Hungrier
Wobbly		Wobbliest
Smelly	Smellier
Scary		Scariest

Opposite day

Today we took a break from speech writing and we wrote some poetry instead.  We have been learning about an 'Oxymoron'.  An oxymoron is when you put two or more words together that are impossible or don't make sense, like 'Freezing Sunshine', 'Hot ice' , 'Loud whisper' or 'Quiet scream'.  We also looked at a famous poem called, 'Two Dead Boys' that is full of lines that don't make sense like 'One bright day in the middle of the night'

We also made lots of 3d shapes.  We used like faces, edges and vertices.  We also found out that you can cut a prism anywhere along it and you will still have the same shape.

Thank you to Thomas and his mother who baked Room 11 lots of yummy cakes for morning tea!  We all enjoyed eating them.

Week 5!

This week we have been thinking about our speech. We have been choosing topics, writing down what we know and writing our first paragraphs.

We have also been finishing off our Greek vases and learning about the different types of jobs people did.  We found out that some jobs were done by slaves or freemen.  Slaves did the hard and dirty work but freemen did the other jobs.  If you went to the doctors in ancient Greece you might be in trouble because they liked to chop off parts of your body!
 

In maths we have been thinking about our times tables and how you can solve tricky sums by splitting them up.  Like 17x5 can be split into 10x5=50 and 7x5=35.  Then you add 50+35=85.  So 17x5=85!  Simple!

We have also been doing some work on algebra.  There is a great balancing game that we like that you can try by clicking the picture below.

We have also been learning about different shapes.  We found that you can use a triangle to make lots of different shapes.  For a really interesting website about shapes, click on the picture below.

 

Mini Olympics - An awesome occassion!

Room 11 had such an awesome time at the Parnell Mini-Olympics yesterday. It was such an exciting time that it would be almost impossible to write it all down. Instead here are a few comments from some of the class.

Xanthe enjoyed battle of the bulge because she had never done it before and it was fun.

Kane's favourite activity was the stilt walk because it reminded him of his old school.

Jonoathan liked the trolley because it kept breaking!

Anguie remembers Mr Miller trying to fix the trolley and dragging people around!

Cameron remembers winning the gold medal!

Oliver liked the ski run because it was like powder skiing.

Fabian liked the ski run too because it was funny when people fell down!

Terri remembered that Latvia lost!

Lily liked the trolley run because we went really fast.

Morgan also liked the trolley run because it was like driving in a car!

The man who handed out the medals to team Tonga is Barry Magee, a real Olympian who won a bronze medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics and trained alongside Peter Snell and Murray Halberg as one of Arthur Lydiard's pupils. So we were very honored to have him hand us our awards!

The countdown has begun!

We have had such a busy couple of days.  Yesterday we were really interested to find out more about the eruption at Mount Tongariro.  We watched some news and talked about how Rotorua and Taupo were so volcanic.  We decided to write some poetry about it.  We started by writing down 20 things you might see at a volcano.  It is actually harder than it sounds.  We all managed to write down the easy things like rocks, lava, smoke and ash but by the time we got to number 15 and 16 we were having to be really creative.  We managed to come up with some awesome ideas like 'burnt skis' and 'abandoned toys'.  Then we chose some of our favourite ideas and thought about why they were there and what had happened to them.  We wrote as much as we could for 5 minutes without stopping.  Then we picked our favourite lines and published them.  It was a lot of work but what we ended up with sounded really great, here are two examples:

Toys burnt

on the ground

Rock fell

Baby ran

buggy left.

 Alex

Lava red

and orange

Scare me I run

Leave my toys and dinner

behind me

Terri 

Today we have been getting ready for our mini Olympics.  We picked our pictures out of a hat to decide if we are in Team Tonga or Team Latvia.  

Some of us painted flags and banners to support our team. We also spent some time practicing the different events we will take part in tomorrow.  Mr Miller was really proud about how sensible we all were and how hard we were trying.  This afternoon we looked at some ancient Greek pottery and tried to design our own Greek vases.  They look pretty neat!

Don't forget that tomorrow you can come dressed in your countries national colours.  Team Tonga are red and white but Team Latvia are white and red!

Week 4

Today assembly was cancelled but the year 3s got together and sang a fun song anyway.
In writing we wrote some instructions for how to play 'Higher/ Lower'
In reading we read a chapter from a book and answered 7 questions.  It was about a cyclopes, they are giants and have a huge eye on their forehead.
We are still practicing our times tables. Today we sang the 6x table song.

Week 3: Done!

Today we have been continuing to learn about some of the different Greek gods and goddesses.  We visited a website and found lots of information.  We had to pick out what we thought was the important information, then copy and paste it into a powerpoint.  It was a good chance to practice using keywords and making decisions about if a sentence is important.

We had our basic facts test in the middle block today.  It was quite tricky but some of us still managed to beat our score from last week.  We have to remember not to be afraid of division and times tables questions!

This afternoon we worked on some art.  We decided to make some pictures of Greek gods.  We think they will look pretty neat when they are finished.

Finally, have a look at this picture that Rici brought in...

She told us that when she was in London she was lucky enough so see one of the torch bearers and he let them hold it while he took their picture.  How awesome is that!

Sizzle Sizzle

Today was mufti and sausage sizzle day.  We all like days like these! 


This morning we started to learn about some of the Greek gods and goddesses.  We wrote down the important information about them and thought about what they would look like.  We tried to explain why they looked the way they looked.  For example Hera was the goddess of marriage so we thought she would look pretty and important. 

SPECIAL DELIVERY!!!!

We were really excited today because we opened our new letters from Bardwell!  We are enthusiastic about writing back and were surprised to learn that they are all on holiday!  At least that gives us time to write something special. It felt really nice to get a letter that was addressed to us and to learn something about our penpals.  It was sad that we can't write to some of our new friends because they have moved school but we are also happy that we have made new friends!

We also received an envelope full of information and wonderful writing about Bardwell Villiage and Bardwell school.  We especially liked the bottle greenhouse and the willow dome.  Bardwell students are so creative!  We have got to do lots of thinking about what we can write and share with them!

Also, we have been learning about probability.  We rolled a dice 100 times and wrote down tally marks for how many times we rolled each number.  We found out that we could never be certain which number was going to roll next and that there was an equal chance of getting any number.


Lastly, we did some cross country practice.  It was quite easy for some of us and we did as many as 5 laps.  But some people thought it was tiring and only managed 3 or 4 laps.