Memories...

Today students in Room 11 started to think about the year that we had had.  We decided to create a piece of music, using looplabs, and add it to a slideshow of some of our favourite moments.  You can see some of our 'work in progress' below....

This afternoon we had a fun time with Room 14.  We played a game, similar to the chariot races we had last term.  This time Santa was sitting on his sleigh being pulled by 2 reindeers and we had to throw presents down chimneys as we passed them!  It was lots of fun!

Summer Festival!

Today Room 11 and Room 14 went to Auckland Town Hall and the Aotea Square to see the 'Summer Festival'.  We all had a great day here are a few of our comments.....

 I liked the last play because it was funny. (Alex)

I loved the first play because it was awesome.[ JONATHAN ]

The clown tried to pick my hair with his claw! (Lily)
 
Today I saw a clown that said "Rubbish, Rubbish, Rubbish!" - Very funny (Paris)

My favourite was the first play because a man was dressed as a girl (Cameron)

My favourite was the first play because it was funny when the clown squirted us with water! (Xanthe)

I am going to give it a nine out of ten! (Thomas)

It was so funny! (Sophia)

Clowning was fun! (Kane)

The dancing was really entertaining (Lucy)

Week 7!

This week we have been thinking about Christmas because there are only 3 weeks left until the end of the school year!
We made some advent boxes and have filled them with lollies, Xmas poems and a mini-origami Xmas tree.  We are going to take it in turns to open the boxes.

We have also been filling up our portfolios with all the tests and interesting work from throughout the year.  The portoflios are nearly popping because they are so full.  Some people naming no names, couldn't even get all their stuff into their portfolio!  We have also been making starts using a compass - some people found this easy, some hard and some medium!
We are also getting ready for the end of year Prize Giving at the Cathedral by doing lots of carol singing

Movie Magic

Room 11 have spent some time over the last couple of weeks learning how to make movies.  First, we wrote some recounts about camp.  We tried to write them so that next years year 3s could read them and learn about what camp was like.  Next we picked out some music and some pictures and created a powerpoint from them.  We are really good at making animations and transitions too so that was easy.
Finally we recorded ourselves reading our recount and we added that into the Powerpoint.  We rehearsed the timings of the slides and put it all together!  We haven't finished because it is so much work, but we will finish them next week.  In the meantime here is Jonathan's video so you can get an idea of what the finished ones will look and sound like!

Going...Going...GONE (nearly!)

Today we saw a partial solar eclipse!  A solar eclipse  is when, in the middle of the day it gets dark.  It doesn't happen much.  For this to happen the moon moves between the earth and the sun and blocks out the light.  We were very lucky that the moon moved in front of the sun where New Zealand is.

During the solar eclipse it was dark, a little scary.  You couldn't look straight at the sun because it can damage your eyes so you have to use special glasses.  We thought it was funny that the birds stop moving during the eclipse because they think it's night time.  We saw a video of a full solar eclipse and we thought it looked like a black hole.

This afternoon we made our own solar systems with just the sun, the earth and the moon.  We used compasses to draw the circles.  Many of us had never used them before.  We can turn them two ways.  You can turn the earth around the sun and the moon around the earth.  We can even line them up to show how a solar eclipse works.

 

C Minus 2 days

We are all very excited in Room 11.  That's because on Wednesday we are going to go to Shakespear Park!  The activities that we're doing are: Sailing, kayaking and orienteering.  Please remember all of the items on your gear list.
This afternoon we were visited by a real author.  Her name is, Julie Scott.  She wrote a book called, 'The Chittens' which is all about a girl called Millie who had a really messy room. One day she founnd some creatures called Chittens living there.  A 'Chitten' is a made up creature but it is basically a baby griffin.  A Griffin is half eagle and half lion, so a baby griffin is half chick and half kitten!

Lilliputians!

We have been reading Gulliver's Travels as part of our 'Journey through Literature'
We have been making some wire stick people that will be Lilliputians (what a weird name!) as part of a display.  Some people thought that is was quite was and some hard. Some people took a long time to get their model right.  After we finished making our wire models we cut some fabric and made clothes for them.

 We looked at what people wore in 1720, which is when Gulliver's Travels was written.  That's almost 300 years old!  That's even older than Mr Miller!

Keep telling me what to do!

Today has been a day about instructions.
In  writing we wrote some awesome recipes for Bob Monkey.  We had lots of cool ideas like Banana Hotdogs and Hazelnut Pizza.  When we write procedures we take care to make them easy for other people to understand.  We also used great adjectives like, 'Delicious', 'Scrumptious' and 'Awesome' to make people want to follow the recipe.

 For maths we learned about compass directions.  We wrote instructions like, 'Take 14 steps north, then take 20 steps west'  We planted flags to mark the treasure!  Then we handed our instructions to a friend and let them try to find our flags.  It was a lot of fun!
This afternoon we have been thinking about journeys.  We tried to describe what a journey was and about how there are all sorts of journeys.  We also thought about any journeys that we have been on.  To finish off we played a game where we wrote a type of journey on a piece of paper and somebody else had to act it out.  It was really silly, but lots of fun.

Back to Ancient Greece

Today we continued to write procedures.  A procedure is a set of instructions.  We are writing procedures about origami.  Today we wrote interesting introductions for them.  
This afternoon we went to see the Greek projects that the other classes did last term.  
Oliver thought the projects were really interesting.  Max thought they were good because they had lots of facts and people had put lots of effort into them.  Jonathan thought that people were smart because some people made shields and some made other interesting things.

Just the two of us....

 Today day Room11 wrote some cool definitions from different reading books. Definitions are what a word means.  We wrote the definitions onto cards that we will use for a guessing game.  Here is an example...

Summer: A hot season when lots of beautiful flowers grow.

This afternoon for maths we made 'mini-me's We measured parts of our bodies and worked out what a quarter of it was.  We used our times tables to help us.  For example, Connor's top of his leg is 56cm.  1/4 of 56cm is 14cm (we know this because 14x4=56) so he cut a strip of paper 14cm long and stuck it onto black paper.  
We then did the same for other parts of our body.  When we had finished we had a model of ourselves that is 1/4 of the real size! Simple!

Term 4!

Can you believe it!  Term 4 already!  It hardly seems long ago we were all new to Room 11, now we're in the last term!

This term our topic will be 'Journeys through Literature'.  We will be thinking about the connection between journeys and discoveries and how and what we can discover through books. 
This is a good chance to get our reading mileage up!  Well done to all of Room 11 who have been filling in their reading diary regularly and collecting bonus table points.  We haven't named our tables yet this term so be thinking of your favourite book about a journey for some ideas!

We also welcome Lucy into our class.  Lucy joins us from Hamilton.  Over the next few weeks we should also see Paris and Nicole return from China!

Spelling this week was all to do with the 'e' sound in words.  We looked at different ways to make the sound (with a 'y', an 'i', an 'ea' an 'e' or an 'ee').  We then looked up some interesting words for our homework.  We also have mathletics this week so remember to check your accounts for your activities!

Week 11

This week we have been busy writing letters to our penpals in England.  We tried to think about things we might have in common.  We realised that England has just had the Olympics and we have enjoyed watching the games so we asked about that.  We also found out that children in England have just finished their summer holidays so we asked them about that and also tried to think about what we like to do during our holidays.
Today we got into buddies and wrote about our school.  Each group chose some place that we liked and wrote about it.  The cool thing was that we could choose what style of writing to use.  Some of us wrote poems about the rock gardens, some wrote information reports about the sandpit and others wrote recounts about the library!  We even wrote a set of instructions for how to use the playground!  Mr Miller was really impressed with what a great job we did.

How to use the playground

A poem about the trees

Our favourite computers lesson

Memories of the library

Today was also the year 3/4 speech final.  Well done to Terri and Connor.  You both did a terrific job and we were all proud of you.

Greek Projects

Today we shared our projects. We have been working really hard on them for the last 3 weeks. We saw lots of different and interesting ideas. We learned lots of interest facts. Here are some of the photos of the day, more will follow over the next few days.

ALSO! Tomorrow we have tennis in the afternoon. We will finish tennis at 3pm and walk back so we may not arrive back at school until about 3:10. It is also mufti and sausage sizzle day, so bring so bring some coins for lunch!