A day of some comparison

This morning we learned about metaphors.  A metaphor is when you compare two things and say they are the same.  Here are some of our ideas.


Xanthe: The girl was a pretty diamond.
Jonathan: I am a cheeky monkey.
Alex: The stingray was barbed wire.
Kane: Fabian was a fit cat.
Cameron: My friend was a mad fireball.


In the middle block we showed our projects to other classes.  We also went to other classes and compared ours to theirs.  We looked at some really cool projects and found out lots of new facts.  We also got some ideas for how we can do projects in the future.

This afternoon we talked about ways that we have made the class nicer and more positive. We thought of so many ideas and then picked the ones that we think we do the most.  These ideas will appear on our reports in a few weeks.

 This afternoon we did handwriting.  We read a poem called 'Waiting' that was full of metaphors and similes.  This is the poem, can you spot them all!
 

Waiting

Like diners at a fine restaurant,

the white-coated seagulls

squat on their liquid blue seats,

eyes on their waiter – the switching tide

preparing to bring in their meal

fish fresh from the sea.

John Malone

Kelly Tarlton's

Today we went to Kelly Tarlton's to learn more about the deep blue sea. It was really cool to see some of the creatures that we had been learning about. We were lucky enough to have a lesson by a real marine expert called Florence, who showed us lots of interesting pictures about some of the creatures of the deep! Take a look at our photos and don't forget to leave a comment to say what you think!

Friday!

In the morning we went in to the ICT room and did some math with Mr miller all morning. After that we had morning tea after we finished our submarines off and had lunch.

Today's blog was written and photographed by Alex and Connor.

Making Submarines

Today we made submarines and they looked awesome.  We made them from bits of junk like cardboard boxes, old plastic bottles and other bits and pieces.  We painted them in different colours and then left them to dry.

We did this because of our topic and also because next week we are having a sharing day where each class is going to visit every other class to see what interesting things they have been making.

Testing, Testing...1...2...3!

Today Room 11 have been busy completing writing, reading and maths tests!  We wrote about a family event, we did a basic facts test and we completed a comprehension activity to see how well we were reading.  It was a lot of hard work but Mr Miller told us it was going to help him write our reports that will go home this term.  So we all tried our best!
To reward us for all our hard work, we had some jelly and watched a bit of a movie.  Thank you to Fabian and his mum who provided the delicious jelly!

This afternoon we split the class in half.  Half went to Ms Macrae for dance while the others stayed with Mr Miller and had some really interesting discussions.  We read a sad book called Rahui about a boy who had drowned and it made us wonder questions like, 'Why is it wrong to play in graveyards?' and 'Why is it ok to fish for snapper, but not for dolphins?'  Mr Miller was really impressed with the ideas and thoughts that we came up with.

Monday Monday

Today we spent some time thinking about the things we can do to make our writing more interesting.  We remembered that we can use interesting adjectives (it was good that so many of us remembered what an adjective was!) and speech marks too.  Then we did some writing about our weekend, some clever people even managed to write their work into paragraphs to keep different events separate.

We did a maths test last week on time and it turns out that a lot of us don't know the months of the year in order or how to spell them correctly.  So we decided to fix that today!  We sung a (very catchy and a little annoying!) song to help us then created a 'Crazy Calendar' full of silly dates like, 'Thursday 15th March - Climbed Mount Everest' or 'Friday 25th June - Dinner with a movie star'.  We even found a secret message hidden in the letters in the months of the year.....

Royal NZ Ballet Visit

Today we were lucky enough to be visited by the Royal NZ Ballet company. They started off with a long warm up to stretch all their muscles. We were amazed by how far they could stretch!
Then they showed us some of the moves they can do, like pirouettes or jumping high. We found out that all of their moves are called French names because that's where ballet comes from.
Finally they did a short routine from their next performance, Cinderella. It was amazing. We liked the lovely costumes. We also loved how the characters moved in special ways to suit their personality. The grasshopper jumped lots and the silly stepsister kept on falling over.

In the afternoon we watched three more project presentations. Well done Xanthe, Kane and Oliver!

Deep Blue Project

Deep Blue Project, a set on Flickr.

Today we had a lot of fun sharing our awesome projects. We have worked so hard to finish them and it was fantastic to see them all together.
We spent a lot of time reading each other's work and giving feedback to each other, saying what we liked, what we learned and what each person might like to do differently next time. In the afternoon some of us had a chance to present their work to the class and answer any questions that people had. We were very grown up and only asked sensible questions.
Room 11 have really enjoyed making these projects and can't wait for the next challenge!

Slime Fish!

We have been getting really good at writing introductions for information reports.  We pretended that we had discovered a new species of fish and we wrote a short introduction about it.  We found out that an introduction is used to tell you what the writing is going to be about.

In topic we learned about the Atlantic Hagfish.  It is really gross!  It makes hairy slime to stop predators from eating it.  The slime is so thick it can actually suffocate other fish!  The worst part is how it feeds.  It makes a hole in bigger fish and crawls inside, then it eats the fish from the inside out!  YUK!  Thankfully they are only found about 4km down so we will all be safe to paddle at the beach!

Goodbye to Zara!

Today we learned how to do an introduction for an information report.  We wrote all about ourselves.  We did some singing this afternoon, we sang count on me, yellow submarine, over the rainbow and a Maori song (but we don't know what it was called!)

Also, Zara brought in a special cake to say goodbye because tomorrow is her last day.  We will all miss her and we wish her all the best in her new school.

Mother's Day

Room 11 have been thinking about their mothers today!  We can't give anything away in case some of them are reading this blog but we have tried to do something nice for their special day on Sunday!

Don't forget though, that this is also the last weekend you have to get your projects finished.  By the sounds of it, most are nearly finished but there's probably just enough time for one last brush of paint, another trip to the library, one more page on the powerpoint or maybe just a bit more websearching.  One  thing's for sure, we should see some fantastic efforts next week!

Good luck as well to all the students who are going to the Cathedral as part of the United Nation's Family Day.  Thank you to Shireen who has been organising this entirely by herself, I hope that it sounds as awesome as possible.

Finally, have a look at these awesome poems from Xanthe and James.  Room 11 managed to write, edit and publish their own poems this week and Mr Miller is so proud of how quickly they have learned how to create such interesting pieces in such a short space of time with only a little help.  Well done!