Collecting Pooh Sticks!

We went to the beach to collect pieces of driftwood to use as our Pooh Sticks (from Winnie-the-Pooh). 

2015 started with a blast

We are now heading into Week 4 of the school year - and we've started with a blast. We are working on setting up routines and coming to a shared understanding of how we work in Room 10.

In Maths we have been brushing up on our Place Value knowledge and learning some different games along the way.

We have also been looking at reading and have worked on a reading goal for everyone. This is the goal we will work on over the next few weeks in our own reading time.

 We have had our first team assembly and kapa haka session as well. Taiaha for boys has started on Wednesday afternoons with Matiu te Huki.

Our Planet

This week we looked at a very cool image from NASA of Earth from space and wrote about what we could see. Here are some of our stories.

I can see the clouds blocking some of the sea;

North, South, and Central America;

The green countries are very big;

The clouds are like white pale snow;

The sea is baby blue colour;

The clouds are swaying;

The planet is a multi colour world.
By Abe

Well, Earth, let me see. The clouds are like crows circling their prey. Land is scattered all over the Earth. Space, that's where Earth lives. There are lot of planets, but Earth is special, because we have life. Space surrounds the Earth, like it’s waiting to attack. Earth is in the shape of a ball. Antarctica lives at the bottom of the Earth as it spins around. The white puffy clouds make shapes in your mind like dancing dinosaurs and singing goldfish. And that is what Earth looks like to me.

by Ellie

This is the little marble shaped planet we live on; Earth.

The thin white clouds drift in swirls over the dark blue ocean,which covers most of this beautiful planet. The green and yellow countries look like little squiggly shapes that a child has drawn. Antarctica sits proudly on top of Earth with the Arctic hanging on tight at the bottom. Both of them are lovely snow covered countries. The surroundings of Earth is black, nothing but scary dark black.

By Nina

First day 2014

Time for 'Listen to Reading'

Friday SODA - 5 word sentence

Today for our SODA (Start of Day Activity) we had to look at a picture and write a 5-word sentence about it. Here is the picture and our sentences.

• There's an old rocky temple.
• Rocky cliff beside a forest.
• An incredibly old castle pillar.
• It's a pile of rocks.
• A fun rock tower party.
• Made by ages of old.
• Piles of rocks stand strong.
• It is covered with snow.
• Old stone outpost long abandoned.
• Do not cross these rocks.
• Ancient ruins of crumbling history.
• An unfinished little rock house.
• It's absolutely solid as rock.
• Stacks of flat grey rocks.
• Cool old crumbling rock structure.
• Ancient ruins of crumbling stone.
• Do not climb these rocks.
• A really big rocky mountain.
• Please don't walk on rocks.
• Old, grey, crumbling, broken Stonehenge.
• Block by block standing proud.
• It is Stonehenge's big brother.
• Forbidden access to rocky landmark.

The Lorax Part Two

Today (Tuesday) we looked at the Once-ler

What kind of person is the Once-ler?

• Greedy; wanting more of everything; loves money; selfish; disrespectful to nature; ignorant; careless; self-centred; bully;
• Greedy; selfish; disrespectful
• Rude, selfish, greedy, stupid, stubborn
• Mean, horrible, cruel, vicious
• Mean and selfish,
• Greedy man who will do anything for money; selfish, silly man with a ‘stupid’ idea

Why won't he listen to the Lorax? 

• He’s ignorant; didn’t think what the Lorax had to say mattered; forgot what you need to live
• Thinks his business is better than the environment; he wants to be famous
• Because he is stubborn
• Because he wants money; wants to make his company bigger; he is selfish and only cares about what he wants
• He thinks money is better than nature; he thinks everybody needs Thneeds; if he doesn’t listen to the Lorax he will be rich; he wants more money;
• Because he wants a lot of money and won’t stop until he gets it

The Lorax says to the Once-ler, "You are crazy with greed." Why does the Lorax say that?

• Because he wants heaps of money, heaps of Thneeds, and wouldn’t listen
• Because he wants everything his way
• He said everyone needs a Thneed before he had even sold one
• Maybe because he was crazy for cutting the trees down; for not listening and cutting down the trees when he was told not to;
• Because he’s greedy; he’s chopping all the trees down to get rich;
• Because it’s more important to look after the environment than neglecting it for ‘pieces of paper’; the Lorax knows what will happen;

Do you agree or disagree?

• Agree: the place was a paradise; he ruined it
• Disagree: he wasn’t crazy with greed; he became crazy with greed - no one tried hard enough to stop him, it wasn’t just the Once-lers fault
• Disagree: he’s greedy not crazy

What do you think?

The Lorax Part One

Today in class we looked at the Lorax - we will be talking about various issues that arise in the book - and discussing our response to them.

What was the land of the Lorax like before the Once-ler arrived?

• beautiful, peaceful, relaxing, lovely, happy
• beautiful, clean, populated, smog-less, exquisite, fresh, pure, nature-filled, fruity, fishy
• beautiful, paradise
• colourful, peaceful, loads of animals, sunny, heaps of trees, lots of fun
• beautiful and romantic; perfect; colourful trees; lots of growth

Did it seem like someplace you'd like to live?

• yes - wildlife, safe environment
• yes - because it was clean and fresh, and it seemed cleaner than 100% pure NZ
• yes definitely - because it’s a beautiful place
• yes - nice and peaceful and lovely; lots of things to do; trees look fun to climb
• yes - the trees are pretty and colourful and silky
• yes - really beautiful singing fish and environment
• yes - it looks cool and has trees and singing fish
• no - because of the singing fish every morning

What parts of your own environment would you be sad to see go?

• the park on Simpson Cres, our wildlife, our mountains, the beach
• grass, trees - they provide oxygen, entertainment, and shelter, Kapiti Island - it provides an area for native birds
• the trees
• Kapiti Island - nature reserve filled with birds; Otaihanga reserve; the clear sea at Pukerua Bay; Reikorangi animal park; Matthews Park
• Pohutukawa trees, kiwi, Kapiti Island
• rivers and seas - places to swim
• Pukeko

How to create chocolate out of nothing

Today in maths we tried to work out if the YouTube video about creating chocolate out of nothing really works. 

Lewis' Showme

Eva and Gwyneth's Showme

Rose and Lily's Showme

Liam's Showme

Samuel's Showme

Geena and Jenna's Showme

Aiden's ShowMe

What if friends only lasted for a week?

Well, for starters that would be a world I would not want to live in. Who will come over? Who will I hangout with at school? Worst thing ever to happen to me!

By Archie


If you're friends with a friend that means you will only last a week too. So you can make more friends each week.

By Gwyneth


If friends only lasted a week I would be so lonely and sad. I might make more friends but they wouldn't be the same as my old friends. I wish my friends stay friends with me. If friends only lasted a week I would want to go to school on Saturday and Sunday as well.

By Samantha


If I only had friends for one week I will get new friends every week, or I'll have the same friends every two weeks.

By Sacha


If friends only lasted a week I would be really sad and I would miss them heaps. I would come to school on Saturday and Sunday as well, otherwise I would be really lonely. You could always make new friends but they wouldn't be the same. 

By Courtney


If friends only lasted a week it would be really annoying because you would have to keep on having to ask them to be your friend for another week on and on all over again at the end of every week.

By Chanade

It is impossible. Why would it happen? And if it did it would have to be a world wide law. And who would want to make a law that stops people from having the same friend for over a week?

By Liam

How to play regions

If  you follow these steps you will have a fun game of Regions with your class

You will need........

• a netball court(to play on)
• 16 or more people
• 3 taggers
• 3 equal regions

Steps needed to play the game.......

1. The teacher chooses 3 taggers
2. The 3 taggers have one region each
3. All other classmates go to start
4. The taggers call 1 person each to run
5. After they run all the other classmates run and try not to get tagged
6. No goose guarding

(Goose guarding means standing directly in front of the person you are trying to tag.
The last person who was not tagged is the winner!!

HOPE YOU HAVE A FUN GAME OF REGIONS!!

By Samantha

Gnarly Maths

Today Ms Fothergill introduced us to 'Gnarly Maths' - it's hard problem posing/solving that we will be doing every Friday.

We had to work in pairs with someone new and work our way through the clues in order to solve the problem. It was very hard.

Here is where you can find the problem we worked on:

http://nrich.maths.org/2127

Gnarly Maths Problem Time on PhotoPeach

Class Treaty

In order to create our class treaty we brainstormed the things we needed to have and do in order to master a new skill - we thought about things like netball, skiing, Irish dancing, playing Halo and Minecraft and lots of other things like that.

Then we wrote these on the board and had a look at how they matched our school values - curiosity, involvement, respect, responsibility, communication, and resilience. (Ms Fothergill added a couple of ideas and Lewis suggested we should also add fun to the list.)

Then Ms Fothergill put the words/statements into a wordle for us.

Favourite Games

Today we got together in small groups to identify the outdoor games we love the most. Ms F said she only knows a couple and that we needed a bigger variety of games to play.

We wrote down the names of the games and a short description on paper and then Ms F collated them. There were two that were the most popular - Regions and Cannon Ball - so we then had to decide as a class which was the most popular. Regions won.
Tomorrow we will play Regions and then on Monday we will play Cannon Ball.