Swimming

We are LOVING our swimming lessons. Here are a few group photos of what we have been learning to do.

Another Storybird story to enjoy

We are very enthusiastic writers in Room 2 at the moment! Here is a Storybird Story from Aileen to enjoy. Post her a comment to let her know what you think of her story.

Exciting Friday news

Yone told us about how she is excited about maybe going to a ballet class. 

Henry told us about going to the warehouse with his nana and poppa. They bought him a fighting trashie. It spins on hard things like a table. It can spin fast and for a long time. 

Misha told us that her nana and poppa are going to look after her because her mum and dad are going to the movies.

Evie told us that her grandma and grandad are going to come back from Auckland and she might be going to pick them up from the airport.

Jess told us that it was her mum's birthday yesterday. She bought her mum some flowers and she put the flowers on the table. Room 2 would like to say happy birthday to Stacey.

Alieen told us about going to an Indian show on Saturday. She drank a fruity juice and saw lots of her friends dancing on the stage.

Jasmine told us that she ate dinner last night at a restaurant. She also brought along a red nose which Aileen is modelling. It is for Red Nose Day. She also told us about buying new pink polka dot togs with pink goggles.

Elsie told us about Lenox coming to stay at her house tonight. He is a baby and her mum will need to go shopping today to get food for him.

Gloria told us that it was her mum's birthday yesterday. Gloria and her dad made a cake for her mum. Room 2 would like to say Happy Birthday to Susan.

Jackson told us about his birthday in 5 more sleeps. He is going to be going to time one.

Benjamin to us about getting some new clothes because he doesn't fit all his old clothes. He got jarmies and socks and jerseys! 

Oliver told us about playing with his green transformer plane yesterday. It can turn into a different transformer. 

Storybird

Today we tried used Storybird and tonight I was lucky enough to get our first storybird story sent to me.  Have a read of Yone's story and leave her a comment about her writing.  Well done Yone for having a go at writing your own story.

Discovery Time

This term our focus in Discovery Time is learning to be responsible. We have a range of activities to choose from while we are practising and learning what it means to be responsible. Here are some photos of children in Room 2 and what they have been doing during Discovery Time. It is always an exciting time with a lot of discussion and awesome questions to find out answers too.

Look at the concentration and focus on some of the faces!  This is one of the parts we have been discussing when we talk about people who are responsible.  They get on with their activity and finish it to the best they can do.  If they need help, they ask people around them until they figure it out.  We are all trying to improve our work and to make good choices for our learning and behaviour.

Gloria was a Discovery Time Star today because she learnt how to make a knot and then used it while weaving on the collaborative hoola-hoop loom.  Yone also learnt how to do this as well by asking Jess to help her.  What responsible girls who can collaborate to achieve some great work.  We are very proud.

 

Responsibility

Throughout this term we have a focus on being responsible. We need to do this all the time but in reading we have a special time to work on this. We had one job that we have to do, which is browsing box reading. We can choose when we do this during our reading time and once we have done it, we put up our numbered counter. These are some pictures of people showing that they can be responsible during this time. Because we have been working so hard at achieving this, we have new reading activities that we can complete, including Storybird and Kerpoof! Both of these programmes are on the computers and we can access them at home from our class website. We were very excited to try these out today. We are very proud of ourselves for being Motivated, Independent Learners in Room 2!

Paula Green - Poet

Last week we also had a visit from Paula Green who is a New Zealand Poet. She came along to our school and read us some of her poetry and even got students up from throughout the school to make their own poems. Josh made it into this poem, which is a little difficult to hear, by giving a word that describes part of an elephant. Great thinking Josh!

And the winner is....

Last week we went to a show in our school hall.  It was called 'And the winner is...'.  It had some of the New Zealand Post Book Award books as part of the performance.  We loved the tug of war part because some of us were able to take part.  The main message of the show was that reading can take you on adventures and that it is fun to read.

Siphoning

The Commas reading group recently read a book that had a tricky word - siphon.  We read about a girl who had to siphon the water out of her fish tank so that she could clean it.  We thought we would try to learn how to siphon too.  First we tried a skinny tube but we couldn't get it to work, even when Sam re read the instructions to us.  The next day we tried a fatter tube but we still couldn't get it to work.  Eventually we used straws to try and work out how the water was travelling.  We have learnt that the children in the Senior School who look after the salmon in the Fish in Schools programme need to siphon their water, so we are going to try and watch them do it one day.  We think we still showed perseverance!

 

Crocodile Measuring

Ella is currently on holiday in Australia.  She sent us some photos in an email that also told us some interesting things she had been up to.  We replied with some questions for her to answer.  When she replied she told us that she had seen crocodiles from 1 meter long to 3-4 meters long so we decided to see how big that really was.  We used a meter ruler and measured on our carpet, leaving chalk marks so we could see where to put the ruler.  Then we used some human crocodile parts to make a crocodile on the floor.  Andrew was the head, Emma has the front arms and part of the body and Jasmine is the crocodile's back legs and tail.  We think it was enormous!

News in Room 2

Oliver made a bi plane with his dad. There are guns that are black. It can't fly. There is a propellar. It doesn't a remote control because it is made of lego.

 

Aileen is going to have her sixth birthday tomorrow. She is going to play statue games. She is going to have a mini cat cake. She is going to have music from her phone to the stereo. She is going to have fruit on a stick. 

Jess has a chapter book from her birthday. It doesn't have any colour in it. She has a bookmark with a fantail on it. She didn't bring it because it might get lost or damaged. 

Ella is going with Evie after school today because they are going to Evie's church. They will get to make things. Last time Evie went she had fish and chips for dinner and ice cream for pudding.

Josh made a book and it was called Josh was at the beach and he did all the pictures and writing inside of it. He isn't quite finished yet so he has put one more strip of Sellotape on. He made it yesterday. 

Good Friends Explanation Writing

We are learning to write explanations this term.  For writing today we have thought of our ideas and followed the new structure to explain how to be a good friend.  We have thought of our sentences, used time connectives and extended our sentences using conjunctions.  Each sentence finishes with a full stop.  We have videoed our writing thinking and will use this to help our writing tomorrow.  It is uploaded on youtube but nobody else in the world can see it, unless they have this link.

Our goals for Term 3

We have been learning to be responsible in our classroom.  Part of this is being responsible about our learning.  We know that we have to try our very best without being asked.  We have chosen one thing that we would like to improve about our learning this term.
Gloria would like to improve the number of words that she can write quickly in five minutes.  She will have to practice her spelling.
Benjamin would like to improve his writing.  He will need to practice writing words and sentences.
Josh would like to improve his basic facts.  He will need to practice his numbers and adding and taking them away.
Andrew would like to improve his writing.  He will need to practice writing all the words properly.
Jordan would like to improve his reading.  He will need to practice reading lots of words and stories.
Jasmine would like to improve her writing.  She will need to practice writing the words properly.
Jess would like to improve her writing.  She will need to practice spelling the words and putting her full stops and capital letters in the right places.
Yone would like to improve her writing without people helping her and also putting her full stops and capital letters in the right places.  She will need to practice it lots and lots of times.
Elsie would like to improve her reading.  She will need to practice reading her words and lots of stories.
Ella would like to improve her reading.  She will need to practice reading her words in sentences and making sure it sounds right.
Evie would like to improve her spelling.  She will need to practice spelling words quickly and lots and lots of times.
Oliver would like to improve how he shows respect.  He will need to listen carefully to others.
Henry would like to improve his writing.  He will need to practice getting the words spelt right.
Misha would like to improve her writing.  She will need to practice writing words that she doesn't know.
Aileen would like to improve her reading.  She will need to practice using all her strategies to work out tricky words.  She also needs to ask when she is unsure what a word means.
Emma would like to improve her writing.  She will need to practice stretching the words out and writing down the sounds.

Let's see how we go at the end of the term.  Miss Browne is very excited to hear what everyone wants to get better at.

Interesting places to read

In the holidays Ella read a magazine to her sister in her cubby house.  Ella made the cubby house with two chairs and a blanket.  It looks like a happy place to read a story.

In the holidays Henry read a book to his mum in his tent.  The tent is inside their house where it is warm!  It looks like he had a great time in his tent.  We think it is an interesting place to read.