Mr Gecko

Early in the term Room 1 had a visit from a gecko. We believe he was a common brown species. We learned about how to look after small animals in our classroom and about vertibrates and invertibrates. Thank-you for the visit Mr Gecko.

Mr Gecko.
Mr Gecko was silky brown. He had mini eyes. He was very small and did not have all of his tail.He darted across the container like a speeding bullet. Then he hid in the wood shavings.
After a morning in Room 1 we put him in the compost. We hope he made a new home.
Zach

The Day I Met a Gecko.
The gecko looks like bark it even looks skinny, like a stick. The gecko is slimey and smooth. It looks camouflaged. Geckos have small eyes.
The gecko can be shy and scared so it will run away. THe gecko likes disguisting and gross stuff. The gecko hides in the dark so he finds dark places.
Geckos might live in the compost or the garden where it is dry and shady.
Keehsa

Room 1 have been writing paragraphs about Spiders.



Where Spiders Live. 

Spiders live world-wide. They do not live in the South Pole. Some spiders live in the forest, grassland, water, caves even the desert. Some can be found in trees, even in houses. Raft spiders are found in wet habitats. They come to eat their prey. Their enemies are bugs, ants and insects.

By Esther.

Mini Beast Communities

 

What lives here?

Why is this place important?

Room 1 are finding out about some creatures that live right here in places around the school.

 

Room 1's Inquiry Sharing.

Here are some photos of Room 1's contribution to the very exciting Inquiry Sharing afternoon at the end of Term 3. Many students completed their first inquiry presentation and all were able to show off their learning about Toys and Pastimes; Past, Present and Future.

We started the unit with ideas about what we did for fun in the holidays.

One of the books that helped provide ideas and motivation to learn about all those interesting pastimes.

A collection of the latest writing that Room 1 have published.

 Room 1 read Charlottes Web and produced a stick puppet show of the characters and setting.

 

 Zach and Cj's America's Cup project.

 

 Kyra worked hard to produce this project about gymnastics.

 

 Sebastian kept us all informed about popular string games around the world.

 Aimee and Te Arahi's project about skipping was very well researched.

 

 

 Ripeka and Te Aroha put together a stunning jewellery box to display their presentation about jewellery.

 

 

 

 We also had a slide show of the lantern-making process.

 

 

 

 

Lantern Making

With the recent Whangarei Festival of Light and Art (FOLA) on at The Quarry Arts Centre, Rust Ave, the children from Rooms 1 and 2 created their own lanterns.
The process involved careful work with plenty of patience and cooperation. Both classes worked together and as you can see from the photos the children worked well in creating lanterns using the materials on hand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roll n Draw

Ms Higgins enjoys creating activities which encourage students to work and communicate well together. This group activity, Roll'n Draw was a result of watching how a student went about starting an oral language activity about drawing as a group. He began with a simple curve and Ms H thought "how effective". The idea is to have a number of simple shapes on a dice. These are starting shapes. Each group has a different leader each time and they start the drawing using this shape. Group members take turns or draw all at once. They decide together what the drawing is about. After only 10 minutes the groups share and comment on how they helped each other and shared ideas to get the drawing they have. Come back to check out the results in a future post. Meanwhile here are photos showing the fantastic sharing going on with the group members.

The 'All Blacks' collaborate on their masterpiece.

 

The 'Princesses' work on their creation.

The Importance of a Name.

 

 Room 1 had a special visitor this term, whaea Natasha, who helped us pronounce Maori words correctly. We played games and sang songs and had a really good time. Everyone completed a special display about our name for the classroom wall.

Heritage Park.
Room's 1, 2, 7 and 8 went to Heritage Park. These are some of our lasting impressions.

• 'At school you had to have your fingernails checked'
• 'The dirty children got scrubbed.'
• 'Baths were made of wood'
• There were no trousers for girls or shorts for boys.'
• 'Rich people had carriages.'
• 'Poor people walked.'
• 'The oxen's horns were on the wall.'
• 'There was a family burial plot.'
• 'Knuckle bones were made from real bones. It was a boy's game'
• 'Ring a rosy is over 400 years old.'
• 'We got to walk on stilts.'
• 'We a giant tug of war.'
• 'The first computer game was 'pong'.'

A big THANKS to all the parents who came to help. Room 1 are working on some thank-you letters for you.

Thank you cards

Hi Room 1,
Here's a snap of Victor reading his thank you cards. I took them to him on Father's day. Well done with having two paragraphs in your writing. Victor said that each letter was different. That goes to show what a great job you all did Room 1!
Ms H

A Visit from Victor.
Victor Green came in to Room 1 to let us know a little about the kind of things he did to have fun as a school aged child when he was growing up in Whangarei. He said he felt old at 21 as there were no ipads back then.

 

 He soon got talking about life in Auckland at Dilworth School where he was encouraged and required to take up lots of challenging and fun pastimes.

Room 1 listened so nicely to Victor when he explained what it was like to go to university after having been a teenager in Whangarei. Maybe people were thinking of the kinds of things they might like to do or study in the future.

His talk about his trip to Japan really had everyone thinking and it was great to see the places he went on our Interactive White Board.
Victor brought his saxophone to play so people could understand that by learning the recorder at primary school then other instruments could follow after.

Here are some photo's of Victor and of Room 1 and other seniors listening to his talk about Japan and saxophone playing.


P.S. Victor Green is Ms Higgins' son.

Asking Questions and Information Gathering.
What a lot of inspiration we have had so far this term.
Room 1 have been busy learning ways to find and organise important information so we can present some interesting answers for our questions about Toys and Pastimes of the past, present and future. The topic has really got us thinking, here are some of our questions;

When were string games invented and who played them in the old days?
 
When was play doh invented?

What were the playgrounds like in the old days?

When were skipping ropes invented and what games did they play with them?

What kind of toys were around in the old days?

When were spinning tops invented?

Were there such things as ipads in the old days?

What were toys and barbies made out of?

How did they make toys and barbies?

What games did they play in the old days?

So that we can answer these and other questions we are using a collection of family friendly websites.
Room 1 are learning to ask questions on the 'Ask Jeeves' website at the moment
Please follow this up at home if you are able. You might find other good sites to share with us at school.

Here's the link;

 http://www.wisekids.org.uk/Kids_safe_search_engines.htm

Writing in Room 1.
It's been such a busy and purposeful start to the term.

Question; Where do we start?
Answer; With some shared writing.

Room 1 have been studying the poem 'The Town' by NZ poet James K Baxter. 

We have been looking at detailed nouns as well as verbs to describe our experiences as people growing up. Ms H took the class outside to recollect the type of things that we had experienced together as a group that were situated around our 'town'.

Morningside.

Morningside was usual enough, it had
a bridge, a creek, a playground, a soccer club
and bush by the water tank I never
went to, me my classmates and our teacher
did what classmates do;
We ran to the rugby stadium to play with the Blues, dug in the potato patch,
listened to the banging and clanging sound of next door's construction site with Mr V,
competed furiously in the cross country,
doing nothing important.

Room 1 are looking forward to publishing their very own efforts based on the language and structure of 'The Town'.

Room 1's version of the Cup Song.

Hi Everyone,
Welcome back to school and to Term 3.
First though lets have a look at one of the many special things we did on the last day of Term 2. What a great day we had with all nineteen students. It was Te Aroha's last day and Aimee's (nearly) birthday. We wrapped up the Term with planting, singing and feasting.
Here's a clip of some students doing the 'Cup Song', inspired by the Whangarei Intermediate Band that we enjoyed listening to just earlier. I think you will agree that the students in this clip are very talented.

Ms H
P.S I was previously not a fan of the rowdy tapping and banging in class but now I just think it's clever!

Welcome to National Primary Science Week! Room 1.

Swirling Milk Stories by Room 1.

Once upon a time in a universe far, far away there was a class called Room 1. They did an experiemnt with milk, food colouring and dish washing liquid. They made the mixture and it started to bubble. It swirled and it twirled. It was amazing!
by Zach.  

The milk was creamy and white. It swirled and twisted with colours. It squiggled and wiggled like clouds curling in the sky. Our experiment was fun to do. We mixed it and it popped. The colours quickly faded away. It went all mucky and brown. The shapes went white and it turned all bubbly.
By Te Aroha.

The mixture sped as all the colours designed their one pattern as the mixture bubbled the food colouring twirled and turned. It got mucky and it faded away. But then it came back alive as it twirled and wiggled as it sped quickly as. It was going around and around in circles.
By Annabelle.

It's been all go here in Room 1 and in the playground of Morningside School. Because it's National Primary Science Week Ms H has been in the playground doing all sorts of wacky experiments to get kids thinking. We've blown up our lunch  (some peole don't like crusts) and managed to learn how not to get wet when you tip a bucket of water upside down.
Tomorrow is Wacky Hair Day and Ms H really hopes she finds a kid without the usual product in their hair to perform the wackiest hair experiment yet.

Here's a populat experiment to try at home. Beware ,it involves explosions!

http://www.kidspot.com.au/kids-activities-and-games/science-experiments+10/exploding-bag-experiment+11736.htm

Our New Maths Learning Tool.

Welcome back to school everyone. 
We are going to have the best term ever! 
I am really excited to try the new learning tool for maths. It's called E-Ako and it's part of the nzmaths website. There's heaps on it, things like addition and subtraction as well as ideas to help with place value and fractions. (Mum and Dad might learn a thing or two!) I'll post the link here.  

Bye for now. Ms H

P.S You all have your own user name and password that I'll tell you at school.

E-ako link. Click on to get to this learning tool . 

http://e-ako.nzmaths.co.nz/

Nesta and the Missing Zero.

What happens if we lose nothing? Does it count? Room 1 thinks it does count very much indeed!
We read the story 'Nesta and the Missing Zero' by Julie Leibrich and Ross Kinnaird and discovered a crazy world where lots of things went really wrong.

 

Here's what some Room 1 People had to say when asked why zero was important.

 

The number zero is important and we can't have numbers if we don't have zero in them.

Aaja.

 

I think zero is important because if we didn't have zero in the world 10 would be 1 and 100 would be 1.

Cj

 

If you're 50 and there's no zero you would be 5!

Treydyn

 

Imagine it!

 

 

Do try this at home.

Have a go at making and reading numbers made from the following numerals. You can mix them up in any order you like.  Remember it's up to you to put them in their place value.

 

2, 9, 0, 5, 4

 

Tell us which numbers you made and how to write them

in the comments section.

 

 

Cross Country

Wow! What an amazing effort from all the students. Everyone trained so well and set and achieved your goals for running. Well done to you all Room 1. It was fantastic to see you celebrate your achievements. Ms H

Students look pensive as they line up in their year groups for the race.



And they're off!

Mr Green gets the Year 4 group settled at the starting line.

Ms Higgins points the way to victory.



Everyone made such a great effort and all were encouraged by the crowd.

Our Clay Day

On Thursday 4th April Rooms 1 and 2 gathered in Room 9 to all have a go at making something out of clay. Ms Higgins wanted people to know about how clay works and to have a go at making something. She showed the students some of her clay work.

Disaster Discovery - What are Shelter Boxes?

Room 1 have been looking at children in disasters all over the world as part of our oral language program. This morning the class were very interested to discover that the tent and equipment provided to the people in the photo was called a Shelter Box and that Shelter Box was a aid organisation.

Here's some of the written responses about Shelter Boxes from our discussion.

 

Click here to find out more about Shelter Boxes.

 

What is a Shelter Box?

 

They help people set up camps. They help people when they don't have families. The people need shelter that are alone in cities. They help people when they have nowhere to live. By Kyra.

 

Shelter box help people who are forced to leave their homes.They help kids around the world that are in disasters.They comfort kids that have lost their parents after the disasters around the world. By Te Aroha

 

Shelter Box helps people survive in the outside world. It gives them safety so they can live their lives. Shelter Box also helps people be safe in disasters. By Annabelle