Week 8

Kia ora Whanau,

Only two weeks left of school!! How exciting!!

We have a lot of things to do within that time, a lot of testing is happening, and a lot of things need finishing off.

The children are very excited to hear some news about camp and I would like to reassure you that there will be information coming out about camp very soon, we are just getting the last of the details finalised.
You are able to begin making payments to the school to cover the cost of camp, which will be $190.00, and if you need the details for these again I can forward this to you (they were included in the last email).

This week we have poetic writing, Matariki activities and our Literature Circles as our main learning activities.
Our whole school Matariki celebration is next Thursday and Room 12 would love for you to come along and see all of the things that we have been learning about Matariki.

Room 13 and our class are currently making the transition into making our learning space into a Modern Learning Environment which will mean that the students have more choice in their learning, they have more opportunities to learn new skills and they become more independent in challenging themselves. Please feel free to come in and watch our class evolve into this new learning style.

I would just like to send out another thank you to everyone for your support throughout these past two terms. It has been a blast.
I would also like to re-iterate that if you would like me to be doing anything extra with your child with regard to their learning, please can you let me know. This could be setting extra home learning, creating differentiated activities for them in class etc.
Their home learning currently consists of their novel studies reading + activities and at any opportunity, working on set tasks on Mathletics or Khan Academy. This week I will be setting an extra task for the children to complete.

Thank you for your time and please feel free to email me if you have any concerns.
I hope you have all had a great term.

Miss McKenzie

Poetic Writing

As part of our classroom learning we are currently studying Poetic Writing. Our theme for our poems is Observing and Noticing where the children have to think in more depth about their descriptions of their objects and explain them using lots of detail.

We have recently read a poem called 'These I have loved' by Rupert Brooke and the children were to use his exemplar to guide their learning towards their own poetic piece.

Here are a few examples of poems that have been completed so far...

Things that I love

Rain free falling with a million others;  

And rainbows gliding into a pot of gold;

And wharf jumping into the refreshing cold;

With the sun setting to the ground;

And licking an ice cream round and round;

The squishy texture of a scrumptious cheese wedge;

and the joyous piggyback ride on a sledge;

The tour of the deep

expansive ocean; And the estuary repelling us from climbing up its steep

surface; and the silky smooth

coating  of a rock; And the overwhelming desire to win not lose

the game of football;

All these have been my loves.

Things that I dislike

Not a sound

nor a whimper just silence; girls follow round and round

high pitch boy band One Direction;

The bullies scowling at your correction;

Cats eating

your pet chicken; And the snores of my friends dreaming;

The sloppy slime of a slug;

And my dads revolting coffee mug;

All these have been my dislikes.

By Daniel Neal

Fifa world cup in our school

At school we have made Fifa teams and consisting of at least one middle at least on senior and at least one intermediate each team has six people no subs and if one person's away you can just fill them in with another person.

There are 10 teams which are 

In group A: Russia, Spain,  Mexico, Germany, Greece

In group B: Brazil, Portugal, Australia, Italy, and Argentina

In group A

 The first was Spain vs Argentina, and Spain won 1 - 0

The second game is Germany vs Mexico, and Germany won 1 - 0

And the final game of that day was Greece vs Argentina, And Greece won by default because Argentina was at Kapa Haka. 

In group B

The first game was Russia vs Brazil, they drew 0 - 0

The second game was Portugal vs Australia, Portugal won 1 - 0

And the final game was Russia vs Italy, Italy won 2 - 0

By Daniel

LOL Corner!!!

Hello and welcome to the LOL corner.

Here are some funny jokes so be prepared to Laugh out loud 
By Daniel

Q: Why did the picture go to jail?

A: Because it was framed!

Q: "How do you shoot a killer bee?"

A:"with a bee bee gun!"

Q: What do you call a man with no body just a nose?

A: Nobody nose!

Q: What do you call a sleeping bull?

A:Bulldozer!

Q: What bow can't be tied?

A: A Rainbow!

Q: What do you call a sheep with no legs and no head?
A: a cloud.

Q:what an alligator in an investor suit?
A:an investigator.

Q: how do baseball players keep cool?
A: they sit next to there fans  

Intermediate academic quiz

The Intermediate Academic Quiz was held last Wednesday (11.6.14) by the Ministry Of Inspiration.

http://www.ministryofinspiration.org/ 

And to my surprise we did really well as a school.

Okay down to business in 7th we have ...

Purple Revival from Mapua in year 8! 

In 5th we have...

Mapua Mad Hatters in year 7!

And the winners are...

Elementals from Prep in years 7 and 8!

And the scores... 

Purple Revival scored  45/81!

Mapua Mad Hatters scored 48/81!

And the Elementals  from Prep scored 52/81!

It was so close and really fun!

By Daniel. 

Noun poems

Noun Poems

Last week (2.6.14) we finished doing our activated noun poems. Activated noun poems are wrote like this

Trees 

Swishing and swooshing through the air.

Also, an extra challenge was to use personification (giving a human quality to a thing that is not a human) like this

Teddy Bears

Spying on you, listening to your every word. 

Here are some that people in the class wrote:

Birds 

Chirping behind your back planning there next raid on you lunch box.
(Daniel)

Wind

Dancing through the trees and quivering fresh emerald green grass.
(Tuscan)

Windows

A open soul willing to share all it secrets. 
(Daniel)

Sky 

A slightly faded sapphire blue blocked by clouds getting in the way to ruin your, then turning a rosy pink and then over run by constellation.
(Daniel)

The Clay Mound

Hacked at by kids with spades, screaming at the kids to stop but they can not here sound.
(Daniel)

   
    

Tuakana Teina time

On Friday the 6th of June we had Tuakana Teina time. This time we did some weaving with paper. We did this to practise weaving. The house captains were thinking of us making little candle holders out of flax and putting tiny candles in them and then set them in the sea on the night of Matariki to celebrate the Maori New Year. Another way to celebrate Matariki is to fly a hand made kite because the Maori believe from Ancient Customs they flutter close to the stars.

By Daniel.

Theatre sports

On Friday the 16th 2014, Rooms 12 and 13 started a new activity called: theatre sports, which is when you have to act out all kinds of things like being  a machine of some sort like an A.T.M machine or a lawn mower!   Students work in groups.  Theatre sports is an exhilarating way to get better at the art of acting and producing a piece of stage performance!  It is good to help improve confidence.

By Izaak (photos to come)