Saturday, February 25, 2012

Sorting it all out

Our trip to the aquarium was FANTASTIC!  We saw all sorts of amazing creatures with some very strange features.  Room 3 and 4 mixed up and split into 2 groups to check out the touch tanks and to learn about how scientists sort and classify creatures according to their features.

We saw crustaceans (animals with crusty outsides and jointed legs)

Isaiah takes a close look at a crab that is trying to escape!


We saw molluscs.  They have a shell and ONE big sucker foot.

The yellow team classified the cats eye snail as a mollusc pretty quickly.  Here you can see Tigue, Luke & Isaac thinking really hard about this tricky animal.  It was a mollusc but the hard shell was hidden under a soft black coat.  Tricky indeed!
The orange team was looking for echinoderms.  (Pronounced ee-kine-o-derm)  These animals are tube feeders and have spiny skins.

Charlotte, Caleb, Kahnye & Josh are inspecting the underside of a sea star to check out the tiny feeding tubes.
Dakota (& Maka from Room 3) have a close look at the sea star's belly.


The touch tanks were very, very cool.  Here are a lot of very interested, potential marine scientists checking out the array of creatures.




Check out the GIANT sea star!


Come back and have another peek at the blog in a couple of days.  The authors in Room 4 have written some awesome aquarium stories.



Speaking of stars.  Here's the new Star of the Week.

A young lady that is great at Managing Self.  She takes responsibility for her own learning and is a ready and willing encourager of other learners too.

Way to go ..... Briah!!!!

Saturday, February 18, 2012

It's TIME for another blog entry

One o'clock it's quiet in the house.
Tell me a rhyme about a mouse.

We've been reading the rhyme Hickory Dickory Dock to practise reading with fluency and rhythm.  We've also been working on reading the time on an analogue clock.

When the big hand is on the 12, we know it's something o'clock.   

When the big hand is on the 6, we know it's half past something.

We also started tuning our brains into Life On the Edge and asked ourselves 
the Question - What interesting things can we see in books about the rocky shore? 







We found a few things we knew just a little bit about and quite a lot of creatures we'd never seen before.   We saw crabs, starfish, sea anemones, interesting shells, seaweed and cockles.  Plus a few totally unexpected creatures like shore skinks, triplefins and even lugworms!  This coming Tuesday we're going to the Marine Studies Centre aquarium at Portobello and hope to see and even touch some of them.  Yipeee!

This week's Star of the Week has been demonstrating the Key Competency of Participating and Contributing.   

Salesi makes a positive difference to the team in Room 4 with his fabulous smile and awesome attitude.

This coming week we'll be flat out.  Monday 20th we have a session on scooter safety with Constable Heather Rei,  Tuesday we go to the aquarium, and Wednesday afternoon we have a PE session with Ginny from Sport Otago.  On Thursday morning Mrs Mitchell-Bain will teach both R3 and R4 while Mrs O'D & Mrs B go to a special workshop all about our new writing and spelling programme called Sounds Alive.  

Then it's Friday again so quickly with our second session of Passion Projects.  We chose from photography, gardening, play production, computers, Japanese, science, woodwork, trolley making, art and treasure box creation.  Hopefully we'll have some photos to show you soon.

Whew - what a week!  See you again soon.

Room 4 

 

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Busy, busy Week Two ...

Room 4 has had such an awesome week.  We've been visiting learning some fabulous new maths games, reading a big book about a boy that had to 'Keep Trying' to get the hang of new things, visiting Harold the Giraffe, painting portraits and getting the hang of the course for our school cross country race.

Luke adds to the train to Heart Central in Harold's mobile classroom.

Harold whispering to Richard.

On Friday morning some of us played charades and tried to guess what actions we were showing.  The were all things that we had to Keep Trying to get good at.  Some of them, like learning to tie our shoelaces we are still trying.  We'll Keep Trying until we can do them.

Isaac's action was writing his name.  It was a bit tricky to get the answer just right but he gave us a really helpful clue.

This week's Star of the Week is someone that has been trying a lot of new things. He's getting better and better at taking responsibility for himself and his learning.  A big round of applause for ...

... Koby. 
 Tino pai Koby.  Keep it up my friend!  

Ka kite ano

from the Fantastic Room Four.


Saturday, February 4, 2012

Welcome to Room 4's 2012 Blog

Wow - I can't believe Week 1 is really over already!   

We have 23 fabulous students in Room 4 and I am looking forward to working and learning with them.  We will try to use this blog page a lot so please have a regular check to see what we've been learning.

Here is an slightly enlarged version of the photo on the school homepage.  What ARE the children holding?  Click on the photo to enlarge the image a bit more ...


All those little blue lines that look like a slightly crazy spiderweb are made up of one long piece of blue wool.  If we hold the wool firmly but carefully it is easy for everyone to be part of the group.  If we pull on the wool, we might get more for ourselves but we make it hard for others.  In Room 4 we are all connected, just like we are with the wool, because our words and actions affect others.  We are going to try really hard to choose words and actions that help and support others. 

Room 4 - you have already shown me that you can be awesome at this.  Lets keep it up.

The Star of the Week in Room 4 for Week 1 is a lad who is already showing himself to be a bit of a superstar with the Key Competency of RELATING TO OTHERS.  


Caleb is great at choosing words and actions that help others.  Go Caleb!!

We LOVE to read comments from readers.  So please do us a huge favour and leave a comment whenever you can.  

Hope to see you again soon.

Mrs B & all the crew in Room 4