We are a wonderful class of year 3-4 children who absolutely love learning and in particular writing. We are going to take turns daily to write on the blog - so please forgive us if you find mistakes - it's all part of our learning. We would love you to post feedback on our blog as this helps us develop our writing even further.
On Monday the 1st December the Middle Team had a photo exhibition where we were showing every thing we knew about computers and cameras. Our parents were invited to it. Room 9 did a double layer photo. Room 8 did photos from the website ‘any making’ on the computer. Room 11 did their name in things that they found in the environment. I thought every thing looked great.
Cheetahs only live in Africa. They are an endangered animal. A cheetah will live 10-12 years.
Weight, Height and Speed Body length: 112 - 135 cm. Shoulder height: 73 - 90 cm Speed: A cheetah can run up to 110 km/hr. They are the fastest land animal on earth.
Food Cheetahs have a big diet. They will eat gazelles, warthog, waterbuck, wildebeest, fame birds and springbok.
For homework this week, Room 9 had to pretend they were their teachers Mrs Wood and Mrs Marshall and had to write their own end of the year report reflecting on their achievements etc. Below is a selection of some of them - all in good fun of course!
Avalon
Avalon has been working super hard this year. She has got two pieces of writing on room 9's blog. Her maths has improved lots from the start of the year. Avalon could try to follow instructions quicker.
(Written by Avalon)
CALEB
Caleb is an expert at using the digital camera. He is a superb reader. Caleb tends to muck around in between activities. He needs to focus. Caleb is a kind and caring student with a great sense of humour. We will miss teaching him next year.
GEORGE
George has had the most disgraceful year! He is now only getting the hang of 1 + 1 which we all know is 2. His favourite subject in class in NONE! Isn't that disgraceful? His favourite room in the school is Te Manawanui. Sorry I was just about to say detention. He future tense 2010 is still making him struggle on one and one which once again is 2.
Sydney has been away on a trip in the North Island and while she was away she kept a diary of where she went and what she did. Here are some snippets from it......
Auckland Our flight here was very exciting. We were the ONLY children so we got to give out lollies. As a reward we got a CUP full of lollies. The staff were very nice. Our favourite staff person was a man who called me 'rascal' and my brother 'tiger'. We were fine with that. When we arrived it was 11 o'clock so we had to get up at something to 8 and out plane left at 9 o'clock. Then we stayed at home for the rest of the day except when we went to the playground. After we went for a walk then Oscar had a sleep because he was a bit of a grouch, but he was very excited. Then our sister Jade came over.
Breakfast: The next day we mainly went out for breakfast . I catched the bus to Kelly Tarltons and saw the penguins and sharks and lots more then we had lunch and went home to chill out with my big 19 year old sister Jade. We mainly had the afternoon at home because it was so hot though raining. The next day we had to get up, have a shower/bath and we got in our taxi to go and get our motorhome. The taxi came with service. Then we drived up to one of mum's very good friends, Greg. We stayed there for 1 night only. We then moved on to the forests and we even saw the BIG tane-mahuta (tree). We then drived to Omapere, then Opononi. we then went on the car ferry, it was very EXCITING. We then drived to our camping ground which was right beside 90 Mile Beach which was very exciting for us. We then went sand-boarding. We all thought it was superb and awesome and we then dept driving to Cape Reinga to see the lighthouse which was amazing. Then we drived up to our camping ground then went for a walk on the beach and collected shells. We then just relaxed for the night looking at the atlas until we played charades and watched a movie, Garfield. ......
Avalon has also been busy writing at home for our blog. Isn't it incredible to see her writing a report using a lot of the knowledge she has gained this year from her inquiry work!
St Clair has many things that have changed over many years in the community.
Sea Wall The sea wall has been broken down lots of times in the past. Several times the people have failed to keep the sea wall up to protect St Clair. First they build the sea wall out of rocks in baskets, then people used rubber to build the sea wall. Both failed to protect St Clair. St Clair has the wall today.
St Clair History Lots of different people have come to St Clair to live here. First there were the Maori people. Next there were people from England, Scotland, Ireland and China. The first early settler was Mr Valpy. Mr Valpy came to St Clair to live. Chung Ding came to St Clair to start market gardens. When Chung Ding came, the land was swampy and boggy so Chung Ding drained the land to start market gardens.
St Clair Changes In St Clair in the olden days, there were a lot of things that they did not have back then that we have today. There was no electricity back then, so they used oil lamps to use as their lights and fires to keep their houses warm on cold days. They could only cook and use a kettle over a fire to make food.
St Clair Beach St Clair beach has lots of sand to stop erosion. Sand sausages were put in the sand dunes. Vegetations was put on the sand dunes to stop them falling down. Rip-rap was put in the right end of St Clair beach. The rip-rap slows down the waves so the waves don't crash down the sea wall.
St Clair School In St Clair, there is a school. The school has a new building called Te Manawanui. St Clair School has over 300 students going to the school. At this school people will learn lots of new strategies.
St Clair Park The St Clair park is a nice place to go on sunny days. Lots of people to meet friends, to play and to have fish and chips. The park is a place to play and have fun.
St Clair Cafes St Clair cafes are a great place to meet a friend for a coffee, night out, tea, breakfast and lunch. St Clair cafes have a great range of food to eat. Yum! Yum!
I think St Clair is a wonderful place. St Clair has new wonders and adventures ahead.
This is a piece of writing James did at home for our blog. Isn't is wonderful to have such enthusiastic writers in room 9!!! It would be lovely if you could give James some feedback - Mrs Wood
Monkeys are hot blooded ad are the smartest animal ever heard of.
Similar Things to Humans! Humans and monkeys are more similar than you think. They use shelters like humans but they use different materials. Monkeys also make tools for eating. They make them out of twigs and leaves.
Food Monkeys eat all types of things like bananas, apples and slugs.
Lifestyle Monkeys work in groups 3 to 12 and can weigh up to 50Kg. They climb trees and groom each other for fleas. When monkeys are married it isn't called married, it's called mating.
Types of Monkeys
Spider monkey
Chimps
Apes
Gibbons
Howler monkey
golden snub nose
Patas monkey
Mandrill
Drill
Roloway monkey
Orangutang
Douc monkey
Debrazzas monkey
Tameron
Emperor Tameron
Squirrel monkey
Predators
Monkeys are usually killed by big cats such as lions, tigers, cheetahs and leopards. A long time ago people use to kill monkeys because they had soft fur but now if any one is caught with monkey fur they get sent to court!
Where Monkeys Live
Monkeys are found in Australia, Russia and America.
I think monkeys are interesting and amazing creatures and that makes me want to study them in the future.
We would be really interested to hear what you think about fairy tales. If you could take a moment and fill in our survey, we'd be very grateful - thanks Room 9.
This week Room 9 has started a new writing unit - called Twisted Fairy Tales. Mrs Wood started us off by reading her favourite fairy tale - "The Three Little Pigs." We looked at the different features that a 'narrative' or fairy tales needs to have. Some of the features were: characters, a setting, a beginning, middle and an end, a strong plot (storyline), a problem and a solution. We started off writing our own by using the structure of the Three Little Pigs and twisting one of the features. Some of us have found this quite tricky as we have twisted heaps of features and we find that we get ourselves tied up in knots and have to go back and start over again. We have also been looking at some digital sources showing the same fairy tale. One of our favourite ones has been the following clip from You Tube. Our class has noticed some similarities and some differences between the different versions however we think they are all pretty fabulous. We hope you enjoy this clip - it was recorded by Walt Disney in 1932 but we still managed to laugh all the way through it!
Some of the children in room 9 love writing so much that they have started writing pieces at home! This one is an acrostic poem by Samantha. It would be fabulous if you could post a comment to encourage her love of writing.
Last week room 9 were parted into groups to go out and walk around St Clair to take photos and interview people around St Clair. I was in Nina's mum's group. Our place was the esplanade. We even interviewed a guy from Fiji. Some from North Dunedin and others from places which are hard to spell. Most of these people were retired. Retired means they have stopped working or just too tired to do it. some groups were even allowed to have a 5 minute play in the park over by Salt (a restaurant) an the lifeguard hideout. We saw lots of other groups taking photos too. There were people with dogs, people we knew and some people just visiting because it was sunny out of just taking a stroll across our esplanade. Some were surfers and some were just sitting down on the nearest seat. St Clair is a main part to our community. We should care for it just like one of us.
Brylies uncle, Marcel Rodeka came to our school and played the drums. He rocks. He plays jazz and rock and roll. That him gets a lot of money. Some day I’ll be as good as him.
By Ben M
*If you look further down our blog you will find a vocaroo post. Just click on the vocaroo arrow and you will get to hear some of his drumming.
In our inquiry we have been finding out about the first people who lived in the St Clair area. We have learnt about the Maori people who had two camps in this area and had a track around here that they used to collect kai (e.g. eels, weka and ducks). We also learnt about some of the early settlers who arrived from England, Scotland, China and Ireland. We have learnt that the early community of St Clair was made up of diverse people. Mrs Wood is trying to encourage our class to use digital tools to aid our learning and so we posted facts about what we found out onto wall wisher. This is the first time we have used it and we thought it was a great way to share our learning together. After we had shared our learning with each other we then began to wonder....is the St Clair community today diverse? This is why we went out into our community with a survey to find out (see our other blog post below about this)
This week our class went for a walk around the different areas in our community. Some of us went to the park, some to the local shops, others to the St Clair hot salt water pool, while others simply went for a walk around the block surrounding school. The purpose of the walk was to meet some of the people in our community. Before we left, as a class we constructed some questions we wanted to find out. For example: what are you doing in St Clair, what part of Dunedin are you from, why have you come to St Clair and what is your favourite leisure activity. We also asked the people we met if we could take their photo so that we could discuss them we when all got back together. Our next step as a class is to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between the people we met today and the people we have learnt about who came and settled here in the 1800-1900's. We will post our thoughts up in the next few days. A special thanks to the parents who came and helped us and also to the lovely people who agreed to answer our survey and have their photo taken.
Today was a lovely sunny afternoon and we were lucky enough to spend the afternoon outside with the wonderful PE students from Queens High School. We continued working in our stations and are beginning to develop some new skills. If you press the play button you will get a wee glimpse of the fun we had today.
