Miner Huts

We took our new findings from our school trip last Thursday and sketched the miner's huts from the Chinese Village. We wrote poems about what we noticed while we looked at them.

We had to make sure they painted a picture for our reader. We included:

• Strong verbs to make things do something
• Nouns (naming words)
• Adjectives to describe our naming words (nouns)

Some of us had time to publish them yesterday and get them up on the wall to share.

Gold Trip Video

Arrowtown Gold Trip

On Thursday Yr 3-6 drove to Arrowtown as part of our tuning in stage for our gold inquiry.
We had a fun filled day of finding out new information, asking questions and experiencing what it was like to be a miner 150 years ago.

The year 3's started off with gold panning in the Arrow River with Denise. We now know what it was like for the miners a long time ago...our feet were numb! 23 out of 28 children found a piece of of gold.

Next we walked to the Arrowtown Museum where we sorted different artifacts from the oldest to the newest. This gave us a good picture of what happened before, during and after the gold rush.
We were lucky enough to have a quick walk around the museum before heading out for lunch.

Last stop was a stroll around the Chinese Village. We had a look through Ah Lum's store. Ah Lum was a chinese miner who looked after other miners gold in his safe. He also had beds for miners and stored food such as pickled lemons and tea.

Then it was back on the bus to school. We are looking forward to sorting our new information and coming up with new wonderings about the gold rush.

Jerome Kavanagh

On Wednesday we were lucky to get a visit from Jerome Kavanagh. He came to talk to us about traditional Maori instruments. We made a Porotiti. It is a wind instrument.

We needed to work together to get them made. we needed string, card, pencil, nail, ruler and scissors. When we got back to class we decorated them in different colours and designs.

When we made them, it was important to get the holes in the middle to make it balanced.

Here is a photo of our Porotitis.

Bus Stop

Today we did a bus stop activity. We went around different 'bus stops' that had a picture of some old tools. We wondered what were in the pictures and wrote down what we thought, what we predicted they were and any questions we had. We hope to find out soon what they are all about!

Netbook learning

We are very lucky to have 4 new netbooks in Room 7 this year. It takes a bit to learn how to use them but gradually we have been learning new skills each day. Here are some photos of a maths group using them to create bar graphs.

Our new comprehension strategy this week...

We have another strategy to learn and remember when we are reading. These comprehension strategies help us understand what we are reading. This week it is all about predicting. This means we need to guess what happens throughout the story and find clues that help us with this guess. Sometimes we may change our predictions!

Room 7's Modiglianis!

We have been looking at the famous artist Modigliani. He is famous for his portraits. We noticed that all of his portraits are long in shape, have long necks, faces and noses, and show the top of their shirt. We also noticed that he uses plain colours on black paper. We decided to use oil pastels. Here are some of our own Modigliani portraits. Make sure you visit the art section at the Wanaka A&P Show next weekend as they will be up on display.

Reading

We are now underway with our reading programme. Some of us are learning different strategies to work out those tricky words and some of us are learning different comprehension strategies and developing our skills in this area. So look out for special bookmarks that come home in the readers now and then. You can keep these to remind you and your child what we are learning to do within reading. This week we are looking at the strategy of Skippy Frog and discussing the main idea.

Nick Willis

Last week we had a visit from Olympic athlete Nick Willis. He talked to us about his training for the 1500m and what it was like to win gold and silver medals for New Zealand.

He had many messages for for us to take away with us.

"He told us that our meals need lots of different colours"

"We can be anything we want to be"

"We need to work hard to achieve our goals"

He took the the children on a run around the school grounds. His advice is going to be good for when we are training for our school triathlon.

Welcome to 2012 in Room 7!

Hello everyone and welcome back to school!

Room 7 has been busy getting to know one another for the past 7 days. We have 20 children this term.

Here is a photo of our class. Can you spot someone you know?

Room 7 created a spider web that showed how we are all unique. We had to pass the ball of string to different people around the circle to create it. It shows that we all have differences.

Come and read why everyone in Room 7 is so unique. It is displayed on our classroom wall.

We hope you enjoy our visiting our blog this term!

Welcome to Term 4!

Welcome back to school everyone!

Already we are in the second week of term 4! We have had a busy start with Gail Loane in our class on the first day of school.

Gail worked with a group of students who looked closely at some special seed pods and then wrote a poem about what they saw! Some made it to the school newsletter!

We will be writng more poems this term, so if you have some interesting things around home from nature, have a go at looking closely and writing down exactly what you see!

Also this term, the juniors are trying to get to the bush! Due to weather tomorrow our trip to the Blue Pools is not going ahead but hopefully will next Tuesday8th November.

We want to look at how humans and animals have impacted on the native bush, the different canopies, regeneration and pests and traps. We hope we get there next week!

Hopefully we will keep the blog a bit more updated this term with what we are doing in Room 7!

Coming up:

Junior Trip -8th November to Blue Pools
School fair - 19th November

Costumes

We were so lucky to have two super mums in to help us with our costumes for the school production. Thanks Liz and Suzanne!

We researched our 4 native birds that we had to act in our song. We looked at the way they looked, walked and how they made sounds.

In groups we brainstormed what we could use for the costunes. Then Liz and Suzanne cam in with some materials and helped us make them.

Some of us learnt how to sew!

Mackenzies Puppy

Mackenzie brought her new puppy Kiesha in to share with us. She was so playful and loved us all in Room 7. We had a heap of questions to ask Mackenzie about Kiesha.

Buddy Reading

We had a buddy reeading session at the beginning of the term with some children in Room 2. We enjoyed reading them some of our classroom stories

Term 3!

We are back! We have had such a busy 6 weeks getting ready for our production...

Here are some photos to show how busy we have been.

We hope you enjoy them.

Cross Country

Here are some photos of the Upper Clutha Cross Country!

Posting a comment!

I know some of you are having trouble posting a comment.

When you are looking at th eposts on the blog, down the bottom of each post it says 0 comments or 1 comment (if someone has posted). If you click on this it will take you to a page where you can post a comment!

Once you have typed a comment, it will be sent to me where I then have to moderate it and make sure it is suitable to be added to the blog. So dont panic if your comment does not come up straight away.

As soon as I have checked the blog, I willl moderate it and add your comment to the post.

I am sure there is an easier way to do this but it will do for now!

Thanks!

Term 3!

Welcome to Term 3!

Sorry we have not updated the blog for a while but we have all been busy learning about our new toy in our classroom! Thanks to the school and the PTA, Room 7 was lucky to get a brand new interactive whiteboard in the holidays. We have been using it daily and we are learning new things on it everyday.

Please come in after school to have a look and to try it out!

We have a new topic this term, Down in the bush. The children are very excited about it and already they know so much about our native forests, bush, birds, bugs and insects.
We are heading away on a school trip next Wednesday, so please get those green slips back to the office as soon as you can.
If you have any expertise or knowledge about this topic, we would love to have you in Room 7 as an expert!

A very busy term! Here are a few things that are on this term...

• Cross Country - tick


• Bush Trip


• Production


• Athletics

We have already had our school cross country. Well done to Red and Thomas who recieved placings in the year 3 cross country on Thursday. I cant wait to talk to the others who stayed behind at school for their cross country.

We are looking forward to a very productive term!!

The old tree...

Room 7 went out yesterday to look at one of our oldest trees in the school grounds. We thought about describing a place somewhere in the school for our writing, so we headed to the tree where lots of children play.

Here are a couple of descriptions about the old tree from some of Room 7 students...

Stones huddling like feet gathered together in a big group. Winding roots twisted and tangled burry into the ground. I could see leaves being thrown around madly by the knotty branches. Moss clinging like birds nests hang to the branches. Rough skin like an elephants back. Finn has left his mark so people will remember him. The old oak tree sits and waits for the next bell to ring.

Mackenzie

The old oak tree sits besdie the tenis court waiting to watch cricket. Stones covering the outside like its haing a spa bath. A lightning strike like a tattoo on its arm. Moss clinging to the old oak tree. The scar unlocks secrets from when it was little.

Josh

Come in and read some more in our writing books in Room 7!