Seed 2 Table - Rotation 2

We had a great start to our Seed 2 Table rotation on Friday.  Check out the photos here.

You will notice that on the Priorities and Specials for the week, there are 2 Priorities if you are in the current S2T rotation.

The first is to find a plant that you can take a photo of every day this week.  On friday, we will be looking at the changes that you notice in your plant.  (Remember that you will notice changes in a small plant more than a large plant).

The second priority is to draw a detailed diagram (with labels) of a plant.

I have also added a Special.  Would you like to see a dicot form?  There are some Sweet Pea seeds in P1.  Put 5 or 6 on a wet paper towel in a shallow container (see the Science cupboard).  Observe over the next few days to see what happens.

Pyjama Day

Congratulations Sensational 7!  Check out this article in the Manawatu Standard.

Simon van Velthooven

On Friday, we were very lucky to have Simon van Velthooven visit to speak to us about his time at the Olympic Games.  We were inspired!  I wonder if any of us could make it?!  We were interested to hear him speak about 'Comradery.'  This links very well with our term's value - kotahitanga.

At the 2012 UCI Track Cycling World Championships, Simon won the bronze medal in the men's 1 kilometre time trial. He also won a bronze medal in the Men's Keirin at the 2012 Summer Olympics jointly with Teun Mulder after the race officials were unable to separate the two in a photo finish for third place.

Here are Emma and Iggy with Simon's Olympic Bronze medal!

Art Day

Sensational Seven and Elly's Whanau Class had a great day making miniature clay models today.  Ask us what we found out about clay and what advice we would give to someone who has never used clay before!

Check out further photos here.

Camp Photos - Week 2

What an incredible week we had on camp last week.  Have you seen all of the gorgeous camp photos on our Poutama Flickr Account?  There are over 900 photos to scroll through!  You might need to find a comfy chair and a cup of tea before you start!  Enjoy!

Seed 2 Table

Seed 2 Table starts again this Friday for the next group of students from Poutama.

Jake, Devin, Oliver, Adarsh, Reagan J, Adam, Tabitha, Kate, Pania, Kaedyn, Hannah, Vincent, Nikitah, Corton, Ben I, Liam Bo, Callum E, Jett, Caidyn, Mitchell, Bella, Jade and Salah will be joining Elly and Joy for the next 3 fridays.

We really need some help in the kitchen and garden! Do you have a mum, dad, grandma, grandad, aunty or uncle who could work with us? Please let Joy know! See the letter below that was sent home on Monday...

Good Luck!

Good luck to everyone who is participating in the Weet-Bix TRYathlon tomorrow.  We will look forward to hearing all about it on Thursday!

Statistics

Ebs and Nic's Whanau classes have been busy learning how to calculate the mean, median, mode and range for our air rifle scores at camp.

 

Writing Progress: WALT Edit

You might be noticing that this week there are one, two or more posts on your child(ren)'s blogs about their writing. We have been focusing on editing our writing. As year 5s and 6s, it is an expectation that we are working towards "choosing the right word/phrase to use at the right time" (Murray Gadd, 2013). This means that we should be experimenting using different vocabulary eg, words instead of said - argued, hinted, etc., and arranging words within sentences eg, He sat down silently. Silently, he sat down. Down he sat silently.

This morning we worked on the first paragraph of Kobe's story.  Check it out:

Camp writing

As I walk stumbled wobble over to the tower, my legs feel like are jelly. What am I doing here? I’m gonna die! I convince myself. I walk inched my way over to Kelly, the instructor. She talks calmly explained describes a little bit about Abseiling to my group. We put on our harnesses. And we wait. And wait.

So we should expect to see a lot of words crossed out, different colours, brackets, spelling errors and underlines at the moment. This is so we (educators) can see the choices the students have explored. Parents we invite you to also give feedback and feedforward to your child/ren - how are they going towards meeting the success criteria?

Willard Home Visit

This afternoon we went to Willard home to visit our neighbours. Being that we had just come back from camp we shared with them some of the stories we have written. Meihana shared his story with 14 residents! They were really happy to have us visit.

Missing? Lost?

Here is a photo of the towels that Nic and Ebony's whanau classes have brought back from camp. Do any of these look familiar? Come in and grab them :)

Links for Percussion Games

At music we have been learning about percussion. Jenny showed us some games online that help with rhythm and beat. Check them out. It might be fun to learn some or make up your own!


If some of you can learn the cup song pattern and teach it to me I’d be really
pleased!
Jenny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCyBMztWUFk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL3XaQbS5xg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyuZlr0AY9U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBSteR_0vdQ
Boom snap clap b-boom snap clap snap boom snap clap b-boom snap shh!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cujVsTgFxeM
Hand game sevens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz0dSnaTs2g
bim bum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukpaCZ3LS4Y
example of a choreographed hand clap skit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2G_-g0dNaI
cup song tutorial – the singing isn’t in tune but the first part of the clip is nice and clear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmSbXsFE3l8
Movie clip – this has great ideas for slightly different things that can be done with
the cups – and the song is perfect
http://www.wimp.com/schoolsong/
cup song in Ireland

This is one we learned at music this week...

Writing 'Post' camp

Wow! We had an amazing session today on writing. So we have looked at this excellent text by Paul Mason called "The Bull Run". As we read it together, I asked the class to highlight the language features that the author used. We colour coded the different types. When we had finished we realised how important using a range of verbs was - there were verbs everywhere! We also noticed that there weren't too many similes. Instead, there is a variety of similes, metaphors and personification. (Make sure you google any of these to help you to remember what they are!). It would be awesome if you could have a discussion with your parents about what this means and what you learnt during this activity.

What is important to learn?

Add your thoughts to the wall. Please check that your writing makes sense, is spelled correctly and has your name.

Created with Padlet

Poutama Camp 1

Created with flickr slideshow.

Camp is cool. It is a great opportunity to have some fun and enjoy being outdoors. You can face your fears and take on activities that you enjoy. At camp you will make new friends and get alongside some people you have not spent time with before. With the caving we got to see so many cool insects like weta’s, crayfish and spiders . Some people got scared of the insects, and clung to adults. Some people got stuck in tiny spaces and some people hit there head like we did, lucky that we had our helmets on. Abseiling is really scary when you are at the top but when you have done it you feel really proud of yourself. Your hands are black and tired, your sweating and your heart is beating like thunder in your chest. The instructors encouragement and people down the bottom calling in support made it easier. The air rifles were hard to get on to the target. Lining up the green and red dots on the target was challenging. We learnt how to aim and all about safety. Encouraging yourself, being relaxed and striving for your best all helps get a better score. Earth-boards are fast as they zoom down the hill. The hill is quite steep so be careful not to crash! It is really hard to manoeuvre and you need your arms and feet to turn. Year 3 and 4 students you are going to love camp. You will get to try some things that you have never ever done, and make even more friends. Have a great camp in 2016. For more images see the link. Corban and Zac, (Poutama Camp 1 2014)

Reading with Nic's Whanau Class

During the last 3 weeks, Nic's reading group have been looking into some texts about caving. We were looking at caving because we will be visiting a cave system when we go on camp. So this week, the children who were in Nic's reading group led their own reading groups with the rest of Nic's whanau class. In green, we discussed what makes a perfect reading lesson?

We then broke off into different spaces with different groups and began our reading groups. Check out these movie snippets I captured!

We ended our session by what the learners learnt from their session.  The "teachers" then gave their group feedback about their reading group. The over all message taken from this experience is that we need to take responsibility when entering the cave system because "mother natures takes a long time to create caves and stalactites and we need to respect that".

Buddy Class with Tahora!

Today Ebs whanau group visited with Tahora (Room 4) for buddy time. We had fun with our buddies last week at 'Buddy Challenge Day'. Our task today was to create a poster that shared a bit about ourselves.

WALT: show kotahitanga (get to know each other)

Task: Create a poster about yourself and your buddy

S/C: (your poster must have)

• Photo (of you and your buddy)
• Names
• Favourite: things to do, food, sport, colour,
• Toys, Games
• Books
• INFORMATION NEEDS TO BE: BIG, BOLD AND INTERESTING TO LOOK AT

WALT set smart goals

Today we co-constructed how to write a high quality goal for camp. We identified that a quality goal includes the "what" (green), the "why" (blue), the "when" (yellow), the "how" (red) and the "who" (black).