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Friday 30 May 2014

Cathy's Amazing Adventure

To we had an email from Cathy, she is spending about 6 weeks in China.



"Hi mrs hall and Room 15 sorry for Emailing you late,How is the class going ok  Room15 and Mrs Hall ,do you what to meet my family  and two dogs in china.This is the photo of one the dogs I will send you a couple more photos. the dog that is siting on a cushion she is pregnant next month she going to have a pappy, And these are some photos of  my family. The photo with one dog was 2 year before"
"Mrs hall on Monday 26 th of may I am going Chinese school do you now that every Chinese school Serbs you lunch every day but it is not free you have to pay for it ."

We wrote a response back to Cathy, as we had lots of questions for her ...

Dear Cathy,
We really enjoyed your lovely photos and comments. We have some questions:
What floor are you staying on? It looks very high!
What are the dogs names? They are very cute.
What is the name of your school? Are you enjoying going there?
What sort of things have you seen so far? Have you seen any bamboo or pandas?
What has the weather been like there? Our weather has been very cold, it was zero degrees the other morning and we had a frost all over the ground.
What yummy food have you been eating? We made a chocolate slice and then gave it away to helpers around the school. We really appreciate the work that they do for us.
We are wondering what the money is like in China? Is it the same as ours?
Why don't you have a look at our blog and see what we have been up to while you have been away.
We really miss you.
From
Room 15


We can't wait to hear back from Cathy and hear all the interesting things that she is doing. I was lovely getting an email.

Thursday 29 May 2014


Bush Restoration Project 
Starting next Wednesday (4th June) Room 15 will be involved in a Bush Restoration Project with Room 7 and Room 3. Community Coordinators from McLaren Park Henderson South Community Trust will be coming into the school and set up a native seedling area in our bush. They will teach us how to grow, plant and transplant native seedlings around our school.
Room 15 is very lucky to be involved in this special project.
We will be working in the bush area and around the swimming pool area, so for our sessions, can the children please bring gumboots and a raincoat, to keep their clothes and feet clean and dry.
1st Session – Wednesday 4th June at 1.30
2nd Session – Wednesday 2nd July at 1.30
If you have any further questions, please let me know.

Wednesday 28 May 2014

How to Make the Best Chocolate Slice Recipe

Room 15 wrote the procedure - How to make the Best Chocolate Slice, try it out, it was yummy.

How to Make the Best Chocolate Slice

Ingredients Needed:
225g Butter
6/4c Sugar
1t Vanilla Essense
2 Eggs
1 Pkt Chocolate Drops
2 Pkts Crashed Biscuits
2T Cocoa

1.              First you need to wash your hands.
2.              Then you cut the butter and take that wrapper off and put it in a microwave bowl.
3.              Put the sugar in the bowl with the butter.
4.              Pour in the vanilla essence.
5.              Next, put the cocoa in the bowl.
6.              Take the bowl to the microwave.
7.              Put the bowl in the microwave for 2 minutes.
8.              Take the bowl out of the microwave (BE CAREFUL – it will be hot). Stir with a hand beater. It will go thick and gooey.
9.              Put the bowl back in the microwave for 1 minute. Then mix again.
10.          Crack 2 eggs into a cup and mix with a fork. Put them in the bowl with the mixture.
11.          Put crashed, broken biscuits into the mixture and stir.
12.          Put mixture into a tine and put it in the fridge to set.
13.          Melt chocolate drops in the microwave for 2 minutes or until melted. Spread the chocolate onto the biscuit base.
14.          Put back in the fridge until ready to eat.
15.          Cut up and serve.

16.          Enjoy.

Pay It Back

Thank you Crystal, we really appreciate your card of thanks. Room 15, you should be very proud of yourselves.




Tuesday 27 May 2014

PAY IT FORWARD

As part of Room 15’s procedural writing, we followed a recipe and made Chocolate Slice. We had to follow the recipe and then write our own procedure. We had to make sure that we were accurate and wrote every step in the correct order. If we miss a step, our slice might not turn on very well.

We decided that we would give the slice to some deserving people around the school. These people work really hard every day and we thought it would be nice to thank them and let them know how much we appreciated their hard work. We wrote cards and delivered our packaged goods.
We are so glad that we could make other people happy.








Playball

We had an amazingly exciting day. We managed to fit in a Playball session this afternoon. We learnt a lot of different skills, including throwing and catching, running and dodging. 



Wednesday 21 May 2014

Angelah's Lunchtime Maths

During our rainy lunch time today, Angelah decided to work on her basic facts. She got out the basic facts tray and beads and completed the whole tray. Well done Angelah, great practising.


Publishing Writing

Just wondering if there is anyone out there who would like to come and help us publish our writing. We have written lovely accurate procedures on how to make tangrams, but are needed someone who can type quickly to help us get them all published. If you have a spare 15-30 minutes and could just pop in and help it would be greatly appreciated. Please come and speak to me.

Tuesday 20 May 2014

How to Build a Waka

This week, the Grinch's reading group have been reading, understanding and following procedures. The text we read was Build Your Own Double Waka. To ensure that we understood what we had read, we had to follow the procedure and build our own waka. We also needed to use our Green Thinking Hat as we didn't have all of the exact pieces that we needed. We went searching for alternative items that we could use instead.

These are some of our Waka's.



Max's Waka - Is this just like the one you paddle?

Kevin's Waka.


We tested our waka in the sink, and they were all successful, they all floated.

Friday 16 May 2014

Hunters News

This week, Hunter shared with us the news about his new train for his model railway. Thanks to Hunters Dad, for the pictures and comments. 

This is Hunter and his new model locomotive for his model railway. It's a KiwiRail class Dc 4-series, the same ones TransDev use for the majority of the suburban rail services in Auckland. Hunter saved up his pocket money and gift money to purchase this; carefully counting out every last cent when we realised the on-line store was having a sale. He's wanted this one for a long time now. The model railway is his- it has two loop tracks, one the "main" line and the other the "mine tunnel" upper track.
 


Thursday 15 May 2014

Cross Country

We had a great day today racing our cross country. The weather just held out and everyone tried their hardest, which was awesome to see. Congratulations to Jade (2nd - 7yr girls), Addison (3rd - 7 yr girls), Emma (2nd - 8 yr girls) and Jaykuz (3rd - 8 yr boys).







Tuesday 13 May 2014

Daily 5 - Read to Self

In Room 15 we have started to implement a new reading programme - Daily 5. We are in the early stages and it will take time to be up and running completely, the result will be that we all become independent readers. We have started Daily 5 with "Read to Self". We are working on sitting by ourselves, staying in one spot, reading quietly, getting started straight away and reading the whole time. We are recording the improvement in our "reading stamina" on a graph and even in two days we have improved. 

We have also spent a lot of time talking about "good fit books". The children can get two library books out each week and I have suggested that they keep one book in their tote trays to read during "Read to Self". The children can take the other book home to read. For most children in the class, they should be reading chapter books, however the book needs to be at an appropriate level for them. They are also spending more time choosing a book that they would be interested in and are really wanting to read.

This is the first step to becoming better readers.

Oliver and Cody have found a good spot to read to self.

Hunter, Shazia and Jade are working on building their reading stamina.

Jaykuz is working on reading the whole time.

Angelah, Paige and Eloise have found some good fit books to read.

Saturday 10 May 2014

Maths Lesson - Week 1, Term 2

Welcome back. We have got straight back into learning this week. We are working hard on our basic facts as part of our maths warm up. We are working on our accuracy (getting more and more correct each time) and our efficiency (working out our basic facts faster and faster). This term, we will be learning strategies to help solve multiplication and division problems.


Concentrating hard on our basic facts.




After completing our basic facts, we are reflecting on whether our accuracy and efficiency is improving. We are getting better, however we will keep practising to get ever better.


This term we will be working on some multiplication and division strategies. One group this week was understanding that multiplication and division are opposites. We were working out the family of facts for 5x8. Sasha then spotted another strategy to use. She used the doubling and halving strategy to change 5x8 into 10x4 to work out her answer. Well done Sasha!


This week we also learnt a new game, Buzz. This will help us with our skip counting. Today we played Buzz using multiples of 5. 

Friday 9 May 2014

Tidy Kiwi - Week 1

Congratulations Room 15, we have been awarded the Tidy Kiwi award for the second time this year. You are doing an amazing job at keeping our classroom and the area outside our classroom tidy and clean.

Monday 5 May 2014

Procedural Writing

Welcome back, I hope you enjoyed the holidays and are really to get stuck back into learning. 
Today went started procedural writing. We are writing a procedure on how to play snakes and ladders.

We discussed what our procedure needs: a title, steps (which we can number) and which must be in the correct order and enough detail so that the game can be played fairly.
Oliver, Isaac, Jagger, Chazz, Jaykuz, Angelah, Jacob and Eloise contributing to our group procedure on how to play snakes and ladders. 
We discussed how we would know if we had written our procedure well. We came up with the Success Criteria above so that we are able to check our own writing and edit it (improve our writing).