Tauranga Libraries Summer Reading Programme

Tauranga Library Website

Be in quick as there are limited spaces. Great way to keep up the children's reading over the long summer break.

Reading

Hi Room 8 families,

I have been doing some reading myself lately and came across this nice website from the  National Library of New Zealand.  Being a competent reading is the door to the rest of the curriculum for our learners. I found a section on 'Reading at home' and thought I would give you the opportunity to have a look at the information available.

Our focus in reading at present is decoding, fluency & expression and then deeper understanding. It is important that with so much reading material and information available to our children now, that they develop 'information fluency'. This basically means they not only read text, but also critique the information and then apply what they have learned.

Above all, we want our children to enjoy their reading.

Dinosaur Poems

We did shape poems based on our study of dinosaurs. We used an adjective, then a noun, followed by a  verb. We used the iPads to research the dinosaur names and then brainstormed the adjectives and verbs. We published the shape poems on paper first, then we used the iPad to make a movie of an alternative form of publication.

Doodle Buddy - We drew our dinosaur
Tellagami - We typed or read our poem so our avatar presents our poem with our drawing in the background
Typedrawing - We typed our poem into the app and then drew our poem around the outside of our drawing.

We then used iMovie to collate our finished product.  This is our first attempt at using Tellagami, so some of the typing may be a little inaccurate, but we did this on our own or with peer tutors. It was a lot of fun.

Click here to view our presentations

Operation Christmas Child

Click here to view the website

Room 8 is taking part in Operation Christmas Child.  The aim is for our children to bring along a small contribution towards filling a shoebox for two children. One boy and one girl in the 5 - 9 year age range.  Below is a list of suggestion. It does not have to be expensive, just a contribution would be great.  We need to hand the shoeboxes back by Monday.

We are finalists in the MADE Awards

Room 8 entered our Magnificent Masks documentary into the 2013 MADE Awards. We are listed as finalists. You can see a list of finalists in all the different categories and details about attending the awards ceremony.

Well done us :-)

This week we made the Bay of Plenty Times. An explanation of the project as well as a lovely photo of 3 of our classmates with their masks.

Magnificent Masks

We have had a wonderful time with our Art Project, lead by our student teacher Karen Reed. We have been enjoying being able to play in paste, paint and all that terrific goo.

We put together an iMovie presentation documenting our journey. This was completed entirely on the iPad. Enjoy

Click here to watch the movie

The Three Little Pigs.... or is it?

We are familiar with the story of the three little pigs. For homework this week we posed the question: Write and tell us how would the story change if there was a 4th little pig and what would he have used to build his house?

Lacey came back with:

Four Little Pigs

The 4th little pig made his house out of cake and candy.

The Big Bad Wolf ate his house and was too full to eat the piggies.

Pukeko Magic

"What will they come up with next?" I hear you ask.

Bringing the colouring-in to life.

Today while we were waiting for everyone to finish the calendar art, some of us got to put together a movie about how we are able to make our pictures come alive.

It was all created on the iPad, except for the movie of the pukeko moving. We had to do a screen capture on the laptop using AirServer and then transfer the movies onto the iPad through iPhoto.

Enjoy our movie.

Click here to view our movie

App Smashing

On the iPads you are able to use a variety of apps to create content.  Sharing mostly revolves around the camera roll which stores both photos and movies.  Here are some examples we have been using in the classroom

Click here to view the movie

Book Creator - iPad App

One of the creative apps we have been using is Book Creator. It is on the list of basic apps for 2014 BYOD (iPads).

This is a screencast of how this app works. It can be used to create all sorts of books including a project, travel journal, retell, narrative and much more.

Have fun with it.

Click here to view Screencast

Factions

We have been dividing objects and groups of objects using half and quarters. We have been using the iPads to demonstrate our understandings and explain our thinking.

Click here to view our movie

Maths - Working with Halves

Today we worked on the iPad again using Explain Everything.  The children recorded their explanations of how they halve objects and groups. This is one of the recordings.

Click here to view our recording

Maths - Fractions

We have been having fun presenting our understanding of basic fractions by creating these on the iPads. We showed whole and half using POW Strip Design

Funky Fun

The children of Tui Whānāu had an amazing day at the Baypark Tech Arena participating in the Funky Fun Day. They did a rotation of 5 different sports, touch rugby, soccer, miniball (basketball), hockey and relay races.
Thank you so much to the parents who volunteered to be team managers and/or transported our children to and from the venue. It was also lovely to have other parents drop in to support our teams during the day. The children gave 100% on the courts and we saw some talent shining through as well.

Here is a small movie of the day.

Click here to view our movie

Tauranga Library Storytime Visit

Click Here to View our Movie

We had a wonderful visit from the lovely ladies (Clare and Penny) who work in the children's section of the Tauranga Library. The children got to listen to 3 excellent stories and dramatised two of them. One of them was 'The Musicians of Bremen' which we captured on the iPad. As you can see, even the audience is fully involved. We have some talented little actors.



The Tauranga Libraries also run programmes in the school holidays.  Keep an eye on their website.

Term 2 Art

Sometimes................ all I need is the air that I breathe

The inspiration for our Art project this term using pastels and words.  These are our finished pieces.

Little Red Riding Hood

Today we had some more special children using Puppet Pals to present a play. This week it was Ryan, Kempton,, Kaitlyn, Miyah and Ella.

They had three backgrounds to juggle as well as their characters. They did a great job.

Click here to view our presentation

Yummy Sticker Promotion!

2012 was such a success we are doing it again!  Collect your Yummy Stickers and get free sports gear for our school!

Collect your Yummy Stickers or cut out labels from the bags of Yummy apples and place them on the Sticker Collection Sheets in your classroom. Yummy Sticker fruit will be found at PaknSave, New World and 4 Square. Your collection of Yummy stickers will be converted  into a winning share of a sports equipment prize pool.  

This will be running for the rest of term 2 & 3.

Why do we have to clean our teeth twice daily?

Click here for more facts about cleaning our teeth

We have to brush our teeth to take the plaque off. Plaque is the yucky stuff that sticks to our teeth. It has germs that make holes in our teeth. We brush to keep our teeth clean.
We have to eat healthy food. Food with sugar makes holes.                     By Ryan

Bacteria in our mouth eat food stuck on our teeth.
Eating the food makes acid. That makes holes in our teeth. So we need to brush twice a day to stop this.
By Zac

..............Because if we don't brush our teeth, then they'll get holes in them from a little bug. By Francis

...............Because they go yellow. By Danni

We brush our teeth twice a day because we don't get dirty teeth. We need to brush our teeth every night so we don't get dirty gums and we eat healthy food so we don't get dirty teeth. By Kempton

We need to brush our teeth every day because if we don't our teeth will get dirty and get holes in them.
They might even fall out!   By Samantha

................You must brush your teeth to remove the bacteria.   By Mitchell

................ So your teeth do not go rotten and your breath smells nice.   By Regan

View information about how to effectively brush your teeth

Daffodowndilly by AA Milne

For poetry this week we shared the poem Daffodowndilly by AA Milne. Although it is a spring poem it was lovely to think warm thoughts this week. We publish his poem in Kidpix using a manipulated image and typing the poem onto the picture. You can read our contributions on the Children's Work page. The other children used Book Creator on the iPads to collaboratively make an e-Pub book of the poem.

Click here to view our book

TCS Harlem Shake

During Art today.......

Click to view

The Little Red Hen

The boys in the Orange reading group today dramatised their book today using Puppet Pals on the iPad. Plays are great for fluency, phrasing and expression. Notice the "voices" they used for their characters.

Click here to enjoy the animation

Characters:

Narrator: Zac
Little Red Hen: Dylan
Dog: Mitchell
Duck: Cohan
Pig: Ryan

Cultural Assembly

We had a wonderfully colourful and exciting assembly put on by our ESOL group.

Click here to view their performance

I Went To Visit A Friend One Day

We had fun sharing the reading of a book called, I Went To Visit A Friend One Day which used a reoccuring story structure and focuses on present and past tense verbs. It was fun and the children had a good time using Kidpix to illustrate their writing and then published using Pages. We then turned their documents into PDFs, combined them into a book and we have published it on our Children's Work page. 

Go To Children's Work Page

Tui Whanau Assembly

Assembly went very well today. The children all spoke, sang and showed their art beautifully. We had a lovely visitor - Mr Tommy Kapai. He donated some "T for Tauranga" books to our school and signed some individual copies for our children.

A link will be posted later with the video of our performance.

Click here to see a video of our assembly

Click here to view our photo gallery

Visiting Author - Dawn McMillan

We had a visit from the lovely and talented Dawn McMillan yesterday. We got to hear her read us a couple of her stories.

She not only writes books for children that you would find in the library or a book store, but she has also written books for schools. She has a website and a blog if you would like to see her works. At present she is giving people an opportunity to win a signed copy of one of her books.

Woolly Wally was such a vain Ram. Oh no, the shearers came. What did he learn?

'I Need a New Bum' is such a fun book.

Home Reading Hints

Junior Soccer Wednesday Lunchtime

Beach Education 2013

Click Here to View The Beach Ed Photo Gallery

Room 8 went on their annual Beach Education Day on Tuesday 12th February. It was a mix of fun, sun and education.
The children start inside the clubhouse and through a video, some dramatisation and quizzing they learned about beach and sun safety.
They then get a tour of the clubhouse to get an appreciation of what the Surf Lifesaving Club does and how they are equipped to help the public.
After morning tea, we all got to go down to the beach for some beach games such as flags and seaweed.
We all got a break over lunch and it was time to get organised to go into the water. Togs were put on and so was more sunblock. The parent volunteers then got to do their thing. (Which was a pleasure really in the heat)
The children got to do a couple of relays and were taught how to move through the water easily. This was a great time to try new things and to gain a little more water confidence.
 It was all finally finished off with some free time to swim. The waves were terrific.
Just hope they slept well for you all that night.