Dress Up Day on Halloween

We had great fun dressing up on Halloween. There were lots of different costumes and we had a parade and dance together at lunchtime.

Thanks to the Social Group of the Student Council for organising this.

Happy Diwali

It is Diwali and we wanted to say Happy Diwali to Bukit Timah Primary School in Singapore. 

Ridley: We were celebrating saying thank you to god and reading a special note. We put flowers, milk and money into the pot. We light candles because it is the festival of lights.

"This is me at Rongatai school celebrating Diwali. We did some performances. People did dances and people sang. Some people did a play and most of it was in Hindi and Bengali. The clothes are traditional Indian clothes. I wore a sari for one of the days".

Please add anything that you have learnt in the Padlet below:

Tangrams

For Maths today we all made Tangrams. It is interesting to see how many different things we can make with these shapes.

Travelling Tales: Fred the Lonely Teddy

We have been involved in a story project called Travelling Tales. This time we wrote the beginning of the story, then it was sent off to a school in Luxembourg and then to Island Bay School, then to Luxembourg and then back to us. 

This is us working on the beginning of the story. Gina wrote the first 5 slides and Nicola and Scott's base group wrote the last five.

Dress Up Day

Baila Baila Baila!

We danced our way through Friday afternoon! 

Assembly 28.11.16

Thank you to our great presenters demonstrating their character strengths of bravery and leadership!

Speaking beautifully about becoming a published illustrator

*Becoming* an illustrator *by Liam*

My teacher at art class (Stephany Woodman) told me about this Toi Toi magazine for kids.

It was created by NZ kids and to be selected I had to submit a few drawings that I felt proud of.

So I drew some practise pictures and found some awesome drawings from the past.

 I asked mum and dad if these drawings were good, they said “Yes, they look good’’,

But that’s just the start of it. There's heaps more to go.

A few days later it was art class again, Stephanie woodman asked “Did you submit some drawings to the Toi Toi magazine”? “Yes, I did.” I said quite nervously. “Oh, good, because there’s been 800 submissions.

“800 kids’’! I whispered to myself. Weeks had passed and I was still waiting for the answer, will I be selected or not? I wondered.

  After school one day mum drove me and my sister back to our house,on the way mum

Said to me”I have a surprise for you” “a surprise, please mum can you tell me”

“ sorry, but not yet”.

   We arrived back home, Dad had the computer ready. An email from Toi Toi said “Dear Liam Struthers, 800 people have submitted. You  were one who was chosen to become an illustrator for Toi Toi magazine, your story is called Rugby in the Mud The deadline is 2 weeks. From Charlotte"

I did two practise pictures and then dad said ”maybe this could help you” he lifted a    

     Big, heavy, book it said... Rugby history I was sketching the picture really carefully

     On page 46.

I was pleased with the final version, so I sent my picture to Charlotte. Now I was going to get published!

I checked through the post. No sign of the parcel.

That's when I come to school. Jude comes walking through the class. We were in the middle of literacy. She had a yellow book in her hand.She spoke ”Hello Tautoru” she said quite excitedly “I looked in the post today and I opened it.” “It was a yellow book it said on the front it said Toi Toi kids becoming artists all over New Zealand” I felt nervous inside is it me or is it not me?

She kept on talking “And I looked through and I looked through...and I saw a cool piece of art I read the writing was very cool too, but when I looked who the illustrator was” she paused for a moment is it me or is it me or is it not me? She said ”Liam S...” uh oh, time to come forward and speak to the class. She said to me “now, Liam how did you really become an illustrator”?

Now everyone Knows and I get to keep the magazine.

Well done to all of those students who got a principal award!

Transition: Getting to know one another

Year 3, 4 and 5 students work together every Friday morning so that we can get used to working with new people, different teachers and get a feel for the space. This week, we watched http://www.literacyshed.com/anti-bullying-shed.html and wrote a PMI (this is a thinking tool- positive, minus and interesting) about what we saw. We linked our ideas to what we know about character strengths.  

We start the day with "Wake up your brain" These are Friday's bootcampers!

Online Manners: Connecting with Lincoln Primary

Today we were learning about making positive comments on blogs. We know that when we are online we need to use our "online manners."  We are connecting with Team 3 Green Class at Lincoln Primary School in Canterbury. You can check out their blog: 

http://team3greenlincolnprimary.blogspot.co.nz/

Yay! Brian is back!

Brian is back! He has been to visit Nikoline in Sweden. He has had a great summer (winter for us) and Nikoline will email some pictures soon. These girls were thrilled with their messages and are writing back. 

Releasing a skink

We had a visit today from a curious neighbourhood cat called Orio.

On the way to the supermarket Nicola and Scott met Dylan's father and he was saving a skink from the paws of Orio!

We released the skink in our school lizard garden where we hope it will live long basking in the sun.

Planting

We are planting at the moment and we are finding a lot of worms in our garden. We are having fun and are going to do some more next week. Thank you Phil (Dylan's dad) for helping us in the garden. By Lily S

Our ideas for the new Children's Garden at the Botanical Gardens

Today we had a visit from Anneke and Ally from Wellington Botanical Gardens. They showed us different plants. We learnt lots about different plants and their uses. They were keen to get our ideas for the new children's garden in the Wellington Botanical Gardens. 

"The garden will be a learning space where children will:

• learn traditional plant skills and uses
• find out about the medicinal properties of native plants
• work with plants important to other cultures.

Wellington Botanic Garden will maintain the Children's Garden, and provide an educator to work with school groups and visitors.”

You can read more on the website: http://childrensgarden.org.nz/

Here are some of our ideas for the children's garden:

Thank you Anneke and Ally for talking to us. We are enjoying our growing inquiry! Also a big thank you to Sophie (Matilda's mum) for arranging this for us. 

Teaching the Teachers

These students were great leaders today and taught some teachers from Island Bay how to use Seesaw. You guys are fab!

Look what arrived in the post!

Look what arrived in the post. What do you think this is? Look for clues...

We're Jamming!

Yesterday we made jam as part of our inquiry. We made blueberry jam.  Scott was going wild in the kitchen. This is our "creating" part of the inquiry. We're looking forward to celebrating and sharing our learning. 

By Pippa