NZ ART

Over the last few weeks Room13 has been doing New Zealand seaside art, based on the artist, Sarah C.

Our Inspiration by New Zealand Artist  Sarah C.

 

 

We have been doing step by step instructions in pencil, then we went over that in vivid, making sure we rubbed out the guidelines. After that we painted each segment separately, waiting for each section to dry before we started the next part, this was so the colours didn’t mix.

Don’t they look amazing!

By Pasa, Humo and Anna
 

plants, Battle of Omarunui and Otatara Pa

Seed Diary
6^th March

We planted some seeds. Every one picked which seeds they wanted. We read the Mitre 10 booklet on planting seeds. We filled our container with seed raising mix. We placed the seed in the soil then we cover it with soil. Gently watered it and waited for them to grow.

  

15^th March

Over the last 9 days we have been watching our little seedlings sprout. The sunflowers have grown the most but the little lettuce and silver beet seeds have grown lots too. We are all looking forward to seeing them fully grown.

By Kimberley & Shirley  

 Topic

Battle at Omarunui

In 1866, 130 Hauhau Rebels fought 200 British and Ngati Kahungunu allies at Omarunui. (Omarunui is about 10 kilometres from Napier on the Tutaekuri River.)

Hauhau built a temporary pa and were defeated by Ngati Kahungunu and the British militia (fighting force) resulting in 21 dead, 30 wounded and 58 prisoners.

We made little figures out of cardboard and attached them to an ice block stick. We made lots of Maori warriors and some British fighters. A stage was made and we acted it out the battle using our figures.

The backdrop is now hung on the wall with the figures so you can act out the scene.

 

By Humo and Nick.

 

Otatara Pa Fact Wheel

First we got to read an article on Otatara Pa and identified the main parts. When we had decided on the most important facts Mrs Colliss gave us a wheel of either four or eight sections, there were the places for the facts. We wrote our facts carefully in the sections and then placed the brown cover on top. The brown sheet of paper had the title on it and our name. We then numbered the facts in maori.

We used a split pin so you can turn it around and see the different facts. Each group selected one that was going to be photocopied and put on the wall. The others are put in our books. They look really cool and it was a fun way to share information about Otatara Pa.

By Caleb and Ethan

Swim Safe

Swim Safe

Today we had Fiona from Swim Safe come and do some dry land swimming activities with us. Lucky we didn't have to get into the pool because it has been cold!

Check us out in our swim caps!

Stretched Streamline

By Ethan, Sam, Shohei, Anthony and Caleb

We had to make streamline arms and stretch as far as we could, we had to try and touch the sky and walk in a line around the pool.

Legs and Arms up

By Seth, Bryce, Humo and Nick.

We were learning to develop our tummy muscles by lying flat and putting our legs and arms up, this will help our streamline swimming.

Bottoms off the ground

By Tommy, Te Ahu, Liam, Kairon and Pasa.

What we did first was lay on our back then we lifted our bottoms off the ground. We had to keep them off the ground for 25 seconds, you could tell it was working our muscles because it hurt.

Forward and Backwards Arms

By Kairon and Anthony

We were trying to swing both arms in opposite ways. This was getting us to practice both backstroke and freestyle arms at the same time, plus test our coordination. It was hard!

Breaststroke Arms

By Kayla, Chloe, Justis, Tahlia and Isabel

Today we were practising our breaststroke arms on dry land. We did our arms into our chest to make an arm arrow and shot our arms out. After we did the arms we started practicing our legs

Breaststroke Legs

By Kimberley, Isabelle, Anna, Shirley and Micayela.

We were learning to correctly do breaststroke legs, first we had to put our legs up and our feet flat in the air, then we turned out our feet and made a circle that brought our feet down to the ground again, then we started again and did it a few more times.

Week 5

Gardening

Since we last wrote the blog a few things have happened in our garden.

Caleb, Karion, Nick, Bryce, Chloe and Isabel worked with Isabel’s mum to put fertiliser and sheep pallets (smarty tablets) on our garden, this was to help make the garden ready for the plants.

After watering the gardens heaps it was time to plant some of the plants that Isabel and Kimberley had been out to buy.

Shohei, Te Ahu, Nikita and Isabel with our amazing parent helper Isabel’s mum,  planted some vegies in our garden. Kids in the middles and juniors have also planted the other gardens.

We have received lots of bits and pieces from families in our class, seeds, sprinklers, containers and more. Thank you to all these wonderful people.

The ZingBokashi’s have arrived and we will begin using them soon.

The worm farm has been cleaned out and we are waiting for the worms to arrive then we can start                                                       feeding them.

What’s in the box?

In literacy we are learning to describe objects and write descriptions.

We brought something from home that we could put in our stationery box. In pairs we then had to write descriptive clues so the reader could try and guess what is inside the box. The clues were to get more and more obvious as you read on. The writing is on the outside of the box, and then the reader can open the box and inside is the object that was described. They look really cool and we are looking forward to testing them out on other classes. 

Census

Today is Census day in New Zealand, so today the seniors carried out their own census. We watched a clip from the breakfast show which told us why the census is so important.

Here are some facts we learnt about the census.

· It is the first census in 7 years (the last one wasn’t held due to the Christchurch Earthquake).

· Everyone in NZ must fill in the census forms, either online or in the booklets.

· The census helps work out where the government spends money on things like, health, education and transport.

We worked in partners to complete a booklet full of different questions. Examples of the questions are:

· Age in years

· What is your height?

· What is your popliteal length? (This is when you sit on a chair and measure from behind your knee to the ground!)

· What is the main way you get to school?

· What is your favourite school subject?

Today all we had to do is collect the data, later in the term we will enter the data onto the website.www.censusatschool.org.nz

Once we have done this we will be able to look at all the data and make comments about the treads, just like NZ statistics will do for the real census.

  

Creating a book on the iPad

We made a book on our iPad using the app Book Creator. Each person had to choose one of the 3R’s that was the most important to them. They then had to write a description of why it was the most important to them. We had to take a photo of ourselves and insert this into the page. The next step, and the hardest, was recording ourselves saying what we had written. Each person had their own page, which came together to make a book. Hopefully we can share this soon.

By Tommy, Kimberley, Micayela and Liam

 Ratburger

We are reading the book Ratburger by David Walliams. This is the same author as the book Gangsta Granny and Mr Stink that Room 13 read last year.

This book is about Zoe who loses her pet hamster and finds a baby rat which she smuggles to school. She gets suspended. This is as far as we have gotten. We have made some great connections, especially text to text because there are lots of similarities to the other David Walliams books we have read.

Shields

We created these shields which represent ourselves. First on our shields we did our draft we have to select symbols that represent ourselves. We drew them in pencil then outlined with vivid, then we used pastel to colour in the pictures, next we dyed the background of our shields, each of the 4 segments a different colour. Then we cut strips of tinfoil and glued it onto the edges on our shields to make it look like metal. Then we stapled the handle on the back, this made them curved and look more interesting, plus gave us something to hold.

 

Special Assembly

This morning we had a special whole school assembly for Ms Bevis, welcoming her as the new principal. Mr Turfrey was there to present a special gift to Ms Bevis, a tuki, it is a dark greenstone necklace, and the shape of it represents building new things. The whole school sung a special song that we learnt for the event and the school song. School families and Ms Bevis’s family was there to watch the special event.

Reading Groups

Last week we started our reading groups, each group is named from a house from Harry Potter. The groups are Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Griffindor.

One group is reading Trash and doing a literacy circle, they will tell you more about this later.

 

The other three groups are reading smaller novels focusing on making text to self-connections.

 

Room 13 are gardening!

Last week we decided that we were going to help with the management of the gardens at school, especially those outside our class rooms.

We talked to Mrs Makene who had a similar idea and had talked to the city council about putting our plan into action.

A parent has donated a worm farm to the school, so Caleb and Humo were given the job to research the worm farm and what they can actually eat and how they work. They are currently working on this to share with the class.

Anna and Kimberley are researching compost bins and finding out about what can go in those, they are also gathering the information to share with the class. We are looking forward to the arrival of some special compost bins that have been ordered.

Seth and Te Ahu were given the task to find out a bit more about pig buckets, as we already have these in the school.

Isabel, Nikita, Nick and Bryce headed outside and had a sort through the garden and pulled out any items that were no longer suitable (dead or gone to seed).

Kayla, Chloe, Micayela, Ethan, Anthony, Shohei and Isabelle started sorting through the books in our class, noting down interesting websites and beginning to find out what plants we can plant.

We are all very excited and have brainstormed some really cool ideas of what we want to achieve.

We look forward to sharing our work with you.
 

Te Reo and Tryathlon

Te Reo Maori

On Wednesday we had our first Te Reo Maori session with Hoani for 2013. We started off by doing introductions e.g.

Ko Humo ahu

Ko Kayla ahu

Then we made a list for all the Maori words for family members, this allows us to add more lines to our pepeha.

Then we did the kapa haka, we sung the songs that we knew from last year. Ethan and Nikita picked up the words and actions really fast (they are new to our school).

Hoani was really proud of us because we worked really well for the first time this year and we displayed the 3R’s (Respect, Resilience and Responsibility.)

Ethan and Nikita shared the star of the week and both received a Maori sticker.

By Humo and Kayla

 

 

Te Ahu at the Kiwi Kids Tryathlon

On Wednesday Te Ahu was away because he was at the kiwi kids triathlon. It was a big event at Frimley Park in Hastings, with nearly one thousand kids participating.

The three events that he had to do were swimming, biking and running.

Seth and Sam asked Te Ahu what his must challenging moment was.

Te Ahu told them “It was the waiting, you had to be really patient, which was hard because I was excited, everyone was bored!”

There were 7 age groups, each had a different coloured cap and stickers so you could tell them apart and the group they were in. 

The youngest competitor was 6 the oldest was 15.

Te Ahu enjoyed his day, especially the running. He hopes to do it next year and is trying to convince his mates to enter.

Written by Te Ahu, Seth and Sam.

 

Welcome to 2013!

Bio Poems by Isabel and Anna

In the first week of school we wrote a poem called a bio poem, which is all about ourselves. We wrote a draft and then later we published them on the school laptops. We took a ‘selfie’ of ourselves using the iPad and then inserted them into our poems; we then had to alter the photo so they were black and white. Now they are on the wall looking spectacular.

Swimming by Nick and Pasa

Monday the 10^th of February was the first time we swum as a class. During the first lesson we showed Mrs Colliss our best swimming so she could put us into groups. Once we got back to class we came up with our group names.

1.     Sharks

2.    Stingrays

3.    Silver Sharks

4.    Clams.

On Tuesday we were in our groups and started to work on our breathing and our freestyle technique.  Tuesday was a great day because every single person remembered their togs!

 

 

 

Studyladder by Te Ahu and Tommy

We have started working on the website studyladder.co.nz. We each have own account, our username is three letters of our first name then some random numbers. Our password is a random computer generated word. We can customise our avatar and bedroom by earning points, you earn the points by completing learning tasks that Mrs Colliss has set for us. We are all excited to get on there and start earning points. This is part of our home learning and sometimes we will do it during class time.

About Us Posters by Ethan and Caleb           

One of our first activities this year has been our About Us Posters, these are posters all about ourselves. We filled out all our details on the posters (nothing too personal!). The types of information we included are our favourites, our family, hobbies etc. Using the iPad we took silly pictures and printed them out so we could insert them on our posters. At the top of our page there is a scroll, in here we wrote our name and decorated it. They are now up on our wall for everyone to read and learn about each other. Surrounding them are words that describe the members of Room 13.

Welcome to Room 13 2013

Welcome to Room 13 2013

We are about to start an exciting new year of learning!

On the first day back (4/2/13) students will head to their 2012 classes.   We will all go to a whole school assembly where the students will find out their 2013 classes. We will then head to class, begin to get to know each other and start our exciting year!

Room 13 students will receive a notice in the first few days which will give information about the class blog and have a slip for parents to fill in allowing their child’s first name, photo and work to be included on the blog.

Mrs Erica Colliss

iSpy Books