CBG Certificates!

Over the course of the term, people who are caught by the duty teacher using one of the 3R's (Respect, Resilience and Responsibility) in the playground are given a little slip called a CBG (Caught Being Good).
These slips are given to your teacher who records them down on a chart. When you get to 5 you get a special certificate in assembly. Then when you get 10 you get a special school badge.

In today’s assembly two special people in Room 13 got a certificate, they were Sam and Kimberley.
Well done us! J

By Sam and Kimberley.

Taradale Art

Taradale Art

Last week we did some art inspired our local community, Taradale. First we did a light sketch of our Pau. Then we did the background which was a river. Then we outlined it in vivid and coloured it using both twistables and coloured pencils. We used a photo we had taken our trip to remind us what it looked like.

Next we did a pencil drawing of the Taradale Clock Tower. We were going to go for a walk down there but this afternoon was the day it decided to rain, after weeks and weeks of no rain. We did a lot of detail but left them black and white.

Then the final step was Otatara Pa. We went to Otatara Pa the previous week and took lots of photos. We used these to draw the palisades in charcoal and did clouds and smudging a bit to add detail. Don’t they look amazing!

By Sam & Bryce

Otatara Pa

The whole senior school walked down to River Side Park where we visited the pou and ate lunch. Otatara Pa was where the Maori used to fight. Hoani our te reo, teacher took us on a guided walk around the pa. We saw the palisades, and kumara pits.  We learnt lots of information about the pa and Taradale on the way, such as Feint, which when Taraia made some of his mean go down to attack Otatara while his good men went in from the top and captured Hikurangi, the chief.

By Kimberley & Shirley

 

Our Pou / Tutaekuri river

On our walk to Otatara Pa we stopped to eat by our Pou. We learnt that the river Tutaekuri was named the Tutaekuri because a chief who spotted a group of people who looked thin and hungry. He slaughtered their dogs to make food for them to eat.  After they ate they threw the guts of the dogs into the river and from then on it was called Tutaekuri river. We learnt that Tutaekuri means dog guts in Maori.  We looked at the Pau and discovered that the blue and brown on the Pau meant water and land. We also found out that Teari’s mum painted the Pau.

By Isabelle, Humo and Kayla

Bryant House

Last week on Monday we went for a walk to Bryant House, retirement home, to interview them with our questions. We got partnered up with the residents of Bryant House. We asked them our questions some people got lots of answers and some people didn’t get as many. The reason we went was to try and learn more about people living in the Taradale community. When we got back to school we compared the answers to the questions, because we had answered the same questions.

Some examples of the questions and answers are…

Q. What has been your proudest moment and why?

A. Getting married because all of my family was with me.

Q. What changes have you noticed in the world?

A. There was no electricity, telephones and fridges, unlike now.

Near the door there was a box full of chocolate eggs, they have a competition where they have to count them and guess the number of eggs there are. The nearest person who guesses the number of eggs gets all of the eggs. We wished we could enter.  When we left we were given a cold drink of juice.

By Tommy and Pasa

Cotton Ball Catapults

On Monday for maths we made some catapults because we don’t swap on Mondays for maths because we want to work with our class mates and do problem solving together. We used Popsicle sticks, paper clips, rubber bands, plastic cutlery, sellotape and cotton balls. We did a test fire outside room 14 and then it was time to fire. 1^st place was Te-Ahu, Seth and Kairon 2^nd place was Caleb and Ethan and 3^rd was Tahlia, Chloe and Samantha.  On Tuesday we fired it inside we used the same catapult 1^st place was Nick and Justis 2^nd was Caleb and Ethan and 3^rd was Tahlia, Chloe and Samantha. Next week we are starting the focus on problem solving and will rotate around the 4 classes.

By Tommy, Isabel and Isabelle.

 

Lego Figures

After popular request, we created lego avatars like last years class did. Don't they look cool!

http://www.reasonablyclever.com/mini-mizers/classic-kid-safe-mini-mizer/

 

 

 

 

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.