Tuesdays Weather Temperature

Room 9 noticed that between 10:00am and 11:00am the temperature rose 5 degrees. At 4:00pm the temperature was at its hottest being 15 degrees. The temperature got hotter as the day went on. I wonder what the weather is going to do tomorrow? What do you know about temperature?

The Wombles of Room 9.

 

Vardon school has a goal to keep our school tidy and rubbish free. Room 9 has a litter area, here are some pictures of us picking up rubbish around our litter area. We are great Wombles. 

MATARIKI TERM 2

Songs

Get your singing voices and boogey on...
Check out our song page!!!

Holiday Homework

Kia Ora room 9 tamariki,

This is Whaea Nikki, i am just learning how to work your blog. Exciting times. See, teachers are learning ALL the time too!

Sixth day of Creativity-In 15 Day Creativity Challenge

Today we imagined what life would be like if we didn't have seasons. We were given a piece of paper and had to colour the leaves in the colour of one season, autumn, spring or summer. Then we had to colour each leaf a different colour and think about what life would be like if we didn't have seasons.
Here are a few of our thoughts.

The weatherman on the news wouldn't be able to tell us what the weather would be like the next day and whether or not to put our washing out. -Gemma

It would be boring because it might be dark and you won't get the heat of summer. -Rico

We wouldn't have some foods because foods grow in seasons. -Eva

There would be no flowers for bees to get honey from. -Maxxis

Animals will die because they won't have the food they usually eat in that season. -Matthew

There would be a drought and no water would mean the plants can't grow. -Jayme

If plants can't grow then we would die because we need oxygen from the trees and water. -Alex

What do you think life would be like without seasons? What would be the good things about not having seasons? What wouldn't be so good?

Pentagons-Two times tables

In the Pentagons we are learning to use our doubles to help us work out our two times tables.
Here is a Pic Collage we have made using materials to show groups of two.

Now we are practicing getting faster at answering our two times tables. Here is a game to practice it with.
http://www.wmnet.org.uk/resources/gordon/Hit%20the%20button%20v9.swf

We were allowed to play it three times and hopefully improve our score. Check out our individual blogs to see what scores we got for our three games and if we are improving.

Fifth Day of Creativity-In 15 Day Creativity Challenge

Today we made straw monsters. We had to use the straw to soak up the die and then drop it onto our page making a splotch on the page. Once the die was dry we had to use our imagination to find how we could turn our ink splotch into a monster adding eyes and mouth.
Check out what we came up with.

Fourth Day of Creativity- In 15 Challenge

Today we got creative with a squiggle. Mrs Head gave everyone a copy of a squiggle she had drawn. We had to turn that squiggle into a picture and it was amazing what we all came up with. Who would have thought the same squiggle could be a butterfly one minute and then a monster the next, a car or even a boy's hat.
We had to use our imagination to really think about what we were going to turn this squiggle into.
Then our squiggle became the main character to our writing. We had to think about giving it a name things like where it might life and a problem that it faces throughout the story as well as a way to solve the problem.

What do you think of our drawings? What would you have created from the squiggle?

Third day of Creativity in 15 day challenge

Today we looked at how time can affect our creativity. How if we have the pressure of time often we come up with a rushed job and just kind of come up with what we have always come up with or expected but given more time we can all become creative and have time to come up with different ideas.
First we watched this You Tube clip.
Then Mrs Head gave us 10 seconds to draw a picture of whatever we choose (but if we couldn't think of something we had to draw a flower). Then she gave us 10 minutes to start our picture from scratch. Have a look at the difference between 10 seconds and 10 minutes.
Creativity vs Time on PhotoPeach
We all agreed that;
We need time to make changes and be creative.
We are more creative if we don't have the pressure of time to think about.

Here were some of our other thoughts...

"With the ten seconds it felt like a rush and I don't like doing a rushed job and having it messy." -Rico
"I liked having ten minutes because it was longer and we could draw a better picture." -Jono
"I didn't like ten seconds because it looked really messy." -Eva
"It was frustrating having ten seconds because it wasn't long enough for drawing the pictures in our mind." -Kayley
"I felt challenged because ten seconds wasn't a lot of time to get what you want done." -Ella
"With ten minutes I had five minutes to think and five minutes to draw." -Matthew
"Ten seconds was frustrating and challenging because you can't get what you want done."-Taylor
"I liked ten minutes because it gave us some more time to finish." -Maea
"I found that ten seconds was hard because I only got to draw the base of the car but with ten minutes I got to add more to my picture."-Jayme
"All I got done was a line in the ten seconds." -Jono
"I think that ten seconds isn't enough time to be creative." -Alex
"I like the ten minute side because you get to add more detail and thinking to your picture."-Gemma

Mrs Head then asked us if we could think of a time when we weren't happy with our final work because we hadn't had enough time to be as creative as we wanted. Here are a few of our thoughts.

Created with Padlet

Have you had a time when you have wanted to be more creative but because of time haven't been as happy with your end result?

Second day of Creativity in 15 day challenge

Today Mrs Head gave us a piece of paper that had 16 circles on it. The circles were paired up and we had to become creative and imagine what those two circles next to each other could make a picture of. With 16 circles that meant we had to come up with eight pictures in total. Here are just a few examples of different pictures people came up with.

15 Days of Creativity

This term our big idea is Imagination. To start this we have got a new challenge. Our challenge is to be creative in some way over the first 15 days of this term.
Today we started off by completing a Simon Says challenge. Mrs Head gave us some simple instructions but kept them brief so that we could decide how we put them on the page and how big or small. Even though we were all given the same instruction we all came up with something slightly different.

Our instructions were;
-Draw a blue circle.
-Draw another circle that is coloured in pink and orange and has a green border.
-Draw a purple squiggly line.
-Draw three stars; one blue, one yellow, one red.

Then we had to come up with illustrations about what we think imagination is all about. Here are a few examples. Check out our individual blogs to see what we thought imagination was.

What do you think imagination is?

Maaori Phrase of the Week

This week our Maaori Phrase of the Week was learning to introduce our teacher.
Ko wai to kaiako? Which means 'Who is your teacher?'
Ko Mrs Head taku kaiako which means 'Mrs Head is my teacher.'

Well done to Cloe and Kayley who have made this weeks Puppet Pal to help us practice the phrase.

Assembly footage

It was great to see so many parents at our assembly. This week was our turn to share with the school and our family what we have learnt so far this year. Our theme was 'Community' we shared about our class community creating online communities and looking at the communities in caves. Here are some videos and photos taken from our assembly if you couldn't make it or want to have another look at our learning.

Room 9's Assembly, Community on PhotoPeach

What did you enjoy about our assembly?

Survivor Challenge-Writing

This week our challenge was a writing one. We had to work as a team to come up with a creative piece of writing. We were given five minutes to plan our story and then just 15 minutes to write it. The catch was it had to include three objects somewhere in the story. These objects were; an umbrella, scarf and a hot dog.
At first we thought how are we going to put all of these three things into one story but quickly we found a way and here are our stories.

Mighty Eagles
One day one big hairy faced man named Mr Twit who always gets hot dogs and his wife Mrs Twit who always gets new umbrellas and their rabbit called Ella who always wears a scarf ate bird pie. A cow girl called Eva always goes around town in her cowgirl boots or heelies and her horse goes clip clop clip clip in his fancy hooves. Oh by the way his name is Rico. His hooves are so annoying that people say get out of town you fancy horse.

Golden Bell Tui's
Mr and Mrs Twit head off to the beach while holding an umbrella and scarf. Look Mr Twit there is a delicious hot dog truck. Should we get some delicious hot dogs? Yes gasped Mr Twit so they put down their scarf and umbrella and ran off to the hot dog truck which was really far away and the first time the Twit's had ever run.

Green Pythons
Once upon a time there was a boy called Alex and his big step brother named Jayden. One day they went to buy a scarf and a hot dog. But after a few seconds it started raining. Then they started thinking out the box it was midnight they ran to the umbrella shop.

Lightening Strikes
One day there was an old lady who walked past a hot dog shop while it was raining with her umbrella and her scarf on her neck because it was snowing. Her dog was called hot dog and she was the poshest dog in the entire world. Like totally! She went back into the hot dog shop and there was just one left so she dived for it but someone else just got it.

What do you like about our stories? How would you have used the three objects in a story?

Maaori Phrase of the Week

This week our Maaori Phrase of the Week was about learning to say what school we go to.
Ko wai to kura? Means What school do you go to?
Ko Vardon toko kura. Means Vardon is my school.

Well done Alex and Rico who used Puppet Pals to create this weeks phrase with the help of last weeks experts Ella and Eva.

Wrap Free Wednesday

This week we had just under 50% of our class wrap free for Wrap Free Wednesday. Unfortunately there were a few of us who lots of wrappers in our lunchbox which meant the total number of wraps was high again. Next week we want to try really hard to get half of our class wrap free and the other half with three or less wrappers in their lunchboxes.

Survivor Challenge-Problem Solving

This week we really had to think outside the square with the problems we had been given. We were given riddles and clues to solve and suddenly our weekly challenge got very tricky! This meant we had to work extra hard as a team to try our best and not give up. Working together and with a few clues along the way we soon discovered it wasn't as tricky as we first thought.

With this one the question was how many letters are in the alphabet? To get the answer we had to change the letter to the letter that comes after the letter shown and then guess what letter would make sense in the two gaps.

Do you know of any good brain teasers we could have a go at solving?

Leave us a comment if you think you might know the answer to our brain teasers and we will let you know if you are right.

Assembly Reflection

Today Room 9 had our turn on stage for our assembly. It was lots of fun and here are a few of our thoughts on what our favourite part was.

Created with Padlet

Assembly Songs to Practice

Next Friday is Room 9's turn to share in front of parents and the rest of the school what we have been learning already this year.
We are practicing The Climb and Count on Me two songs that we will be using as school songs.

Tennis

Today we started our Grasshopper Tennis. We had lots of fun learning to have control of our ball on the racket which was harder than it looked! Especially when we played a game 'poke' when we went around poking other people's balls off their racket. Well done to Chrystal who managed to keep her ball on the racket the longest. We started to learn our forehand in buddies throwing the ball to our buddy to hit over the net. I wonder if we will learn our backhand next week?

Waitomo Caves

Yesterday Room 9 went to Waitomo Caves with the rest of the Middle Team we had lots of fun exploring the cave, going to the Discovery Centre and Musuem and then going on the Ruakuri Bushwalk where we went through broken down caves and even saw people Black Water Rafting.

Going to Waitomo Caves on PhotoPeach

We have learnt how to make a Photopeach to put some of our photos together in a slideshow. Check it out and leave us a comment or a question about what you would like to know about the caves and we will try to answer them for you. Sorry there are no photos of glow worms because we weren't allowed to take photos inside the cave.

Maaori Phrase of the Week

Each week we are given a new phrase at Monday mornings assembly to practice and learn in Te Reo Maaori. This week we are learning how to introduce ourselves.
Ko wai to ingoa which means My name is...
Ko ... taku ingoa means ... is my name.

You can also introduce your parents by saying
Ko wai to mama-My mum is...
Ko wai to papa-My dad is...
Thanks to Ella and Eva who were the first to give the Maaori Phrase a go using the Puppet Pals app on our ipad.

Maths-Place Value

At the beginning of the year we had to do the dreaded IKAN test. A super FAST maths test to see what we can answer quickly. One area we all need to practice as a class is our place value. So on Friday we did a quick activity with ice block sticks. Some were bunched together in groups of ten (these were our tens) and some were loose ice block sticks (these were our ones). Mrs Head then called out a number and we had to make that number with the ice block sticks and tell her how many groups of ten made up the number and how many ones there were.

Next time we try this we will use counters and tens frames.
As a side note it was great to see lots of the groups choosing to make tally marks with their ones to easily show how many ones you had, bringing some of your statistics knowledge into your number knowledge.

What are some ways you practice your place value? 

Survivor Challenge-PE

This week our challenge was to work as a team to keep the balloon up off the ground. The challenge was at different times Mrs Head would call out a body part and we could only use our elbows, noses, ears, bottoms etc to keep the balloon up. This made it trickier than just using our hands like normal and we really had to work as a team to avoid all of us just watching the balloon fall to the ground or to share the balloon around the group to make sure everyone was participating. There were a few arguments and the team that won the challenge (Golden Bell Tui's) and the team that had the best teamwork (Lightening Strikes) worked together to share the balloon around, make calls as to who would grab it and huddled tightly together so the balloon had less risk of touching the ground.
After our challenge we had a discussion around what made these teams successful and every team is going to try extra hard next week to work together as a TEAM so that their team can earn the most points.

Quadblogging-Our turn is coming up!

It is just about our turn to be the focus class for our quadblogging group. This is the week quadblogging gets really exciting! We have a responsibility to make frequent and interesting posts on our learning for the other classes to comment on. Just as they have a responsibility to provide us with some comments.
As we look to our week I want you to think about what you want to get out of quadblogging.Would you just like any comment back or would you like feedback on how to improve your learning? Maybe with some questions to start a conversation? Would you like to teach our buddy classes anything through our posts? What would you like to make posts about? Would you like them to comment just on our class blog or your individual blogs as well? Would you like to know who is commenting back to you with their name and school that they are from?

Created with Padlet

Netball

Today we got to put our netball skills to use with a fun session run by Aroha from Kiwisport. We had a great time with the different games that she taught us and relays that got us using some skills you need to have for netball. Some of us played basketball for the school last year and found there are some differences between netball and basketball one major one being you can not step with the netball instead we learnt to pivot.

Wrap Free Wednesday

This week we unfortunately went backwards. We increased our number of wraps by three and we didn't have quite as many people wrap free. Last week we had 48% and were excited that we were close to 50% unfortunately we didn't reach this goal and we only had 43% wrap free. But next week is another chance for us to improve and remember our wrap free lunchboxes.

Here is a picture of the people that were wrap free.

Well done to Rico, Ella, and Weiyi who have been wrap free for three weeks in a row.

Using Thinglink for planning our writing.

In Week 7 we are heading to Waitomo Caves with the whole Middle Team. So that means we have some work to do to. Sharing our ideas about what we think we might see inside the caves (gathering some prior knowledge) as well as learning some rules for when we are inside these special places in the week ahead.

This week we are going to be writing some stories about what we might see. As a different way to plan our writing we are going to be using Thinglink. Here is Mrs Head's example (if you hover over the bulls eye you will see her planning (or thoughts) from looking at the picture.

Check out our individual blogs to see our own writing planning. Be sure to head back to our blogs a bit later once we have had a chance to develop our writing around the caves.

Have you ever used Thinglink before? We would be interested to hear how you have used it to help with your learning. 

Do you think this is a good way to plan your ideas for writing? Why or why not? 

Quadblogging Week 3

This week it is Room 10 Scallywags turn as the focus group for our quadblogging.

If their blog url is Room 10 St Clair how could you find out where St Clair primary is in NZ?
Can you name one of the students in their class?

Created with Padlet

Survivor Challenge-Oral Language

This weeks Survivor Challenge involved talking and every teacher knows us kids love to talk!
The challenge was an oral language one where we were each given a card with a picture of part of a nursery rhyme. The challenge was we weren't allowed to show anyone our card. Only we could look at the picture and we had to carefully describe it to the rest of our group. Once we had taken turns to describe the picture on our card we had to think about what nursery rhyme it might be about. Some of us found this tricky because there are a few rhymes that involve spiders! But eventually we all figured it out and it was Little Miss Muffet. Once we knew the nursery rhyme, we were able to describe our pictures to the group again and decide what order they needed to go in so that they illustrated the rhyme from beginning to end. But we still weren't allowed to look and had to lie the pictures face down. Mrs Head then came around to check and if we had the order right we were able to flip it over.
What helped us make the challenge easier was that each picture was different so if we described our picture really well we could work as a team to decide the order.

What do you think you would have found most challenging about this task?

Wrap Free Wednesday

Wow, we made great progress with our goal of going wrap free on Wednesdays this week. Last week we had 29% of our class wrap free and 39 wrappers. This week we reduced the number of wraps by five and we increased the number of wrap free lunchboxes to 48%. We had three people in class that had only one wrap and we worked out that if these people try really hard to be wrap free next week we will have over 50% of our class wrap free.
Do you think we can do it?

PS: Last week Cloe left a message on our Wrap Free Wednesday post saying I wonder how many times the wrap free people can stay wrap free. Well four out of the six people who were wrap free last week were able to stay wrap free this week.

Survivor Challenge-Week 4

Today was another technology challenge but a bit different to the engineer pasta and marshmellow challenge. This week we had to become fashion designers creating some wearable art within the theme of swimming. But we could only use two pairs of scissors, a couple of strips of cellotape that Mrs Head handed out and one roll of toliet paper.

We had five minutes to plan our ideas thinking about what we wear when we go swimming and any accessories we might have eg: snorkles, flippers, goggles, towels etc. Then we had 30 minutes to create our wearable art thinking carefully about how to put it together so that it didn't rip and without running out of tape to hold it together.

Some groups worked better than others this week with some teams struggling to get everyone involved. It is a team challenge so congratulations this week go to the Lightening Strikes who had everyone involved the whole time to create their wetsuited boogie boarder.

What would you have done if you were asked to create a swimming themed outfit made from toliet paper?