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? 

Marmite delivery

Today our parcel arrived and everyone got their very own tube of Marmite.
Mrs Head said to put it in our bags and save it for home but most of us just couldn't wait. We licked the tube dry by the end of lunchtime.
Thanks again Sanitarium! We LOVE MARMITE.

Wow, check out who has been reading our writing!

Last month Room 9 wrote some poems about Marmite. Mrs Head sent the link to our class blog off to Sanitarium and guess what she has just got back....

 

An email from Sanitarium!!!
The email is below. Keep up the great writing Room 9.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Emily Ryan <Emily.Ryan@sanitarium.co.nz>
Date: Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 12:36 PM
Subject: Marmite Poems!

Dear Mrs Head and all the kids in Room 9,

 

We loved reading your poems about Marmite and are very glad that you are enjoying having it back after such a long time.  Thank you for sharing your work with us - we really enjoyed reading everyone’s work.  Keep up the great writing and we hope you keep eating Marmite!  Your blog is great and the photos were awesome!

 

We've sent you a few jars so that you might be able to have another Marmite snack some time and a t-shirt for your teacher. Hopefully the will arrive soon.

 

We look forward to hearing from you again sometime!

 

All the best

The team at Sanitarium :)

 

 

Emily Ryan

Internal Communications Coordinator

P| +64 9 625 0831   m| +64 21 761 089   w| www.sanitarium.co.nz

Marmite poetry

After tasting Marmite again. Some of us for the first time and some of us it was like the flavour never left it tasted exactly the same.
We tried out the whiteboard feature on our new i-pad.

And we wrote poems about Marmite.
Here's what we came up with.

It's black
It's yum
It's stinky
It's slimy
It's cold on my tounge
It's Marmite
By Storm

Marmite, Marmite
I love Marmite
I love you in the morning
I love you late at night
I love Marmite
By Summah

Marmite, Vegemite
Everyone wants a bite
Yum, yum
In my tum
I like Marmite
Everyone likes Marmite
By Jacob

Marmite is here
People rushing into supermarkets
We found Marmite
I want a whole box
Everybody's happy
Forgot what it tasted like
We want Marmite
Yay it's back
Yum, yum
By Rico

Marmite, Marmite
Yum, yum, yum
All around the shelves delicious
Marmite spreads the taste is yum
When it gets on your tounge
It get's very salty when you take a bite
Yum, yum, yum
By Alex

Black Gold Rush
The buildings have fallen to the ground
and people shouted
Oh no!
Marmite is gone
now that it is back
it's turned into a black gold rush
people are filling buckets of it
so when it goes again they don't lose it
taking so much it has almost disappeared from the shops again
By Gina

Marmite, Marmite
You are back
I missed you day and night
but now your back
yum yum
you taste like a lolly
Supermarkets are filled with people
but I got you!
By Ella

It's black
it's yuck
it looks like poo
it's slimey
it's back
don't give it to me
By Tawhiao

Yummy mucky
it is so delcious
I can't stop eating it
to be away from Marmite
makes me want to cry
cause of the earthquake striking
By Amelia

Marmite, Marmite
I love Marmite
give me a whole box of Marmite
yum,yum
in my tum
I love Marmite
yum, yum
I love it!
By Eva

Marmite, Marmite
I hate Marmite
I want buttery gold
It is black it is poo
No more Marmite for me and you
By Alex S

Marmite, Marmite
yum, yum, yum
in my tum
we found our black gold
our super hero of all breakfasts
By Saphyre

Everyone wants Marmite
Marmite is every where
Even in my class
By Kaylee

Smooth and black
tasting yum
it tastes very delicious
delicious on toast
By Christopher

Marmite for our breakfast
yum, yum
it tastes good to me
because it is made in Christchurch
By Filipe

The black Marmite is back
Marmite, Marmite
in my tum
it's back in New Zealand
and it is so yum
Mum, Mum
please can you go
to the shops
to buy some Marmite
By Gemma

Marmite, Marmite
Marmites back yippy
it's back on the shelves
in the supermarkes
I love Marmite!
Give me a box of it
yummy, yummy
in my tummy
Marmite the king of all spreads
It's the best!
Ps: I hope you like it
By Trinity

Marmite is Back!

Marmite is back on the shelves. So today we got a piece of toast smoothered in Marmite. We made notes in our notetaking books about what it looked like, smelt like, tasted like and felt like on our tounge. We used this to help write poems about Marmite.

Writing- Describing characters

WALT:  Describe characters for a narrative.
Think about what they look like, what they are wearing, who their friends are, what they do.

These boys have been stuck in the woods for six years. They live in the forest and are extremely poor, they have no money and no food so they have to kill animals with their bow and arrows. Then toast the meat on the fire to eat with fire made from sparking stones and bamboo rubbed together. They sharpen sticks to peel the skin of the animals bodies and cut the animals up to cook over the fire.

The boys use bamboo cut in half to make little bowls and giant leaves for plates to eat from.

They build treehouses out of sticks, bamboo and leaves with secret tunnels and trap doors made from the tree trunk hollowed out. They have secret hide-outs with slides to kept themselves safe from all the animals that are angry the boys have killed their friends to eat and make mats from the animal skin and destroy their forest to make their own treehouses.

They use bamboo to make tubes and use the teeth from the animals and rope to tie the teeth onto the bamboo to use for their arrows. Their guns are made from bamboo filled with animal teeth and when they blow, the teeth attack firing out of the bamboo.

THIS IS OUR DRAFT PIECE OF WRITING. TO CHECK OUT MORE LOOK AT OUR INDIVIDUAL BLOGS FOR OUR OWN CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS.

Writing about a setting

WALT: Describe a setting for a narrative story.
Thinking about who might live here and what its surroundings might be like.

This house has a large pole that looks like a tree trunk that has grown out of the ground with a regular looking letterbox house perched on top. A rich man owns the house because the house is customised with lots of rooms. The rich man is a very tall man who needed a big house to fit inside. He lives on a farm with fences that look like spiderwebs next to the huge house. The house reaches up towards the clouds like a rocket pointing to space.

THIS IS OUR DRAFT PIECE OF WRITING THAT WE HAVE QUICKLY COME UP WITH AS A CLASS. PLEASE CHECK OUT OUR INDIVIDUAL BLOGS FOR A SIMILAR EXAMPLE OF OUR WRITING.

Explanation Writing: Why do birds chirp?

More Explanation writing-Why does Popcorn have a sound

Explanation writing: How a tadpole turns into a frog.

Our group wrote an explanation on how a tadpole turns into a frog. We liked using the etherpad because it meant we could work together and help each other with our writing. Check out our video's as well to see our reactions to this new writing tool.

Explanation Writing using Etherpad

Check out our explanation writing that our group put together on a Etherpad. Each person got a different colour and could start typing at the same time which surprised a few of us!

Then this is us with our planning. We created a flowchart because it is an easy way to plan with explanation writing. We used this to then each pick a couple of the boxes of information to write about to create our group explanation on how milk is made.

Language Experience-notetaking

Today was the first day we have used our note taking notebooks. In Room 11 we use our notebooks to quickly write our amazing words down, especially when we have a language experience. Hopefully we use these words in our writing to make it really interesting with our descriptive vocabulary. Mrs Head modelled to us first how we take notes using key words and not being worried about our spelling, so long as we can read it back. The idea of the notebook is to get all of our ideas down. This afternoon we had five different plates of food including; dried cranberries, salt and vinegar chips, smarties, honey and citric acid. Mrs Head warned us to only take a tiny bit of citric acid because it makes your eyes water but lots of us went back for a little bit more! We had to make sure that we wrote down at least five descriptive words for each one. We came up with words like slimy, sticky, crunchy, gooey, sour, smooth, chewy, bitter.