End of year / Final Prize giving

Last night we had our final Prize Giving.  We had a good time and each student got a certificate, as everyone in Room 4 have been working very hard this year.  I am very proud of every student and of their accomplishments!

To all my lovely students moving on to Year 2 next year, I wish you all the best.  I do hope you stay as enthusiastic about your learning as you have been this year and that you will keep on talking about and sharing what you are learning, as you have done this year with your elearning portfolios.

Remember to always use your Virtues and enjoy your new learning experiences.

This is my amazing class' Christmas presentation at the Prize giving.  Well done to you all!

To conclude, I would also like to extend a warm thank you to all the Room 4 parents who have been actively involved in their child's learning this year.  I enjoyed our home-school connection and all the informal 'catch-ups'.  Enjoy the holiday with your children. A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Quoted in a Storify story

We (as Broadlands Room 4 - @LittleGiants7 on Twitter) enjoyed participating in our final kidsedchatnz in which we shared our latest learning for 2012 on Wednesday, 12th December. 
Today we got a message to let us know that we've been quoted in a Storify story! To view our three-sided hanging lanterns, Santa Christmas baskets and Tweets please click: 

to Mrs McCauley.

Christmas activities

We worked very hard on making our three-sided hanging lanterns .  They were a bit tricky, but we love that they were so colourful.  We also made some Santa Christmas baskets.  With this activity we had to think carefully about our cutting, or our baskets would not work out!

Popsicle stick Christmas trees

We used Popsicle sticks to make Christmas trees as part of our Christmas Inquiry.  We had to put them together, make a mark with a pencil on each one to show where we wanted to cut it.  Then we used our glue to stick them onto the base.  Afterwards we painted and decorated them.

Showing compassion

Greer, Sienna, Liliana and Summer found two dead baby birds at school during lunch time.  They showed our teacher, Ms van der Spuy, who suggested they should bury them.  Liliana got the big spade and Ms van der Spuy helped them to dig a hole.  They put the birds inside and covered them up with soil.  At the end they picked some flowers to put on top.

 

 

Our first Twitter chat

Today our class participated in our first Twitter chat. We have our own class Twitter account https://twitter.com/LittleGiants7.  We talked to other students in New Zealand via #kidsedchatnz.

Here is our first tweet as Goals-R-Us, but then we changed our name to Broadlands - Room 4 so people can recognize us.

We answered questions and told other students about our school.  That was very cool! Here's just some of the things we said.

Then we had to say goodbye, because it was time for our swimming.  We are lucky because some schools don't have their own pool.

Information about Broadlands School

Hello Quad-blogging buddies!  This is a post showing you where we live and something about our school.


View Larger Map

View Larger Map

Road Safety Campaign

A police checkpoint was set up outside our school.  Drivers were stopped by police and given road safety information from us. Our Year 5/6 buddy class went out with us onto the road and helped us to talk to the drivers.
This operation aimed to remind motorists to slow down for children and make them aware that we cross that road every day to get to our school hall.

Grandparents' & Friends' day

We love our Grandparents and enjoyed spending the day with them.  They came into our class to look at our work and we told them all about the technology we use in class, like our iPods, Notebooks, Interactive Whiteboard and our Individual e-portfolios blogs. 
We enjoyed morning tea together and we also had a little performance for them, which included two Kapa Haka items and our 'We will rock you' song from the school production.

Thank you to all the Grandparents and friends who made this day special by coming and spending the day with us.

Buddy Maths Quiz

We are working very hard on learning our Basic Facts.  After completing a worksheet, we sat on the mat with our buddy to quiz and help each other with our maths work.

 

Inviting our Grandparents

We worked on our invitations for our Grandparents' day which will be held on Friday, 9 November. 

We used different colours for our picture and also different colours in the 'fat' letters. We had a great time making our invitation cards.

We are looking forward to having our Grandparents spending the day with us in class and at school.

 

 

Squash

We had the opportunity to learn some basic squash skills.  It was great fun, but we had to concentrate very hard to keep the ball on the strings of the racket when we walked with it.

We were also able to go on the squash court to hit some balls.

Counting with the Hundreds Board

We are learning to count to 100 alongside our learning buddy, using the Hundreds board. We are good at recognising the numbers too.

Buddy Reading with a senior class

One of our favourite things each week is our Buddy reading with Room 3.  They are one of our Year 5/6 classes at school.  This is a fun way to help us read better and we are supporting one another in our reading.
We help when our buddy gets stuck, but most of all we praise our buddy with their reading.

A special T-shirt

Today I am wearing this special T-shirt just for my teacher.  I like lions too.  From: Zara

 

 

Congratulations Travis!

Congratulations Travis for winning the Reporoa RD1 colouring in competition (age 5-7 category). For this, Travis has won a $50.00 Paper Plus voucher. Well done!

 

 

Puzzle making

We made our own puzzles.  Each one of us got a picture, which we could colour.  Then we had to stick the finished picture onto a hard paper and cut the picture out on the line. We also made our own envelopes to put our puzzles pieces into.

 

 

 

Music

We learned about music with Mrs Sutherland when she came into our class.  We practised the note time value and played it on some instruments.

Calf and Pet day

We had a lovely, sunny day on Saturday when it was our school's calf and pet day.  We brought our calves, lambs, dogs, cats and fish to school.
We had a cupcake competition and could show off our animals to judges.

The labels are all done!

The labels that we had to create for the chutney and jam that Room 5 cooked are all done!  We glued them onto the bottles, ready to be sold on our calf and pet day.

 

 

 

High jump practice

We had our first high jump practice for this term.  Room 5, our other Year 5/6 buddy class taught us what we need to know.
Wow, this was fun.  We are going to be so good at our school athletics!

Ken Lusby is attempting to to walk the length of New Zealand in 80 days to raise money for cure kids. Cure Kids is about research for all diseases which affect kids. They focus on raising funds so that vital medical research can continue until the researchers find the cures our kids need. He walked passed our school and we all went out to cheer him on.

Waiata and Kapa Haka

Our involvement in learning waiata and kapa haka with Matua Grant and Whaea Martha are continuing this term. We are enjoying this experience.

  

Hello Quadblogging buddies

Our school started back today for our last term of this year.  We are very excited to share our learning journey with you and are pleased for the opportunity to be involved in yours as well. 

Hello to all the cool teachers: Mr Evans (Kingswood Primary - England), Mrs Sheridan (Holmes Elementary School - U.S.A.) and Mr O'Regan (Hampden Street School - New Zealand) and all the wonderful students who will be part of our Quad!  

We are looking forward to checking out your blogs. Have fun and enjoy your school!

Room 4 - Broadlands School (NZ)

School Production: 'History Rocks'

We worked very hard on learning our dances for our school production.  Our class performed to: 'Count On Me' and 'We Will Rock You.'  At the end, the whole school sang and danced together on: 'Simply The Best' and 'Jailhouse Rock.'  We had so much fun and thought it was our best production ever!

                        'Count On Me'

 

                     'We Will Rock You'

'Simply The Best'

 

                                                                                                        

               'Jailhouse Rock'                                     

 

ShakeOut earthquake drill

We participated in the New Zealand ShakeOut earthquake drill on 26 September, the first ShakeOut drill held nationwide in any country!

We practised "Drop, Cover and Hold" which we know is the right action to take in an earthquake.

Read to Someone

We love reading to someone. We sit beside our friend and follow the text with our eyes.  We encourage each other to use our reading strategies and we are positive, offering praise and encouragement .
During this time, we know to use our 'soft voices'.

The Morepork

Greer brought a dead Morepork to class to show us what they look like.  We had a great day talking about and finding information to answer our many questions about Moreporks.

Work on Writing

We choose to use our 'Making Funny Stories is Fun Dominoes' for our Work on Writing. We enjoy this activity, because we are able to write 'silly sentences'.

Blogging

We enjoy working on our individual blogs: http://kidblog.org/Little-Giants/  

They are our eporfolios's and we publish and reflect on our learning.

Painting our Guitars

We had so much fun painting our guitars. We will use them in our School Production for one of our songs, "We will rock you."



Thank you to Bruce and Victoria who made them for us!

Most improved rugby player

Lucas won the rugby trophy for the most improved U6 player. Well done, Lucas! We are proud of you.

Famous Olympian Report

This Term we have been learning about the Olympics. We had to choose a Famous Olympian Athlete and had to do some research to find out some information about our athlete.

Using our Virtues

Matthew and William have been using the Virtues of Caring and Helpfulness towards a new student in our class. They saw that he needed some help with writing his letter of the week and went over to help him and showed him what to do.

Well done, buddies! I am proud of you.

Thank you Blake!

Blake walked into the class this morning with this huge guitar case. After greeting me politely, he said: "I brought you a flower," while opening the case. There it was, the most beautiful flower.




Thank you Blake, you have made my day and I will always remember you. You are a very special boy and I am privileged to have you in my class.

The little Kiwi read by Matthew

I loved learning about Kiwis and have been very enthusiastic about my learning. I brought a book about a Kiwi to read to the class.

Zak's reading

Zak reads his favourite part from 'Old Macdonald had a Farm'


Do you know what his favourite part is? Here's a clue...

Labels for the Chutney

Room 5 have been very busy making chutney for our Calf and Pet day which will be held on Saturday, 27 October. We are busy making labels for the jars.


Busy creating some of the labels:

Earthquakes

We wrote stories about 'Earthquakes' and what to do in case of an earthquake. We choose Silvana's story and she had to read it to the class. Well done, Silvana! :-)

Comparing weights

We choose an object and predict whether it will sink or float in water. We placed the object in a bucket with water and observed what happened. We placed the items that sank in one pile and the items that floated in another pile.

After we have finished testing our objects we discussed the results using the following questions:
• How many of our predictions were correct?
• We looked at the pile of objects that sank and the pile that floated and described them. We talked about if they have anything in common with one another.


In a follow up activity, we cut out pictures and stick them on a scale to show and compare heavy/light. We were able to justify our answers.

I ♥ my teacher - by Summer

Today I gave my teacher a picture and wrote her a message. I did this because I love her and she helps me with my work. I like my class and I am happy.

Mr Wolf's Birthday Surprise - read by Blake

Blake read us the story of Mr Wolf's Birthday Surprise.
We think he did a great job. Well done, Blake!

Move it

This Term we are involved in the Go4It Gymnastics programme, called 'MoveIt.'

We are learning to develop our rolling, stopping, landing, bending, stretching and balance skills.

Thank you (end of Term 2)

Room 4 would like to thank our parent helpers, who donated much-valued time to our class this term. It is because of dedicated parents like you who are willing to volunteer their time that our class is able to experience important out-of-classroom activities which truly enhance our education.

As your child's teacher, I would like to thank all of Room 4’s parents for your valued support and for making this a wonderful term. I wish you all a great holiday with your precious child.

2D shapes

We are learning to name shapes like circles, ovals, squares, triangles and rectangles. We used different 2D shapes to make our pictures.

Can you see these shapes...?

Our Kiwi Report

After learning about our endangered Kiwi, everyone in our class created a Kiwi picture in paint with written ideas. This is how we shared our information.

Read to Someone

When we read to someone we:
- sit elbow to elbow, knee to knee
- use a soft voice
- read the whole time
- check for understanding
- get started right away
- put the books away correctly

Kiwi team visit

As a follow up from our visit to Kiwi Encounter, we decided to ask an expert from the Kiwi team to visit our class.

Carmel, a member from the Kiwi Encounter team, was very impressed with our knowledge about the Kiwi. We were able to ask some questions that we stumbled upon during our inquiry.

We thoroughly enjoyed our day and learned even more about our precious Kiwi. Thank you very much, Carmel!




Blake brought an Ostrich egg to class, Carmel brought the Kiwi egg, Ms van der Spuy brought a Hen egg and Ms van der Spuy's son send us one of his Dove eggs.
We took a photo to compare the sizes of the eggs. The Kiwi egg is the largest in the world in relation to the size of the bird laying it.

Paper mache 'Kiwi eggs'

After learning about a Kiwi egg, we've decided to make paper mache eggs the size of a Kiwi egg. We wanted to know how big it will look in our hand compared to a hen's egg.

We used balloons, lots of glue and ripped up lots of newspaper.

(Part 1)


(Part 2)





A big thank you to our parent helpers.

Cultural Festival

On our Reporoa Cluster Cultural Festival day, we performed our Kapa Haka waiata that we have been practicing during the term.

Here we are, with one of the waiata - He Honore.

Hatching a 'Kiwi'

Travis brought a 'kiwi egg' to class. We thought that this was a brilliant idea, as we could see how long it will take this pretend kiwi egg to hatch.

During our inquiry study about the Kiwi, we learned that it takes a real Kiwi egg about 5-8 days to hatch. Our pretend kiwi egg took 9 days to hatch. Have a look...

Rainbow Springs - Kiwi Encounter visit

We had a lovely and enjoyable day at Rainbow Springs were many of the questions we had around the Kiwi were answered.









**

Player of the day

We are very proud of Matthew in our class, who won the Player of the day trophy for the Rugby game he played last weekend. What makes this more special is that he played for the Under 7's and he is only 5 years old.
Well done Matthew, we hope to see you playing for the All Blacks one day.

He brought his trophy to school to show us.

A 'Diary' by Thomas G

Last week Thomas went to visit his Grandparents. While he was away, he wrote down some of the things that he was doing during those two days.

Look what he was up to:

'GetWise' with money

A Super Hero from the ASB GetWise programme told us about making good choices with our money.
We learnt:
· where money comes from, why we have it and its value (coins and Dollar notes)
· why saving is so important
· about choices around saving and spending money
· the difference between ‘wants’ and ‘needs’






1,2,3,4... notes and coins...

Look at the worms!

We worked very hard on our vegetable garden.

We went out to look at our plants again and saw something was not right. We found worms on the leaves and they were eating our plants.

Some of us caught the worms by hand to get rid of them, but harm was done!

We will now have to wait and see what will be left for our planned Stir fry.

Cross Country practice with Room 5

Mr Sutherland asked Ms van der Spuy if our class would like to have a cross country practice with them. We always like working with our 'Big Buddies' so we went outside with them.

First, they walked the track with us, so that we know exactly where we will have to run. Then it was time for us to practice! They were much faster than us, but we all managed to finish our practice race.

A Story

We read the story 'The hissing bush' by Trish Puharich. Afterwards, we talked about changing some of the characters in the book to write our own story.

Here is some of our stories:

Hello QuadBlogging Buddies

Hello to all

A warm welcome to our class blog this week. We hope you will have fun looking at what's happening in our class.

Please click on the link below to view our message to you.

http://www.geogreeting.com/view.html?yrkFoUkUqBokDUGooua

Bye for now!

'Dizzy Giddy'

We have been using the Dizzy Giddy (a slow speed spinner) in our PMP.

The Dizzy Giddy will help us to master our balance - which helps to unlock the ability to sit still, focus, concentrate, and think!

Crossing safely

After our day of targeting speedsters in front of our school, the Rotorua district Council gave us high-vis vests to wear every day when we cross the road to get to our school hall. We like to be seen.



Linking and waiting to cross the road safely:


Crossing safely:

Anzac Day

We looked at what Anzac Day is about en talked about the meaning of the poppy flower.

We wrote a class acrostic poem on Anzac Day.

Welcome back to Term 2!

Hello Room 4



I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday.

This will be another exciting and busy term. Have a look on our Class Wiki to see what our learning journey will be about this term.

We have new QuadBlogging buddies too! They are from England, U.K. and Australia! We will start QuadBlogging with them in week 2.

I am sure we will have another awesome Term together.
Have fun!

Happy Easter

Thank you to all our followers for a wonderful Term. We hope everyone will have a Happy Easter and an enjoyable holiday.

Clay Food Sculptures

This Term in Art we were working on making Clay Food Sculptures.
In pairs we've decided what our favourite food is, what it smells and tastes like and if the food is healthy or unhealthy. We also learnt about clay and where it comes from, how to shape it into clay food and how to store it safely.




Getting the paint ready for painting the 'food' and the end result.

On Ruru patrol

Today a road safety station was set up outside our school and we were on Ruru patrol! Drivers were stopped by the police and we had the opportunity to tell motorists to slow down, because we cross the road every day to get to our school hall.

We gave the drivers an information leaflet, and a 'Ruru the road safety morepork' gift pack before we sent them on their way.

Performing the HAKA

After looking at the Year 4 students at Fieldhead Carr performing their HAKA (after they looked at our Kapa Haka post), we decided to put our HAKA videos on our Blog so that they can see how our class is doing the HAKA in New Zealand.

Hello Ms Breyley!

Hello Ms Breyley!
Thank you for "adopting" our blog and for introducing yourself to us. We are doing really interesting things in our class, and we are working very hard. We give everything a go and our teacher says it's o.k. if we make a mistake because that's how we learn. Sometimes things are hard, and she says it's only a little hill (like a learning wobble!) in our way and we just need to keep trying and practising, we will get over it and you know, when we do, it feels great at the end. Our teacher is so proud of us then and we are too!

We adopted Scotland as our second team last year in the Rugby World Cup - our teacher loves the song "A Scottish Soldier." We don't wear kilts like the Scottish men.

Do you teach all the children in your school? That must be hard work! Our class has 22 students.
What kind of fun do you and the children have on the island? What kind of animals are on your island.
What town are you in? We would like to Google earth where you are.

Our school holiday stars next week - 5 April and it will be much colder when we return to school.

Do you have a class blog? We can look at it too if you like and say hello to the children in Shetland.

Bye for now

A year 4 Blog in England!

We are so excited that we have been mentioned in a Y4 Class Blog in England after they've watched our Te Reo Maori post and were inspired by it!

Have a look at what they've said: http://year4blogspot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/haka.html

Te reo Maori

As Te reo Maori is an official language of New Zealand, we are learning some basic words/greetings, karakia and waiata.
This provides a means of communication with people from another culture and allows us to explore our own personal world.

Here we are learning Maori through our waiata during a junior Kapa Haka session:

Goldilocks

We viewed Goldilocks and the Three Bears on our IWB and had a discussion about all the things that have happened in the story.

After our discussion, we had to work in Co-operative learning groups to think what would have happened differently if Goldilocks respected the Bears' property.

Ms van der Spuy talked to Whaea Margo and some students from Room 3 came into our class to read their version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
We had to listen and think carefully about what they said as their version was very different to the original story!



At the end (with the help of Room 3), we discussed all the different things that we could find between their story and the one we watched.

Thank you Whaea Margo and Room 3!

Co-operative Learning (Respect)

In our Co-operative learning session we used 'The Brainstorming' key to think about ways we can show respect when working with our peers.

We were divided into four groups and had great ideas that we put together as a class in the end.

Ms van der Spuy was very proud of us and how well we thought about this.

Leg it - 'long jump'

Today we practised our long jump technique. Thank you, Dave for making this a fun experience!