ROOM 4 CALENDAR ART # LOOKS AMAZING !!

Dear Parents, Whanau and Caregivers

Please be sure to put an order in for your child's calendar art.  We worked very hard on them and WOW they look great.  You can see the original in the office and place your order.  They range between $10 and $12 and help to raise money for Cloverlea school, too.

They are an ideal, affordable Christmas present for whanau or friends and look fantastic on the office or kitchen wall.  They come with a spiral binding and glossy artwork.

Here is a sample of some of them.  I've taken the names off for now so you can be super proud and impressed when you see which one belongs to your child.

We used different techniques to make the trees and branches.  We've been practicing painting without brushes, and used a painted collage technique to make the paper for the birds, which we then cut out.  We used a slightly different 'brush' to make the snow flakes, too.

Hockey Skills with Manawatu Hockey

We have been learning some very valuable Hockey skills to use on the field with a fantastic representative from Manawatu Hockey.  Here are a few snaps of us having a fun game where we can use some of what we've learnt.

CELEBRATING SUCCESS!! Go Room 4!

And having FUN!!

Year 5 & 6 Camp

Today the Ruahine Teaching Team went to visit the Makahika Camp site.  We wanted to make sure that all of our students will be comfortable there.  The staff there are fabulous.  I can really see that they all love their jobs very much; and who wouldn't? It's absolutely beautiful there and YES you will love it, too!

Here is a link to their website if you would like to have a look for yourself.  http://www.makahika.co.nz/schools/

I took some photos of my own so you can have a look before you go.

These first ones are of the lodge.

 

Here are the high ropes, Sam the dog (you will learn more about him) and the grounds.



There is a very well established bush camp with fire places and a river!!

More of the bush camp and the flying fox.  I can't wait to see your faces when we get there!!

Duffy Books & School raffle

Here we are with our Duffy Books!

We sure are a lucky bunch.  Another big thank you this time to the PTA and Duffy Books.

While Whaea Regina was visiting us to talk about Duffy books and herself, we asked her to draw the Camp Grocery Raffle.  We were thrilled that one of our families won the raffle. And even better was it was someone from Fantastic4!

Thank you Kids Can!!

How cool do we look in our new Kids Can Jackets?

Thank you Kids Can!!! 

Manawatu Digi Awards

The Digi Awards season has come around again and we've been out and about in the school grounds learning how we can take some interesting and 'artistic' photos.

There are 7 categories that students can enter this year:

• Photos
• Photo Essay (5 photos)
• Short film
• Animation
• Documentary
• Graphic design
• Other

Don't forget to check out the Manawatu Digi Awards Facebook page to get some inspiration for your own work and to check out the standard of the past winners work.  

Here's some useful suggestions to help us take some interesting photos at school.  

Don't forget it you want to do some digital work at home, you can share it with the class email address where we can add it to your file.  The work must be your own.  If you didn't make it or create it, you can't use it. 

Mrs Mullinger Teaches Geometry

Mrs Mullinger challenged Room 4 were to make some 3D shapes using paper nets.  However, a few very clever children found that they could model some 3D shapes using pipe cleaners.  I was working in the office but Mrs Mullinger was so impressed that she sent Caitlyn over to show me.  

Ruahine Speech Competition

Before we know it Speeches will be upon us.  Speeches will be about a country of your choice and more information will be handed out in class.  The posters below show when these are due and out line what will make for a successful speech.   Please let me know if you have any questions. 

Investigating in Science

We have been working on some science experiments that help us to be able to extend our experiences and personal explanations of the natural world through exploration, play, asking questions and discussing simple models.

Here's what we did. 

We had 7 different 'bus stop' activities set up to build and create sounds and musical instruments out of everyday materials.  Some of the materials we had to work with were, glass bottles, water, sticks, buckets, pots, wooden spoons, rice, plastic bottles, paper clips, dice, rubber bands, cardboard boxes, cardboard tubes, balloons, straws - JUST TO NAME A FEW THINGS!

While students were experimenting with different materials, they were to predict, plan, what they would have to do to make sounds change or to produce different sounds.  Then after they made their 'instrument' they were to observe and infer the reasons for the different sounds.   


WALT: Explore every day experiences of physical phenomena in sound
Success Criteria:

• we can work in small groups to experience different ideas.

• we can seek and describe simple patterns in sound. 

• we can build and create simple instruments that make sounds or a range of sounds. 

• we can explain how the sounds change when we alter the instruments. 

It sure did get noisy!

Learning to Summarise

We've all read an article on Kiwikidsnews about Animal Rights in Switzerland.

We are all learning to summarise to help us with our researching skills.

WALT: Summarise using key words. 

SC: We can look for important key words in the text to help us summarise

We can summarise the main ideas in the text in our own words

First we looked out for the key words or topic words.  We wrote them on the whiteboard and then used those to make 3 summary sentences.  We talked about needing to include some of the 'Ws', who, where, when and why?

This is what it looks like:

We had some discussion about how we can turn our key words back into sentences to summarise the main article; and this is what we came up with.

In Switzerland, in 2008, the government made it illegal to own only one goldfish.  They think it is cruel; fish need companions because they live in schools.  These laws protect animal rights, including cats, parrots and other pets.  

Take a look at the article here and see how you think we did? 

http://kiwikidsnews.co.nz/owning-just-1-pet-goldfish-illegal-switzerland/

Science - Communicating in Science

We have been working on making observations, describing and comparing them in our learning about how to communicate our scientific thinking.  We are developing knowledge of the vocabulary and symbol systems and conventions and how these are used to communicate ideas and knowledge.

This is what we did:

We placed some water in a tray with some food colouring.
We placed a candle the tray with coloured water.
Miss K said she was going to put a jar over the candle
We then poised a question.

Question:
What will happen to the candle and water?

Most people thought the candle will go out.

Miss K. had written our WALT and Success Criteria on the whiteboard.

WALT:observe, describe and compare physical and chemical properties of common materials and changes that occur when materials are heated or cooled. SC: we can observe and describe what happens to the candle and water we can poise a theory/hypothesis as to why this happens. We can understand a simple formula for a change in chemical state.

Then Miss K. lit the candle.  It went out and as it did the water also rose up the jar!

Then we tried it again to be sure that the same thing would happen.  

Then we did it again with different sized jars and a bottle.  

The same thing happened.  Here's a photo showing what happened.  

We got to have a turn placing the jar over the candle and watching the candle go out and water rise up.

We talked about the chemical names or formula (Scientific Symbol Systems) for candles, water, oxygen and smoke.  Miss K. showed us what it looks like on the whiteboard.

To try and understand why the water was sucked into the jar, we had to understand two different processes:  

1) Burning, two oxygen molecules result in one carbon dioxide molecule and two water molecules.  Not only did the oxygen run out (we knew this would happen), but the water replaced that and more!  So why did the water go in the jar after the candle went out? 

It was hard to understand but, it made sense when Miss K. said, 

"Let's look at the maths".

If we only look at the numbers and not the science names for the chemicals, 2 of (2+4) does not equal 2+2.  But that's what the equation tells us.  So water replaced the missing or burnt gas, the air space in the glass decreased.  It had to be replaced by something. So the water moved up into the glass! 

2) The other reason was that the air warmed up when the candle was burning, but when it went out, the air cooled, which means it takes up less space, so there was even more space (less 'air') in the jar, so the water continues to rise after the flame goes out.

Crazy amount of science from one little experiment!!


 We then had a very quick chat (because we were running out of time) about how we can use this scientific thinking and communication in our every day life.  So much to think about!!

Matariki Kites

We have some super talented artists in Fabulous 4! Late last term we've been working on 4 different art techniques to create some lovely kite artwork to celebrate Matariki.  We used pastel to practice shading and blending colours, we made a small collage, a zed-tangle panel and the trickiest part was to do some weaving to create our kite tail.

Here are some photos of a few.

** FLURO DISCO **

WOW - WHAT A GREAT BUNCH OF FUN LOVING DANCERS WE HAVE IN ROOM 4. 

Writing with Speech Marks

Rooms 3, 4 & 12 have been working hard on our punctuation this term.  This week we are working in our own class on speech marks.
Here are some main points of a writing lesson we did today about using speech marks correctly in our writing.

Why do we use speech marks? 

1. It breaks up the narrative. 
2. Makes our writing lively.
3. It is useful to show more about characters. 
4. It is excellent for showing reactions to events and relationship between characters.
5. It helps to tell the story from different views.  

We remembered reading Baa Baa Smart Sheep by Mark & Rowan Sommerset. ( Here is a funny YouTube clip that gives a 'taste' of what the story is about, if you haven't seen it before). He uses speech marks inside speech bubbles which helps us remember how speech marks are used. We can use them instead of speech bubbles.
We talked about the 5 things we need to remember to do when using speech marks. These are:

1.	To put speech marks around the words being said.	"Hi."
2.	To open each new set of speech marks we need a capital letter.	"Hello, how are you?"
3.	To punctuate the speech before we close it.	"Watch out!"
4.	To start a new line for each new speaker.	"I think this makes the writing easier to read," said Max.
5.	To say WHO said it.	"I agree," replied Anisa.

Then we watched a short video called Reverso.  (scroll down till you find it).

Our task was to write a conversation the man has with his Mum.  In the conversation we need to explain what happened to him. 

Why is gravity different for him on Earth?

How did he get to Earth?

What is a sentence?

Before we can write a great paragraph, we need to learn what a good sentence looks like.  We've been doing lots of thinking about sentences.  We need to learn how to write interesting sentences to make our readers want to read our writing. 

This post is here so we can come back and revise our learning any time we want to.  

We are learning to (WALT): 
recognise and write different kinds of sentences

Sucess Criteria (SC): We can write different kinds of sentences correctly.

We can write a complex sentence beginning with a verb.

We’ve learnt that there are 3 kinds of sentences:

• Simple sentences
• Compound sentences
• Complex sentences

     And we are pretty good at writing simple and compound sentences already, but we've looked at these again to help us make comparisons with these and complex sentences.  Here's some of what we worked on.  

A simple sentence features:

Punctuation - Capital letter at the beginning and full stop at the end.  If it’s a question it has a question mark and if it is said with excitement, has an exclamation mark.

It contains one idea (clause) and has a subject, verb and object.

Daniel jumped off his bike.

Subject verb object

A compound sentence features:

Punctuation - Capital letter at the beginning and end punctuation.

It contains two ideas (clause) joined by a conjunction.

Daniel jumped off his bike     and pushed it up the path.

Subject verb   object conjunction  verb object                                                    

A complex sentence features:

Punctuation - Capital letter at the beginning and end punctuation.

It contains two or more ideas (clause/s) joined by a conjunction.

Running late for the game, Caitlyn jumped out of the car and ran for the court.

It contains two or more ideas or thought (clause/s) joined by a conjunction.

It contains 1 dependent clause and a complete, compound sentence.

Running late for the game, Caitlyn jumped out of the car and ran for the court.

Dependent Clauses: do not make sense on their own.  They need to be joined to another complete clause.

‘Running late for the game’, on it’s own does not make sense.  We are waiting for more to come to make it a complete sentence.

‘Caitlyn jumped out of the car and ran for the court’ is a complete thought and makes sense on it’s own.  It is a complete sentence so we can add the dependent clause to it.

Here are some examples of independent clauses (blue):

Tara ate a cheese roll after she watched the news.

(Tara ate a cheese roll is an independent clause. It works as a standalone sentence.)

My mother is originally from Wellington although now lives in Palmerston North.

I went for a run before my breakfast.   

Examples of Dependent Clauses (purple)

Tara ate a cheese roll after she watched the news.

(The clause after she watched the news is a dependent clause. It does not work as a standalone sentence.)

Even though his mother was a driving instructor, my cousin failed his driving test six times.

A computer once beat me at chess but was no match for me at kick boxing.

Writing a complex sentence beginning with a VERB

The ‘-ing’ sentence starter … beginning with a verb

Ambling along the path, Dante noticed something shining on the ground.

Your turn:

(this is where we all had a go at writing some sentences)

Word Study - 'sc' or 'sk' ?

Here's an example of some of the word study work we do in Room 4.

We've been discussing if we use an 'sk' or an 'sc' in words and how do we know which one to choose when they both can sound the same.  We began to write some 'sc' sounding words on our whiteboard and came up with a theory.  We were then able to organised these words into columns to show our thinking.  This is what we came up with. 

Room 4 Athletics

Congratulations to some of the Fantastic (room) 4 students for coming in the top 3 places at the athletics day. 

You guys are funny! I love your cheesy smiles :-D

Paradise

This is one of the songs we sung at the Room 3 & 4 Assembly.  Room 4 had great pleasure teaching the lyrics and sign language to Room 3 kids. Where we then were able to share it with you all.  Singing makes us feel happy, especially with such a lovley Kiwi song as this one. 

Just incase you want to keep practicing at home and Mums, Dads, Grandmas, Koros, Tipunas, Uncles, Aunties or anyone wants to learn this beautiful song, here it is!  A hyperlink to the youtube signing and the lyrics, are below. 

PARADISE

(Waimarie Smith) ©2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlHyZyUR4EA




In the morning, can you hear the tui call
Can you hear the tui call. Can you?
Then in the evening when the sun goes down
And the moon is out, hold my hand

Can we chill underneath this pohutukawa tree,
Life is a breeze like 1, 2, 3 ahuh. Come on
Let’s take a dip in the ocean and watch the sun‐set
Time is precious that’s what we forget oh no. It’s gone…

This is, where the taniwha was born
Where Maui drew his hook, my home
And no one can take this away from me
My land is a part of me till I’m old

Hold my hand and raise your glass to
Life in paradise, paradise
I can take you places people only dream of
But it’s all mine in paradise

Time is precious that’s what we forget
Time is precious that’s what we forget oh no, it’s gone
Time is precious that’s what we forget, time is precious, oh no, it’s gone

Term 2 Karakia

Here is our karakia we are learning for Term 2.  We are very lucky that one of our wonderful class mums has been coming in to help us with our pronunciation of Te Reo Maori.  We will practice some more in Term 3 till it's perfect. 

Here it is here if you want to keep practicing at home:

Circus Challenge

Wow, this was fun, learning how to do cool plate spinning and stick juggling.  We have some super circus kids in the making here, showing their resilience and curiosity in trying new skills.

Letter Writing and ANZAC Day

We had been learning to write letters.  We've been learning where the address goes, where to put the stamp, how to address who the letter is to and from and how to sign the letter at the end.

We had been learning about ANZAC day and had been reading some stories about the Gallipoli campaign.  We also read a great (but sad) book called Jim's Letters by Glyn Harper.  It's about two brother's who write each other letters during WWI. One brother is at home on the farm and the other is away at war on the front line, fighting.

We had to make some letters to pretend we were family members writing to each other during the war.  We first made some paper look really old by using coffee and tea stains, we got some old stamps images and then some nice poppy images to make our display and letters look like they had come from Gallipoli where the poppies grew.

Here are some pictures of our display.

Manawatu River, Ruahine Ranges & Koru Art

Students have been working on a landscape of our surrounding area of the Ruahine mountains & Manawatu awa (river) and using the cultural symbolism of koru shapes along with the iconic images of the windmills that sit on our Maunga (mountains) nearest to our city. All students were encouraged to finish this artwork and they have now been displayed in the classroom.  

Don't they look great!

Good Learners

We had a fantastic discussion about what good learners DO.  What they DON'T, what they SAY and ARE.  It was a pretty good discussion and we all seemed to agree on many of these things.  Here is a 'scribbley' version of what we talked about.  




As with many conversations, the discussion changed topic a little and became more about, why do we need to learn and why do we need to come to school.  

I was most impressed about the ideas the Fantastic Four members had on this very philosophical topic. 


"Why do we come to school?"

"To have a better life." 

I just loved this discussion, Fantastic Room 4

Here is another 'scribble' brainstorm of what we talked about. (Sorry it's on it's side, it's not behaving as it should) 

Kowhawhai Boarders for Room 4

We have been working on creating some borders to hang up in our classroom to make our mark on our room.  We learned that we could design our own borders which would replicate the tukutuku panels in a Whare.  We first practiced drawing koru shapes that represented our families and also write a pepeha to introduce our families learn some te reo vocab that would accompany our artwork.  Here are some students proudly showing their art works.