School Trip

 We made it to the Auckland Zoo today. And what amazing pieces of writing after. So proud!

Thursday we went to the zoo and saw lots of animals. I saw a baby baboon. We saw a lion moving to eat and the other lions were sleeping under the tree. Mr John took a picture of us. - Penamusu

Arriving at Auckland Zoo everyone waited for the other bus to arrive at the zoo. When the bus finally arrived we all sat down and listened to the rules, from the zookeeper. We all got into our groups and grabbed our lunch. Then our group sat down and ate our rolls. After finishing our rolls we ran to see the animals. First animals we saw were the emu, zebras and giraffes. They were so tall. Next, we ran off to see the scary lions sleeping. The last animal we saw was the big fat elephants. - Tyrese

Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! 

"We are going to do this all day. If you can't stop your chitter-chatter!" Mrs Kereopa shouted, "Heads, shoulders, knees, toes!" She kept shouting.

Finally, we stopped talking and shut our mouths. It was only Kereru we were waiting to come, so were can start our day off at the zoo. Just then Ms Castle came in and shouted loudly, "Is everybody ready for the zoo?"

"Yes!" everybody shouted yelled.

Then we all got up and into our groups. I was in group one, and group one was the last one to explore the ginormous zoo. At last, our group was off and we were very excited looking forward to seeing all the animals in the zoo. - Loto'a

"Put your hat and shoes on," Mrs Mundy said.

We put our hat and shoes on, all except Dakora. Miss did the roll call, and gave someone from each group the name tags, to give to us, so people know who we are. We went outside and got some instructions. I was in group 2, we walked down the driveway to our bus and got on. 

"Shanell, come sit by me." Te Hanni said.

"Ok," I said back. 

We talked and talked until, Ms Kereopa said, "We need some kids to go with Ms Castle.""Ok," Matua Samuel said, "You can go you can your whole group can go!" - Shanell

We didn't make the Zoo but we did make Sandwiches

Due to the predicted rain, which did arrive, we postponed our trip to the zoo. However, we were given beef, ham and chicken and so we had yummy sandwiches made by the teachers.

Cross Country Fun Run

 We were supposed to run our Cross Country last term. However, with all the issues in Auckland, it was postponed until yesterday. We had been training and we ran and ran until we were tuckered out. 

As you can see we could dress up in our house colours. It was the Year 4's first year running out on the road and we hadn't had a chance to practise and they got confused and ended up running around the field, so they didn't run past Mrs Mundy.

We had doughnuts and a slushy as a treat for lunch is we had run and listened to the teachers. What a yummy reward!

Parents even received a surprise as they were a lot of seedlings that were available for them to take home. Thank you ICL.

Duffy Show Assembly - The Coggen

 We thought we were going to have to watch the show through the TV due to Covid but being in Level 1 they were able to come to us. Yippee.

The show was really cool. Duffy loved to read about a Super Hero that was part cat, chicken and part dog. On a Youtube advert, this man had created the Coggen creature from the stories, and it was for sale.

Unfortunately, the new pet needed training and the training wasn't going so well. And the pet ended up feeling unwanted and ran away.

Everyone learnt a lesson about being tolerance and empathy.

Writing an Explanation

 We are learning about Volcanoes. We looked briefly at what an explanation was last term and decided we should have another look this term as we study the earth. We have been looking at different clips and research to gather information to answer our How or Why question that starts our Explanation.

Stop Bullying

 Today we all tried to wear PINK in support on Stop the Bullying.

Mrs Mundy wear, I mean where are you hiding?

Thanks for our Treat

 We are lucky at school, our teachers missed us and wanted to say thanks for coming back with Trumpets

Being Visually Creative

 We are learning to use a range of materials to create a visual image.

It is amazing how different each image is, especially as we all saw the same stream.

Being Creative with Music

 

One positive thing that has happened to our school with Covid19. Matua Samuel returned to New Zealand and is teaching Music to students at Redhill school. Tui is learning to play the Ukulele. So far we know the names of each string and how to play C and A minor.

Our Play Space

 

We are trying to make our own bubbles in the school. Tui is one learning space and a bubble, we walk home in our family bubbles. So to keep us safe we have a play space and our teachers picked the best one, it has room for soccer, trees to climb space to roll down the hills and do cartwheels.

Returning to Learning

 After the teachers learnt a few moves during Auckland Level 3 Lockdown. Every morning after the roll we get busy and warm up our brains and bodies ready to learn.

Worm Farm

 

We gathered a lot of fertilizer for the new gardens in front of the school hall. It seemed like a hundred bucket loads, but really it was only 15 so far.

Can you find our exaggerations?

Making Paper

 After reading Junior Journal 44 this week we are following the instructions to make our own. We spent hours ripping paper and our fingers were ready to drop off. (can you tell we have been learning about exaggerating too.)

Making Cards

Cook Island Language Week

I can't wait to see the finished products. 

Every Drop Counts Investigation

We have been visiting Hayes Stream, a 10-minute walk from our school, to see how healthy the stream is. We have done a range of experiments including measuring the temperature, the depth across the stream, the flow of the stream. 

 

Each time we have been down we have collected a black sack of rubbish, which is rather disappointing.

Mini Olympics

Mrs AhFook thought we could have a fun day with our two student teachers while Mrs Mundy was away.  We have a range of fun activities to complete practising skills we would need when we go to the local stream to carry out experiments on the water quality. 

We had a lot of fun!

Positive Ponchos

Starting Term 3 off on the right foot. After trying to find all the positive that students do to help the more active students stay on task in Term 2. We thought we would encourage the students to find positive things to say about each other using Positive Poncho.

We created a poncho each using two colours of paper the top one we folded into 8 before cutting to make a pattern. Then we unfolded it and glued it to the second piece before cutting out the hole for our head to pass through. 

After going through a range of words that students could use we broke into groups and selected a word they thought matched the person. This part was quite tricky to start with they wanted to put words on their own poncho, then some tried telling people what to put on their poncho. The blue words are our school values.

Yummy Treat

Every couple of weeks the Senior Leaders have decided that Fun Fridays need a treat with them. This week we received cupcakes and each student was able to ice their own. 

No two cupcakes were the same. We even had stars we could add to remind us of Matariki.

Getting Out and About - Highwire

It was a great day the rain was staying away, which was great as we had to walk 10-15 minutes down the road to Highwire. A great facility who we link with whenever possible and time allows. The facilitators down there Chelsea, AJ and others, all organised by Mr Hopkins provided a couple of hours of fun activities developing teamwork and communication. 

Creating Patterns

Over the last few weeks, we have been looking at patterns. We start with Samoan Language week and creating Sasa and Siapo. Then we created Kowhaiwhai patterns. Each pattern we learnt told a story. 

In groups we created repeating patterns for maths can you pick the pattern each group has created?

Getting out and About - Preparing for Every Drop Counts

We took a walk down to Hayes Stream where we are going to investigate the water quality and animal life.

Hot Soup for Lunch

Using the soup packets we received lunch was made the night before in a crockpot and left cooking. Early in the morning, we added Chayotes that were given to us by Whaea Elena.

The best part was it was hot and we could dip our bread into it.

Parachute Fun

First, we would like to thank Our Board Chair for giving us the parachute we had a lot of fun with them.

 

The Parachute

“Yay!” Everyone shouted we got up and rolled the parachute until it was even. When it was all even everyone waited for the teacher to say tahi, rua, toru wha. When the teacher shouted tahi, rua, toru wha everyone threw their arms up, holding the parachute and waved to each other. We did it again and our teacher yelled out tahi, rua, toru wha. Then we all threw it up but this time we left it up and went under the parachute instead. It looked kind of like Patrick’s house but it was smaller and the color was grey. We all got up and our teacher grabbed a bag of bean bags and tossed them onto the parachute. We had to try and keep the bean bags on the side of the parachute there was a kind of big hole in the middle of the parachute and we had to try and not let the bean bags in the middle of the parachute. 

Samoan Language Week

We are learning about numbers, so we thought to add fun to counting in Samoan we would try to create a Sasa or two.

I have included a few of the videos too, so you can see the fun we had.

 

Asking WHAT Questions

WALHT Use Questions to help direct our Writing.

We looked at how to write WHAT questions using a range of starters...

What did...

What would...

What should...

What happened...

The example given was:

What did you do during the Lockdown?

Well, let me tell you about my lockdown experience. Tuesday I went into school to clean and sanitize the class. I went into school to help deliver the milk out into the community, but there were lots of others there, so I found something else to do. I made sure the worms were well feed and had enough moisture to survive for a while as I didn't know when we would return to school. 

Once I was stuck at home, I went online to prepare for distance learning and to be there for students who need to talk or wanted to learn. Ben, my son would pop into the office wait for me to look up before he waved and ran out. It was hard to believe at the beginning of lockdown he turned 16. Especially, as he would do this 2 to 4 times a day. Yes, he was bored.

What I hated about staying at home?

I hated staying home because I needed to clean up the whole house. This was because of the virus Covid-19. I had to make sure all get all the germs off and then I needed to do more cleaning. I hated staying home it was horrible. by 

What is your favourite food?

Let me tell you about my favourite food. It has been ages since I was allowed to eat the crispy skin that wraps around a piece of chicken from KFC.