Week 8 Term 1 2009

This week we have continued to make the posters about ourselves using comic life. We worked in pairs on the mimio board helping each other.
Look at our results below. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Celine


Ashane


Brodie


Dong Hae


Joanna


Mark


Sarah

Week 7 Term 1 2009

We started the week receiving a letter from Jacqui Knight ‘the butterfly lady’. It was so nice to receive all the beautiful stickers. At the end of day we all went home with one.



We drew some beautiful monarch butterflies to display with our personal recounts about the day our butterflies hatched.

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At the end of the week Mrs Chambers brought us in a newspaper clip she thought we might find interesting. It was about people tagging butterflies.



Cultural week at Sunnybrae was a wonderful celebration of all the cultures we have within our school.

On Tuesday the students in the junior syndicate swapped classrooms and we went to three different classrooms to complete an activity/art work from another country.

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On Thursday morning we took part in the cultural parade – the heavy down pour meant we had to hold the parade in the hall. It was amazing to see everyone dressed up.


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Thursday afternoon we took part in a school base ‘sports around the world’. We were split into family groups and played games led by the year 5 and 6 students.

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Some of us have started our comic life posters about ourselves – see below
Zoe



Zac


Julius

Week 6 Term 1 2009

It has been another busy week in room 15. It was with great excitement we discovered that 3 people had left us a message on our class blog this week.
Jacqui Knight the butterfly lady was one of them – she is sending us some butterfly stickers- we can’t wait to see them.

We have continued to explore the Kid Pix programme and this week we drew a border around a photo of ourselves.

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Next week each of us will have a turn on the laptop, using all our KidPix pictures to put together a page of our work on comic life. We will use captions to explain what each picture is about. Look out for some of these on our next blog entry.

Our shared book this week was about a farmer who loved to wear a large straw hat but it was looking very old and worn. It got us thinking what could be done with the farmer’s old straw hat. Click on the image below to enlarge it so you can read our wonderful ideas.




We were very lucky this week to have a visit from Al a musician and Claire a nurse. They told us a lot about their jobs, the equipment they use and why they like their jobs. We got to ask them a lot of questions and we are learning a lot about why people do the jobs they do and how people help us.


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On Firday we visited our buddy class. They were competing in the school tryathlon in the afternoon and they showed us their bikes.

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Later on in the day we watched some of them competing in the tryathlon as it was on just outside our classroom.

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Reminder - Next week is cultural week – and on Thursday we will have a cultural parade at school.

Weeks 4 and 5 Term 1 2009

It was an exciting start to week five, to find that over the weekend our butterflies had hatched. We watched a powerpoint by Jacqui Knight the ‘butterfly lady’ and discovered that our butterflies were both females. Female butterflies have thicker veins on their wings than males and male butterflies have two black dots on their wings
It was great to have a butterfly fluttering around our room. We put it outside and watched it fly away. Later in the day while at swimming a butterfly flew into the area – we wondered if it was OUR butterfly.

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We also watched a video clip of a caterpillar hatching –






On Friday the last of our butterflies hatched – it was a male. It stayed in our classroom all day and at the end of the day we placed it outside on a tree.

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On Tuesday we took part in the junior swimming carnival. It was a fun filled afternoon.

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We have continued to use KidPix to draw our families and a favourite thing we like doing. See our work below –
Our Families

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The favourite things we like doing.

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As a class we explored the differences and similarities between a teacher and a fire fighter.



We invited Mrs Stewart our principal into our classroom and through our questioning found out a lot about her, her job and her interests.

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Next week we will reflect on what we have learnt about Mrs Stewart and write down some of the things we have found out.


Our work about Mr Barnes is on display in our classroom.

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Week 3 Term 1 2009

As we have explored our class as a community we have begun to look at the community beyond our classroom by looking at the people who help us at school. One of these people is Mr Barnes, our property manager. We invited him into our class and asked him some questions ranging from what do you do each day? to What did you do before you came to work at our school? to What is your favourite thing to do at home?

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Mr Barnes answered all our questions and even took us to show us all the equipment in his shed which included his ride on mower. We found out that his favourite job at school is mowing the lawn and his least favourite is cleaning the windows. There are jobs he has to do everyday and one of these is checking the quality of the water in the pool.(see photos above)


We have started drawing our families using kidpix and our handprint faces are now on display in our classroom along with our Who am I ? statements

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On Tuesday it was with great excitement that we watched one of our hungry caterpillars twist and turn into a chrysalis. We were fascinated as this is something that not many of us had seen.

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Week 1 and 2 Term 1 2009

Room 15 is a delightful class of year 2 students. Together we are settling into the year and have been exploring the importance of making room 15 a fun and exciting place to learn.

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We have begun to explore how to use the class camera – learning to place our hand through the strap and hold it still while taking a photo. We started by taking a photo of a class member. See our results below

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We have also used kidpix to draw a picture of ourselves. – See our delightful images below.

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On Friday we met up with our buddy class - room 10 and met our ‘buddy’. We will spend time with them every Friday sharing our learning with each other.


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Week 8 & 9 Term 4

Week 8

This week we read an article about the wrybill. We learnt that the wrybill is an endangered native bird of New Zealand with only 5000 of them left. People are helping to save them and they wished the wrybill was as famous as the Kiwi. We reflected on what we had read and some of us prepared y charts and Venn diagrams (click on the image to enlarge it)

Jwon and Jude


Sam and Patrick


We have received a certificate from Michelle thanking us for supporting the Save the Kiwi trust.

We also explored the explanation key. -
Explain how people can find their way in the dark without a torch to find a known kiwi burrow. You can use words, diagrams and labels.

Juwon and Elly


Ellisha


Liam


Thomas


Bill


Week 9

With the term coming to a close we finished off the kiwis we had made. We were very proud of what we had achieved. We met with the other junior classes to share our treasured kiwis. We thought it fitting to take them down to our bush area on our school grounds and place them amongst the undergrowth. It was a lovely way to finish off our inquiry.

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On the last day of the term we received letters from Santa.



We were so excited to find that Santa’s sleigh was being driven this year not by reindeer BUT KIWIS. Amazing.

Week 8 Term 4 2008

We started the week by writing cinquains about the kiwi predators and finished the week off by drawing a picture to go with our work and using voice thread to record our voice.




Our predator poems are now on display in our classroom.
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In the weekend Hupai the 1000th kiwi chick was released back to the wild. We watched the news clip from TV nz about it and were delighted to see Michelle from the BNZ kiwi trust on it.

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/


On Thursday the whole school met together and a representative from each of the rooms shared an interesting fact the classes had found out. Then we presented our kiwis covered in the coins we had collected to Michelle. Michelle was very grateful for the $252.70 we had raised to help save the kiwi.

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We have also worked on building a picture from a simple mark on a kidpix screen. (see picture below)



The motivation was the legend, explaining why the kiwi can’t fly. Having listened to a version of the legend written by Katarina Mataira we each drew a picture related to the story. The creative thinking was impressive as each of us incorporated the mark into the picture.

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Week 7 Term 4 2008

It has been another busy week in room 5. It started with Ellisha and Lata making a poster about bringing along a coin to help save the kiwi




We photocopied the poster and delivered it to every classroom in the school.



Elly, Ebony, Juwon and Bill painted kiwis to put the coins on.On Wednesday and Thursday morning we met up with our buddy class and went out with the rest of the school to help save the kiwi by raising some money for the save the kiwi trust.

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We talked about how we felt saving the kiwi – See wordle document below.



In pairs we have continued to make posters with very important messages.

Liam and Sam



Elly and Juwon




We are also working hard on our paper mache kiwis – which will look stunning when they are finished.



On Friday we finished off our Kiwi poems and used voice thread to shared them with you – ENJOY.

Week 6 Term 4 2008

The week started with a visit from Maria Gills the author of Operation Nest Egg. She talked about the work of operation nest egg, the damage predators are doing to the kiwi.

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Using the mimio board, we are working in pairs to make posters to get across the message to ‘save the kiwi’. The poster below was completed by Bill and George




On Wednesday afternoon we took part in ‘Huff and Puff’ which was a great event. See the photos below.


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Week 5 Term 4 2008

This week we have continued our investigation of how people are helping the kiwi on its journey of survival. We watched the video clips of Sonny B’s visit to the Kiwi encounter at rainbow springs. Wow - Sonny B got to sit next to three kiwi eggs. We were told that kiwi eggs come in different sizes and shapes.


We have also had a visit from Michelle from the save the kiwi trust. She talked to us about how the kiwi is endangered and ways people are helping the kiwi with Operation Nest egg, which includes predator proof sanctuaries. She emphasised that we can help the kiwi by keeping dogs on leads in known kiwi areas. Michelle also showed us photos of the 1000th chick hatched as part of Operation Nest Egg.


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Michelle had a Kiwi ‘look alike’ egg that some of us got to hold. It was the same size and weight of a kiwi egg. Given the size of the kiwi the egg is huge and heavy. Ellisha got the chance to hold it.




We went on to the savethekiwitrust website and watched sniff the kiwi tell us about 006 and its journey of survival.




On this website we found e cards and had some fun sending them to Mrs Stewart, Miss Lawless and Michelle. Below is a photo of Ethan as he wrote the e card.




We were very excited when we received one back from Mrs stewart



This week we have also finished our alphabet key work based on things found in New Zealand. We tried to think and draw as many things as we could related to native birds and the kiwi in particular. Below you can see our efforts.

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Week 4 Term 4 2008

This week we have been on a virtual field trip following our ambassador Sonny B on his journey with Mike the LearNZ teacher into the forest to see the lifting of a kiwi egg as well a health check on Storm a three year old Kiwi. Below is a photo of Sonny B as he started his journey with Mike. Sonny B is on the left Mike the LearNZ teacher is in the middle with Kupe the Kea the LearNZ ambassador.




We have watched video clips of what Mike and Sonny B have seen in the forest. We particularly enjoyed watching the video of ‘Storms’ health check



and the changing of the transmitter where we saw Storms claws – amazing



On Friday room 6 invited us to join in a audio conference with Mike and Claire from Rainbows Spring. They joined us in room 5. It was a great experience as students asked questions and we could all listen to the answers via the polycom. We learnt a lot about the hatching of kiwi chicks and how they look after them at Rainbow Springs.

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Under the direction of Miss Lawless (who is in the photos below) the students have finished off their predator masks and used them to dramatise the Kiwi being attacked in the forest.

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All students have now labelled their photo of the kiwi and these have been placed on the bottom of the information reports each student has written.

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Week 3 Term 4 2008

This week we have been busy finding out about predators that kill kiwi chicks and eggs. Under Miss Lawless’ direction the students have made predator masks and have moved to music as they have pretended to be a kiwi or predator.


We have all finished off our inspiration documents where we have recorded what we know about the parts of a kiwi. (Click on each image to enlarge it)

Ciaran


Ebony


Elly


Tahlia



We have each taken a photo of a Tui – (our class soft toy). We will use this image to label the parts of the tui using Kidpix in the next couple of weeks.

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Week 2 Term 4 2008

It has been another busy week in room five.

We finished off the kiwi kidpix pictures which display the question we want to investigate – see below

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We have displayed our pencil sketches of the kiwi within our room

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As a class we have gathered information about the kiwi, organising our facts using a Y chart. We have looked at how the parts of the kiwi help it to survive in its environment and showed this new learning using an inspiration document– (Click on the image to enlarge it )see below



Some of us have made our own. (click on the image to enlarge it)
Ciaran


Ebony


Ellisha


George


We have begun to take a photo of our ‘class kiwi’ which we will import into kidpix and label in the next couple of weeks. (see below)

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Students have continued to bring in items to photograph for the blend of the week and the following images have been completed using comic life.
George and Liam


Juwon


Jude


Bill