Play

This term I will be focusing on developing a classroom programme where play is incorporated daily. After attending a professional development course on the importance of play I was inspired by the many great benefits that play has on children’s academic, emotional and social development.
I have made an information sheet for everyone about the importance of play.

Friday Fun Day Art - Blowing Dye Bubbles

On Friday Miss Liu mixed some coloured dye and dish washing liquid together. We got to choose two colours and used a straw to create bubbles. We had a lot of fun and some of us ended up with messy dyed hands.

Planting Kumara

On Friday we planted some Kumara in our garden.
First we had to pull all the weeds out of the garden and the used the rake to soften the soil. Then we dug some holes and planted the sprouting Kumara.

Te-Wai-O Taiki Nature Reserve Trip

This term our inquiry is Rodents and Streams.
Last week we walked all the way to Te-Wai-O Taiki Reserve from school to look at our community environment. We saw a lot of animals and even got to use a water filter tube to see how clean the water is from the duck pond and the water in the sea.

Here's a video of the photos I took on our Te-Wai-O Taiki Nature Reserve Trip.

Monsters

We have been learning to use adjectives in our writing. Towards the end of term 3 the students in Room 16 drew their own monsters using paint, pom poms and googly eyes. When we were drawing our monsters we had to think of the describing words we wanted to use in our writing. We had a lot of awesome looking monsters. They are all different and unique.

Thank you Room 8 (our buddy class) for helping us with our monsters.

Here are some of the writing that the students in Room 16 did about their monster. These children worked really hard to record their writing on Explain Everything. I must admit it is a very difficult task - taking a good photo of the monster and its lunchbox, reading your draft writing fluently and expressively, making sure your voice is loud and clear for the iPad to pick up, turning pages when you finish reading a page and avoid other distractions around the classroom.  KA PAI kids!

Here is Ryan's monster, Evil:


Here is Rhiana's monster, Fred:


Here is Sione's monster, Goku:

Read and Draw

Here are a few more Read and Draw activities that the students in Room 16 did at the end of term 2. I showed the children how to record themselves talking about their picture on Explain Everything. However the children found it a bit too hard. Well done to those who gave it a go anyway.

Here is Margaret's Drawing:



Here is Monique's work:

Narratives

This term we've been learning to write narratives. We know that narratives needs characters, setting, beginning, middle and end. Here are some of the narratives that the students in Room 16 wrote.