Symmetry

Today in maths we revisited rotation, reflection and translation. We did this quiz online. You can click on it and try it too at home.
 

Totara Swimming Carnival

Peer Mediators

This year our Year 6s are Peer Mediators. Their responsibility and contribution to the school is to help our students if their are any problems in the playground. Last week we started training, with our focus on ACTIVE LISTENING. Active listening is giveing all of your attention to the speaker. It is the opposite of BUSY LISTENING which is when you are doing something else and trying to listen at the same time. If you are busy listening then the speaker may not feel valued.
Here are some photos of our training.

Our Year Peer Mediators! 

Our Classroom Native Species Tank

Our Native Species Tank on PhotoPeach

EELS: Click here for more information on eels in New Zealand.
KOURA: Click here for more information on fresh water crayfish in New Zealand.
BULLIES: Click here for more information on bullies and native fish species in New Zealand.

What do you think of our tank? Let us know and please leave us a comment!

Our trip to the stream

At The Waimarama (Brook River) on PhotoPeach

WaiMaori

Make your own photo slideshow at Animoto.

Life Processes

In Room 3 we watched this animation about the seven life processes. We are learning ti write a paragraph about each life process, introducing each paragraph with a TOPIC SENTENCE to explain to our audience what each paragraph will be about.

Click here to view the animation 

Friday afternoons... how they should be!

Privileges Time at The Pool on PhotoPeach

Summit Club!

Horray for Summit Club day! Every Thursday Year 5 and 6's who belong to the Summit Club leave NCS at 12.15pm to trek up the Center of New Zealand. At the top there is a spectacular view across the city and Tasman Bay, and we sit and eat our lunch. Afterwards we head on back to school, getting there about 1.30pm.

Once we have done ten summits we can earn a bronze badge, 20 summits gets us a silver badge and 30 earns us a gold badge. At the end of the year those who have earned a badge can come with us up Mt Arthur in Kahurangi National Park, quite a special place.

It was a gorgeous day for Summit Club today. Shannyn's mum met us at the bottom with Derek their little dog. Poor Derek was exhausted by the top, ...and a few of the rest of us were too! BUT what a great way to spend the lunch hour, have fun and get fit at the same time!

Any parents and their pooches are welcome anytime!

Here are some pics of us at the top under the sculpture at the top, showing the Summit Club symbol.

Pop Art Portraits

As well as looking at Picasso portraits this term we have created these bright and colourful Andy Warhol-style Pop Art portraits.
Fiona took a photo of us, printed it on A4 and handed them out to us.
Next we used our Sharpies to trace around the outlines of our faces.
When we turned them over we saw the outlines that had soaked through.
Using our water colour pencils we simply coloured the outlines in using wacky, fun and bright colours.

Who do you recognise?
Which colours do you think look fabulous together?

*Please leave us a comment*

Pop Art Portraits on PhotoPeach

Picasso Portraits

Here are some of our completed Picasso Portraits! We think they look fabulous, what do you think?

Please leave us a comment below.

Zany Zebra

Source: National Geographic Wallpapers

Dark, luminous clouds cover the sky. In the distance thunder rattles and crackles. A zebra stands to attention, proud and strong. His black and white stripes zigzag like lightening. His skin shivers in the warm breeze and his ear twitches, alert for any sign of danger.

Wikipedia website about zebras.

WALT: Insert an image on to our blog, write a post and insert a link to another website. 

Picasso Portraits using watercolour

Just last week we made a great start, and for some a finish, on our Picasso Portraits.
Firstly we studied the colour wheel identifying primary, secondary and complimentary colours.

Then we practised making our own colour wheels in our art sketchbooks, and blending colours that are next to one another on the colour wheel using our water colour pencils. We discovered that complimentary colours are harder to blend, but some students managed to really well!

We learned that 'perfect planning prevents poor performance' and sketched out some ideas in our art sketchbooks before planning our final design for our Picasso Portraits. After drawing over our pencil lines with our Sharpies we got stuck in using our knowledge of the colour wheel to add a splash of colour to our portraits.

Here we are working on them; keep an eye out this week for a VoiceThread of our finished artworks!

Week 1 Reading

It was fantastic getting to know everyone in Room 3 this week just been. What a great bunch, it is going to be a fabulous year!

We got stuck into our reading activities this week with a short story by Paul Jennings called, 'Picked Bones'. We tried to predict what the story would be from the title, but were still surprised when the story started that the main character's uncle, a keen birdwatcher and environmentalist, had been found dead, his skeleton 'picked clean' by the desert birds in the outback of Australia. From that point on we were well and truly hooked!

Here is our story map that we created for Picked Bones to help us identify the parts of a story:

Our story map sure did make it easy for us to summarise the main points of the story!

We used the information on the story map to write a blurb together for our book covers. It was important that we didn't give away the end of the story, and we also thought that using rhetorical questions was a good way to hook our audience into wanting to read the story themselves.

Here is a 'PhotoPeach' slide show of some of our book covers. Look at all the different ways our class visualised the story in their minds as Fiona read the story aloud.

'Picked Bones' Book Covers on PhotoPeach 

We are looking forward to the next story Fiona is going to read us, 'Kensuke's Kingdom', by Michael Morpurgo.

Welcome to 2013!

Dear Room 3 Whanau,

Welcome to our Room 3 blog for 2013! Congratulations and thank you for getting this far and having a look!

Each of the students in Room 3 have their own blog that you can access using the right hand sidebar. Each student is responsible for completing set tasks and writing stories and articles about their own interests and hobbies on their blog.

I, Fiona, am responsible for writing on the class blog. Our class blog serves several purposes:

• Sharing our learning week by week, giving you an insight into what we learn in class so that you too can join in the discussions with your child. The more prior knowledge a student brings to class the better, and any background knowledge you can share with them is highly valuable.
• Sharing our learning with other classes in NZ and around the world, making links and connections with others.
• Providing students with links to videos and sites we use in class so that they can be revisited at home to consolidate understanding. 
• Informing whanau about upcoming trips and Totara events.
• Showcasing our school and community for future teachers and families of NCS.

Please take the time to leave us comments; we love receiving them and they spark lots of discussion and encouragement!

If you would like to contact me about your child's learning, or anything you see on this blog, please email me: fionam@nelsoncentral.school.nz

Thank you!

Fiona