Brain warmups in Maths

Room 5 has been doing 5 minute Brain warmups before Maths this term to practice using logic to solve unusual puzzles.

Look at the video below to see a student explaining his thinking.

The next challenge is to get the more reluctant speakers joining in and sharing their thinking.

Duffy Grandparent award

Sam is a loving grandpa who his often at school with his grandchildren Charis, Audrey and Savior.  In recognition of his care and support, he received the Duffy Grandparent Book award.

He is pictured here with his grandson Charis who is in Room 5.

Moment in Time Writing

This week Room 5 has been learning to use their senses to help them make their writing more personal and interesting.

Room 5's teacher modelled an example and then they did their own writing from pictures of school children around the world who travel dangerously to get to school. Room 5 had to write from one of the children's point of view in the photo.

Graphics from "The Writing Book" were used to give students feedback. Next week students will be using the graphics themselves to give each other meaningful feedback.

Here is a sample of some of the writing.

Name: Sateki

Date: 26/7/18

Learning Goal:

We are learning TO USE OUR SENSES to describe what we think is
happening in the photo.

We are learning to use WOW! words like adjectives

and verbs to add impact for

our audience (people who read our writing).

Title:  The most terrifying moment of my life.

I heard the birds squawking in the air while I was riding down the zipline.

I saw the snake creeping and wiggling through the mud trying to catch its prey.

I felt like the zipline was momentarily about to collapse at any moment, I would fall to my
death without any protection.

I wonder if my body will survive and not be the snakes next victim.

Image attribution: https://www.boredpanda.com/dangerous-journey-to-school/?utm_source=direct&utm_
medium=none&utm_campaign=direct

Image credits: Christoph Otto

Name: Opeti

Date: 24/7/18

Learning Goal:

We are learning TO USE OUR SENSES to describe what we think
is happening in the photo.

We are learning to use WOW! words like adjectives and

verbs to add impact for our audience (people who read our writing).

Title: The scariest way to school

https://www.boredpanda.com/dangerous-journey-to-school/?
utm_source=direct&utm_medium=none&utm_campaign=direct

I heard splashing in the mucky water and wind blowing past my ears.

I saw the beautiful malachite mountains and the yellow beaked birds in the foggy sky.

I felt terrified, sick and excited at the same time.

I wondered if the other student in front of me felt the same.

Parent Letter Term 3

Dear Parents/Caregivers,

Your child will read the Parent letter that is on our Class Site under Parent Space to you about what we are learning in Term 3.  Please can you come up with 2 questions and post them as a comment on this Blog Post.

This is part of their Home Learning tonight.

Many Thanks

Mrs Middleton

WINTER LEARNING JOURNEY FOR ROOM 5

          

WELCOME TO THE WINTER LEARNING JOURNEY FOR JULY HOLIDAYS 2018

As you can see from the 3 headings above, there are 3 themes for our Winter Learning Journey.

Each day you will be given 1 activity for each theme so 3 activities per day.

You have the whole week up until Sunday to complete the activities.

Day 1 - Monday 9th July 2018

Activity 1 - READ TO SUCCEED - Join a library and get reading!

LEARN 

1. Go to your local library, join up and get a library card.

2. Take out 1 of your favourite books (it must be a chapter book).

CREATE

1. Take a photo of your library card.

2. Take a photo of your book AND read your book. (You have the week to read and finish your book)

SHARE

1. Blog the image of your library card - BE CYBERSMART AND MAKE SURE YOUR LAST NAME IS NOT SHOWING.

2. Blog the image of your library book and then fill in this summary.

Blog the completed summary with the image of your book.

Activity 2 - WRITE TO EXCITE - Weather Haiku

LEARN 

1. Go to Google Classroom and fill in the All about weather worksheet. This will give you the adjectives you need to write your Haiku poem.

CREATE

1. Use the adjectives you found about the weather and write your Haiku poem. Take photos of the weather from your window or the front door of your house to go with your Haiku poem.

SHARE

1. Blog your Haiku poem. 

Activity 3 - ACT LIKE A SCIENTIST - Making Ice cream

LEARN 

1. Go to Google Classroom and follow the instructions on how to make ice cream. You are learning about reactions between substances to change matter.

Make sure you answer the green light bulb questions along the way.

CREATE

1. Make a Slideshow showing your pictures of you making ice cream and add the questions and your answers. Make sure you follow the Scientific method you learned about.

SHARE

1. Blog your Google slides making sure you write a paragraph about your findings. 

Give Sailing a go!

We were blessed with the opportunity to give Sailing a go by the wonderful St Johns Rotary Organisation. 

Room 5's fantastic parents Tema, Aly, Brown, Gabby and Karissa made it possible for us to attend by providing transport to and from the event. Many thanks, wonderful parents!


May 8th dawned bright and clear with a light breeze. Perfect conditions for our class to get out on the water and learn how to sail.

Students were paired up and sailed together. 

Please read a partner recount by 2 of the sailors. I blended their Recounts so you could feel it from both points of view.

This is a recount written by Thomas and Patience. They wrote it together. Patience is in black and Thomas is in blue. I have attached images below the writing.

A crazy day in a boat 

Tuesday was a very exciting day. My class were going to go sailing. I was feeling a bit nervous but excited at the same time.

We got to Okahu bay and the instructor showed us how to rig a boat. We needed a sail, a pole to hold the sail up, a board to push down when we got into the water, a baler to get the water out when the water is inside our boat, and most important, the courage to sail! It looked easy at first but when me and my partner tried it ourselves, it was soooo hard.

We got all the easy parts of our boat finished but we had to do our sail and ropes and the “BOOM OF DOOM” almost hit me. The instructor told us to come in but we hadn't even finished our boat. Luckily Maria came and checked all of our boats to make sure we had rigged them correctly.

Then we had to get into sailing gear. We had to wear a tight wetsuit, a rain jacket over that and a really tight life jacket. When we finished getting changed I could barely breathe. I felt like I was being choked to death.

It was time to go on the water! We had to line our boats up in a row at the edge of the water on the ramp. Soon, it was our turn. When we got on the water my partner was freaking out and I was screaming my lungs out. I felt like I was in a horror movie!

My job on the boat was taking care of the rudder and my partner, Thomas had to take care of the sail. We were working so well as a team and managed to keep up with the instructor. The other people yelled, “How are you guys going so fast?” We went fast because we were following the wind and making sure our sail was not “flappy and unhappy!” Then the wind got stronger and stronger but we did not give up! We just kept on following the wind. When we finished wandering around the sailing instructor told us to go to him.

When we went to him he grabbed a ball and threw it into the water. We had to sail and get the ball before the other boats. The first person to get the ball had to pass it to the instructor. The hard part was that you could only hold it for five seconds! After the game was finished the wind came and blew our boats and the BOOM OF DOOM! nearly hit my head and yes, my partner Patience started to scream, again!!. When the wind got heavy I was scared because we were in the deep side of the water. Even though we were all wearing life jackets I was still scared because I thought that the fish would come and bite our legs.

We sailed back to shore to have lunch and were very excited because we were going to go out again. My food was so yummy. I wanted to eat more but I knew I couldn’t because I would get a cramp. After a yummy pizza lunch bought by a parent, we all pulled our boats back into the water and sailed to the instructor, Simon. When we got there he flipped our boat over. Me and Patience had to swim and flip our boat back over the right way.  We were swimming in the water trying to help other people who were capsized and couldn't get their boat back up the right way. We helped them push their boat back to shore.

There was so much water in our boat and I was shivering. It was time to go back to shore, so we sailed back, got our trailer and brought our boats out of the water. It was time to go home. I wish we got to have a longer swim and also another chance to go sailing. It was a very interesting day. I wonder what will happen when I go sailing again?

Thomas and Patience rigging their boat

Tamaki Soccer Tournament 16th May 2018

On Wednesday 16th May, Year 5 and 6 students from Room 5 took part in the Tamaki Cluster Football Tournament. They trained hard at lunch breaks with Mr Gaffney.

The highlight of their day was when they beat Panmure District School 4-1. They played 6 matches altogether.
The team lost the first match to Stonefields 2-0, which put them into the 2nd pool. However,  they recovered well and lost their last match to Point England 2-1 (The eventual winners).

Mr Gaffney was very proud of their sportsmanship and teamwork.

Well done Year 5 and 6 soccer players!

Mothers Day Art - Wind of Love

Room 5 created beautiful Mothers Day Cards for Mothers Day.

We did the art work first and then they wrote beautiful letters to their mothers/caregivers to thank them, to say what they loved about them and what they wished for them.

Our partner class SCHOOL KIT metaphors and similes and a "fun facts about themselves" activity sheet

Room 5 joined the SCHOOL KIT event where classes were partnered up throughout New Zealand and completed a set of postcards which created the poster "EVERY PERSON IS A NEW DOOR TO A DIFFERENT WORLD".

Our partner class/school was Room 2, a year 4/5 class at Enner Glynn School in Nelson.

We had fun putting their postcards together to create the colourful poster they had made with their metaphor postcards.

Hip Hop with Jess - Creating our own dance moves

Term 1 Hip Hop with Kiwi Sport
We have had a great time learning Hip Hop with Jess. She made it look so easy!

This is one group getting some help fine tuning their moves.

This is one of the dancers Haiku poetry about Hip Hop

Our SCHOOL KIT metaphors and similes with Room 5's informational activity sheet

We had so much fun doing the crazy activities on the fun filled informational sheet about ourselves. Look closely and you will see some of the nutty things we had to do.

Look at our crazy metaphor cards. Our teacher is very proud of us!

We gathered together our metaphor and simile cards about ourselves....

and put them in with our class photo, hand fan from Tonga and our found poem.

We do hope Room 2 from Nelson enjoys looking at and reading all our crazy information!

Our Lenten Promises

Room 5 have been working on their Lenten promises for Lent and created posters to show their sacrifices and promises to do a Kind Act each day of Lent. They have been blogging their Kind Acts each day.

Below is a slide show of some of the Lenten Promise Posters created by the students.

Congratulations Summer Learning Journey Bloggers

Cool Text: Logo and Graphics Generator

Today, Rachel came to St Pius X to present our champion Bloggers with their certificates and prizes.

Mrs Middleton received a special chair for her classroom for supporting her bloggers in the holidays. She was grateful and appreciative of the comfy chair which is now a Birthday chair for students as well as a special seat for students who achieve personal success in their learning.

(See picture of chair below)

Below are the students from Room 5 who blogged some or all of the Activities from the Summer Learning Journey site. 

Back Row:Solomone, Cameron, Charis, Lily, Gabriel, Christopher, Etuale

Side: Diego

Front row: Silia, Akesa, Dianne, Opeti

Missing - Patience Makatesa

 These are the students from Room 5 who received special spot prizes.

From left to right: Silia, Akesa, Dianne, Opeti

Many thanks again to Rachel Williams and her team of commenters who made this exercise fun and worthwhile.

We look forward to taking part in the 2018 Winter learning Journey in the July holidays.

Kawa of Care

Most of the students in Room 5 have had their netbooks since 2017. We talked about reminding us of how we care for our netbooks and made some posters with important points to remember.

These are some of Room 5's tips for caring for their/your netbooks.

(No teacher input, students remembered on their own and shared their tips with the 4 new Year 4 students - proud teacher!)

Seven Sharp TV appearance

(Click on the image link to the video to watch the whole article - Room 5 students are at the very beginning and the main article continues featuring Rachel, Aaliyah and Katelyn)

On Thursday 8th February, Room 5 was filmed as the introduction for an article about the Summer Learning Journey. Katelyn and Aaliyah, 2 students from Nu'u Learning Space were heavily featured as they were the most active bloggers during the holidays.

Rachel Williams has worked incredibly hard setting up this Holiday Blogging Activity program and supporting the students as they blogged throughout the holidays, giving them comments and feedback.

St Pius X was blessed to be chosen to represent the Summer Learning Journey blogging program and are just one of many schools in the Manaiakalani cluster participating.

We at St Pius X are incredibly proud of the effort and commitment shown by the students blogging through the holidays and look forward to taking part in future Blogging journeys with Rachel and her team.

Lady of Fatima statue visit

 

St Pius X school was blessed by the visit of the Lady of Fatima statue. The whole school had a liturgy honouring and praising our Lady of Fatima, the mother Mary.

Room 5 posed in front of the statue and then wrote a recount of their personal experience of the event.

This is the recount of one of the students, Patience Maketesa.

Meet the mother Mary

I was very excited to see the statue and the sisters. The sisters were all wearing a dark blue and the statue was wearing white.

As we were saying the rosary my voice got tired and I lost my breath I couldn't talk or say the prayers as much because the prayers were so long!

When I came up close to see mother Mary I thought she was beautiful. Her cheeks were as pink as a rose, her crown was as bright as the sun and her clothing as white as a dove.

I think that Mother Mary looks real because her skin looks very smooth.

At the end each class took a photo with the statue with our rosaries and prayer cards. That was my favourite part of the visit.

That was a very fun experience meeting they Fatima statue, I hope I get to see her soon.

If you are interested in finding out more you can click on the extract below to read further about the tour of the statue and how it was organised.

"On January 11, Pope Francis blessed six statues of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and conferred upon them the title of “International Centennial Pilgrim Image of Our Lady of Fatima.” Each of these pilgrim images have since been sent from the Eternal City to a continent, where their pilgrimage will be focused."