Picture Books for our junior buddies!

Today was a very exciting day in Room 7. We presented the picture books that we had written and illustrated to our junior school buddy. There were some very proud moments when the Room 7 children saw how much their buddies appreciated the thought and effort that had gone into making such a special book just for them.  Check out the cool pictures.

Camp Thinking Map

Please click on the link below to answer the questions

Camp Thinking Map

The superb second week!

What a great week we had in room 7. We enjoyed showing our visitors from ERO how we learn in our classroom.

We had a hilarious day on Thursday when we all chose a new name for the day. There were Indiana Jones', Spongebob square pants, Princesses, Einstein, lots of middles names and a strange teacher from a foreign country. We even had a visit from Constable Gumtree.

For writing, we are in the middle of some excellent narrative writing about a robot from the future. The children have been very imaginative about coming up with creative stories that include a hook and interesting words to entertain the reader. We look forward to sharing them on our e-portfolios soon.

Keep smiling and enjoy your long weekend with your families. 

Wonderful Week 1!

We have had a fabulous start to our term in Room 7. We welcome Brooke to our class and look forward to having you part of our team. The weather this week has been amazing and it is a good time to remember the dangers of being in the sun too long. Please make sure you put sun block on before you come to school and wear a hat. There is also sun block available in the class to re-apply if necessary.

We started our Keeping Ourselves Safe topic this week and discussed what it means to be confident. We also talked about valuing ourselves and remembering that we all have strengths and to be proud of these.

In maths, we are learning about patterns in Algebra and being number detectives to try and work out the rule for the patterns we are making and repeating.

We are beginning a big project that has links to reading and writing. We will be researching, planning and making our own picture books. Our writing theme this term is Narratives, so we will be applying what we learn and producing a cool picture book to gift to our junior classes.

Our inspiration this week has come from thinking. We are learning how to change the way we think in order to achieve our goals. So this week we have all had our thinking cats on!

Enjoy your weekend everyone, keep smiling.

Term 4 Holiday Quiz

Please check out the link and fill in the information:

Holiday Quiz

Welcome back to Term 4

Hi everyone, I hope you have had a super holiday. We have got a lot of exciting things happening this term. I look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow. Please remember to bring your sunhat and sunscreen. Lets hope this beautiful weather continues.

Random acts of kindness week

We are zooming through the term and still have so much to complete!

Our assembly was chocka-block on Friday but we managed to squeeze in our awesome movie about Random Acts of Kindness.

It is great to see so many of you continuing this and seeing how you can help others.

Enjoy your Friday off. You all deserve an extra long weekend. The Teachers will be undertaking some professional development on Friday so will be busy discussing and thinking.

Keep smiling, and thanks to all of those who comment on the class blog. I appreciate it.

What a wonderul week!

Week 5 has been and gone in a blur of first aid courses for Mrs H and three way interviews with all the wonderful children of Room 7, and their parents and whanau.

We have been focusing on being happy and have begun a challenge of identifying 100 things that are good/happy about being in Room 7 and in Year 4 and 5. We have had so many good ideas from the children. Lets see if we can crack 30 by the end of next week room 7?

I was so proud of all the children who presented to their families during our goal setting/three way interview conferences. You were courteous, polite, focused and explained your goals to your families with confidence and enthusiasm.  It was great to see so many parents/whanau, especially during such a horrible night on Thursday with hail, rain and nearly snow! Please come and visit us in room 7 whenever you can, the children love sharing their learning with you.

We have started a new writing topic in room 7 this week. We are learning how to write descriptively in order to paint a picture in the minds of our readers. We begun this week with a scenic picture of a lake in the wilderness. We discussed in pairs what we saw and how we would feel if we were in the picture. The children then completed a quick 4 line poem based on the image. The results were amazing. I will be publishing some next week so watch this space.

Singing has become a regular part of our weekly time-table in room 7. We have learnt songs from One Republic, Frozen, Keane and Imagine Dragon and this week we went back into the past and sung one of my personal favourites by Louie Armstrong - What a wonderful world. 

Please enjoy the link below and have a super week! Keep smiling!

What a wonderful world!

Wow, where did week 4 go?

The term seems to be flying by and we have had another action packed week in Room 7. We have swum, reflected on goals, watched impressive hail storms and completed a maths challenge.

The swimming sports on Thursday was amazing! All the children gave 100% in their individual races and supported each other as well. We also participated in swim safety, wearing life-jackets, and had a go at synchronised swimming.

The starfish challenge!

The end of a stunning sequence of underwater moves!

We have also been preparing for our 3 way interviews next week and reflecting on the goals we set last term. We  have set new goals to share with our parents/whanau and have been practising what we will say with our buddies.

What a hail storm we experienced on Thursday afternoon! The class came to a stand still as the hail pelted Normandale School. The children were excited and all hoped it would snow.

We have been following the maths week survivor series in Room 7 this week. Each day we were faced with 10 maths questions (in the flavour of the amazing race) and then given a golden letter. The aim was to collect 5 golden letters by the end of the week and figure out what the word spelt. This has been an exciting way to do maths, and the children have enjoyed the challenge.

Please check out the website as it has lots of fun and exciting games for the children to play.
Maths week website

Have a great weekend everyone, keep smiling and I look forward to sharing some of the super work your children have been doing with you at interviews next week.

Swimming and Sandpits

Week 3 was a busy week in Room 7. We started our winter swimming programme with a lot of excitement. The children have been awesome at remembering their togs and towel each day, and have been great role models to the junior classes we are going to the pool with. Our swimming skills are improving a lot.

Keen to get in the water on the first day!

A bit of water polo training.

We enjoyed 'Peace Week' and learning how to make paper cranes, and then passing on our knowledge to the juniors in our Whanau groups on Friday. In Room 7 we discussed each day what peace meant to us and lots of the children had questions about war and what was happening in other countries. I set the children a challenge of getting 10 smiles, by smiling at 10 people who were not in Room 7. I don't think the bus driver (who was taking us to the pool for swimming) had seen so many smiling faces before, eager to add to their smile tally for the day.

Our wonderful new sandpit area and landrover, was officially opened this week as well. A HUGE thank you to all the wonderful parents and helpers who gave up so much of their own time to make such an awesome area, for our Normandale School kids to play on/in. We LOVE it!
Have a great week everyone and remember to keep smiling!

Penguins and positive thinking!

We have had another action-packed week in Room 7. Our focus this week is remembering to keep positive.

Writing this week has been based on factual reports. During our zoo visit last week we got a chance to hear about the penguins. Two of these birds had been rescued by the zoo, due to injury, and the children were fascinated to hear how we could help these little helpless animals.  We learnt from the zoo keepers that looking after our environment, picking up rubbish, keeping it out of the sea, using sustainable, recyclable materials can all help.

So back at school this week we watched a video about some more penguins and learnt even more information about them. Please check out the link below to watch more about penguins:

Penguin clip

Room 7 would love you to hear their wonderful writing so parents/whanau and caregivers please feel free to drop by our class sometime and come and read them.

Here are a couple of us sharing our penguin reports in assembly.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Zoo Trip and Inspiration!

We have had a fantastic start to the term in Room 7. It was great to hear everybody had a great holiday and were refreshed and ready to learn. We are beginning each day in Room 7 with a piece of inspiration, a story, photo, video clip etc. to get us thinking about keeping positive, working together and supporting each other. The children particularly enjoyed this video clip showing the power of working as a team. Enjoy the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE6mDCdYuwY

Today was a highlight for many of the children and teachers as we ventured out into the big world, on our zoo trip. We had been unlucky with the weather on Tuesday but the sun shone brightly today so we began our adventure.  Of the many cool things that we did, being able to touch a Tuatara named Stonehenge, was my personal favourite. I will let the children fill you in on their favourite bits if they haven't already.  Mr S, Mrs G and myself along with all the wonderful parent helpers, were super impressed with how well the seniors behaved today. They made us really proud. Here are a few snaps of the day.

Homework Week 1

End of Term 2

Gosh, where has the term gone? We have been SUPER busy in Room 7.

One of the highlights of our last week of term 2 was the presentation of speeches. I was blown away by the high standard of the speeches and super-duper proud of all the children, for getting up in front of the class and presenting their speeches.  This was not an easy thing to do for a lot of the children in Room 7, however everyone has grown in confidence from being part of the experience.

Congrats to the students who made it through to the senior syndicate finals.

This is the senior syndicate before the speech finals take place.

We are enjoying syndicate fitness, when the weather is kind. We had a lot of fun playing dodge ball today.

Wishing you all safe and happy holidays with your wonderful children. See you back for another exciting term on Monday the 21st of July.

World Cup 2014 in Room 7

We are all very excited in Room 7 as the football world cup has begun. Every person has drawn out a team to follow and we will be learning about the country our team comes from. Mrs H will be showing some of the football games (that have an 8am kick off time) before school in Room 7. If your child would like to come and watch them they are allowed to come to school at 8am to do so, as I will be supervising them. Please check the FIFA website for information and times for games. What a great spectacle it has been already.

Homework W6

MoveMprove

We are steaming our way through the MoveMprove sessions with our fantastic gym instructors. We have learnt a lot of great skills and are having a lot of fun each Thursday. Check out some of the things we did this week.

Waiting enthusiastically for our turn.

Listening carefully to the instructions.

We warmed up with a fun activity similar to musical chairs but with hula hoops.

We had to use co-operative skills to all fit in the hoop.

Working with a buddy to practise balancing and tucking.

We had to use a partner to walk together using our hands and feet. It was tricky.

An even harder challenge was making a line of 4 people to move across the floor with.