Our Special Guest

On Wednesday Ms O’Connor’s sister Lyn came to school to tell us some things about her former job. She could help us with our inquiry on rules, laws and consequences because she was a prison officer. Some of the things that she told us were that you got cold porridge for breakfast and marmite sandwiches for lunch. the criminal’s family could buy them a T.V to watch but only if they are good. She also told us that the closest to luxury in a prison is getting put in a different cell that looks like a normal room. You can cook your own meals and go to work. For an average job you earn 6 dollars and forty cents a week!
By Kahu

Our Avatars

Today we finally had a chance to make our avatars. We used www.weeworld.com. What do you think? Do they look like us?

Explore Parliament

Today I learnt about a new website called explore Parliament. We had to click on the top game, your the Prime Minister of Zilagoye and to many people are crashing the magic carpets. It is your job to make a law about magic carpet riding. In the game my name was Pinwick Lollibye. I thought that the game was exciting.

By Isaiah

Spelling - Week 9

Whero - List Six

Kakariki - List Six

Kahurangi - List Six

Kowhai - List Six

Student Blogging Challenge

This week for the student blogging challenge you get a chance to catch up on any work not completed yet.

1. Is your ‘About me’ page completed and is there a link to it on sidebar or in header?

2. Have you added links to student and class blogs on your sidebar?

3. Have you made sure your blog looks good? Do you pictures, widgets fit? Have used used a font that is easy to read?

4. Have you finished your glog on commenting. Embed your glog into your blog.

5. Do you have any draft posts? Complete them, get them edited and publish them.

6. Create your avatar and upload your avatar as your profile picture.

If you have finished these activities have a go at this, research a famous woman in the world. Write a short biography including reasons you consider her famous.

Give Hockey A Go Programme

Today we were really lucky to have a hockey expert come in and work with our class. We had a blast!

Duffy Assembly

Today we had a Role Model Duffy Assembly. We had Henara O'Keefe come to our school and share with us how he loves reading. He entertained us with a great song and told us some fantastic stories. We really enjoyed having Henare at our school.







We loved getting our new books, we didn't want to put them down.

Marae Visit

On Thursday we went to Putiki Marae. We were there for the whole day. We were split into 4 groups and shown lots of new exciting things. Some people made and ate fired bread, we learnt lots of new games like Ki O Rahi and some lucky people even went out onto the river in a waka. It was an awesome day!



The boys doing the Haka

Merit Certificate Winner

Congratulations Brandin. You really impressed Ms Whitwell on the Marae trip. You did our class proud!

Duffy Book Winners

Way to go Tyson and TePaerangi. Keep up all the good work.

Cooking Dinner!

Check out the slideshow of all the people who helped someone cook dinner last week. Doesn't it all look yummy. You are all great cooks.

Spelling - Week 7

Whero - List Five

Kakariki - List Five

Kahurangi - List Five

Kowhai - List Five

Student Blogging Challenge - Week 2

This week you are going to focus on the following...

Does your blog look good? Have you chosen fonts, colours that are easy to read? Do you have pictures, widgets that don't fit within the section? Spend time making your blog look good.

Have a look at other student and class blogs taking part in the student blogging challenge and leave meaningful comments.

Create a post about where you live. Make sure it is interesting for the reader and they can learn something from it.

Create an avatar, write a post about your avatar

Our Plan

Today we planned our inquiry and made a list of people who can help us make our own class treaty.

Mr Petersen
We want to interview Mr Petersen and ask him things like, who made our school rules, why do we have the rules we have, how did you decide the consequences and does he have any suggestions for what he feels will be important in our class treaty.

Mayor of Wanganui - Council Chambers
We want to talk to the Mayor and visit the council chambers and ask them things like, what is there job and do you help make the laws in New Zealand.

Police Station
We want to visit the police station to learn about the role of the police, what their job involves and how do they enforce the laws.

Parliament
We want to visit Parliament to learn things like how laws are made, how do they decide on new laws and can you change laws.

The boys will be spending the next few days emailing and talking to the people/places above and start arranging our visits. It looks like we are going to be a busy class.

Inquiry

Today we read a story called 'The Tree Hut Treaty'.



After reading this story and discussing the Treaty of Waitangi some more, we decided it would be a great idea to make a treaty for our class after discovering our class rules weren't so great.

Everyone agreed that was a good idea. We also discussed who could sign our treaty with us or oversee us signing the treaty. Below is the list of people we came up with.
Mr Petersen
Our teachers
Mayor of Wanganui
Someone in Parliament, maybe our local MP
and of course ... US!

Spelling - Week 6

Whero - List Four

Kakariki - List Four

Kahurangi - List Four

Kowhai - List Four

King of the Den

Hi 5 Winner

Today was TeWaoriki's lucky day. He also won a prize for being a great office monitor.

Duffy Book Winners

Congratulations to our 2 winners, VJ and TeWaoriki. Keep up the hard work.

Our Super Heros

Today for Hero Day we had a go making our own super hero's on cpbherofactory.com.
It was very interesting to see all the different characters they came up with. here are some.

Tyson


Josh


Anaru

School Spirit Day

Today we had a School Spirit Day, it was Hero Day. We all came dressed up as someone we thought was our hero. They boys did a fantastic job! They were so good that Mr Petersen announced in assembly that we were the best class. He gave everyone a Hi 5 card. Isn't that cool. We had a change to parade our outfits. It was great seeing everyone else and the effort that was put in, especially the teachers! It was so much fun dressing up for the day. I can't wait for the next one. I wonder what it will be, any suggestions?

School Spirit Day on PhotoPeach

Purple Cake Day!

Today was Purple Cake Day. Purple Cake day is a day to celebrate the children in our lives! This day encourages us to learn about children globally and fundraise for those in need. This year to focus was on Nepal. The money raised on Purple Cake Day is used to delivery quality education opportunities. This brings hope, education and real change to children living in poverty and hardship.

To celebrate Purple Cake Day we wore purple. As you can imagine the boys had trouble doing this and only a few were successful in finding purple outfits in their wardrobes. We also had a chance to buy purple cupcakes which were delicious. We also had a cardboard purple cupcake which we put the donated coins on.

In class we had a Purple Cake Day Celebration with Room 9. We did some finger painting with purple paint and ate some cupcakes. It was a great day!

Purple Cake Day! on PhotoPeach

Rules and Laws - What's the difference?

We have been looking closely at Rules and Laws. Today we needed to find the definition for what a rule is and what a law is.

We decided a rule is a statement explaining what someone can or cannot,helps people make the right choice. It is made by a group of people/organisation.

We decided a law is a system of rules within a country, region, or community. These rules are made by the government.

After that we made a list of all the laws we know. have a look at what we came up with.
No stealing, No drink/drug driving, No using a mobile while driving, No drugs - only prescription, No harming others, No speeding, No trespassing, Wear a helmet, Wear a seat belt, You must be 16 and over to drive, no assaulting, no fraud, no identity fraud, you must be 18 and over to buy smokes and alcohol, no vandalising, no abuse of any kind, no violating parole and you must not be left home alone if you are younger than 14.

After doing this activity we discussed why rules and laws are put in place. As a class we decided we have rules/laws to make the world a better place and to keep us safe.


All of a sudden people started to question our class rules. Can you believe it!

They were right, after 5 weeks they clicked we had problems.
1. I made the rules and told them what they were. We did not decide them together.
2. Our rule of only Year 6's on the couch is unfair. Rules need to be fair to everyone involved.
3. Our rule of putting up your left hand if you have a comment and right if you have a question. Is pointless it does not contribute to a better/safer class.

So What do we have to do now then??

Classroom Displays

Some of our displays are finally up. What do you think?

Spelling - Week 5

Whero - List Three

Kakariki - List Three

Kahurangi - List Three

Kowhai - List Three

Homework Task

One part of this week's homework task for the boys, was to clean their bedroom. Check out some photos of a few rooms. Much better!

Harry


Isaiah


TePaerangi


VJ

King of the Den

Clever Tyson!

Today in assembly Mr Peterson had 3 big bags of fruit to give away. Tyson was able to think quickly and answered one of Mr Peterson's questions, Who is the Prime Minister of New Zealand? Well done Tyson!

Community Picnic

We had the community picnic today. It was fun seeing everyone come together to catch up and play games. It was a great time.

Beach Safety

Today we went to Castlecliff Beach for the whole day to learn about beach safety. We learnt lots.

We learnt...
There must be an adult always watching when you are swimming
you put your hand straight up, not waving it, when you need help
You must use the right equipment - no floating gear
There is no whit wash on rips
Never swim alone
Slip, slop, slap, wrap, slurp and slide
IRB stand for inflatable rescue boat
Rips are discoloured and calm
Stay between the flags
You must know your limit
If in doubt stay out!

Beach Safety on PhotoPeach

The Tortoise and the Hare

Today Mrs Larsen read us a story 'The Tortoise and the Hare'. After we read the story we discussed how this relates to the habit we are focusing on, Persisting. We created a venn diagram the show the similarities and differences in their behaviours. We think we did really well.

Click here for larger version

All About Rules

Today we worked in groups to answer 5 questions about rules. What do we know about rules? Where do we have rules? Who makes the rules? Why do we have rules? Who enforces the rules and how? Once we have done some more learning we will come back to these questions and see if we were right.

Do I have to?

Today we started our new inquiry "Do i have to?". To introduce this to us Mrs Larsen showed us this you tube clip.



After watching the you tube clip we discussed it. Whats not right? We decided as a class that the class obviously had no rules.

Next we filled in a wallwisher 'Are rules important?'. Check out our thoughts and feel free to add yours.

Spelling City

Whero - List Two

kakariki - List Two

Kahurangi - List Two

Kowhai - List Two

Persisting

The habit of Mind we are focusing on at the moment is persisting. I saw this you tube clip on another class blog and thought, wow that pig just doesn't want to give up! Great attitude. What do you think?

Duffy Book Winner

Well done Harry. He was our very first winner of a Duffy book in Room 15. Keep up the hard work Harry.

King of the Den

Student Blogging Challenge

This year we are going to take part in the Class and Student Blogging Challenge.

The Class and Student Blogging Challenge starts in March.

Each week a task will be set for us to complete. All tasks are designed to improve blogging and commenting skills while connecting us with people all over the world.

You can work on your Student Blogging Challenge task at home if you haven't quite finished them at school.

Click here to register your blog in the Student Blogging Challenge

Our Friends in Poland

Can you believe it we have made friends with a school in Poland. We are so excited to work with them. They have sent us a power point of their school. Check it out below. We will be emailing the regularly and building a wiki together. All the boys were very interested when they found out about our new friends. But one thing we did learn, we need to learn a bit about Poland. We know nothing! Watch this space to see what we learn about Poland.

Buddy Time

Today we went to Room 12 for buddy time. We taught them how to use a website we learnt about befunky. They did a great job.

Befunky

Today Mrs Larsen showed us a new website called Befunky. Its a great website. You take plain photos and can add lots of effects to make them look even better. Everyone had a go at changing there photos. Check out some of them.