Our Water Hunt

Our group went on a water hunt around the school in search of ways we could conserve water. We found some dripping taps and collected the water for a day in a bucket. We collected 10 litres and sent an email to Mr Wilkins our caretaker asking whether the leaking water fountains could be fixed to stop wasting water. Here is a photostory of our "Water Hunt".

By MQ and FL

Our Saving Water Animations

This term we have been learning about conserving water. Our group decided the action we would take would be to make different animations about how to save water. We hope that we get the message across clearly to people who read our blog. By A.T, K.C, R.D, K.K, J.Y, T.T, D.D, C.Mc

Natural Events - Our Glogster Poster

Oceans reading group have made a glogster poster about Natural Events. At some stages it was fiddley and the rest was easy. We hope you enjoy it, especially the video links about hurricanes and volcanoes.

RD, GW and AD

Natural Events - Our Voicethread

We have created a voicethread of natural events information. One of these natural events relates directly to the importance of water conservation. Which one do you think it is?

By TC, CM, DV and DM

Water Features

Our reading group has been finding lots of information about Water Features found on Earth. This is our first photostory and we practised reading aloud to make sure you could hear our voices.

Can you leave a comment and share whether you thought we recorded our facts clearly.....

MQ, AT, LB, KC, BD

Disco 2010

Last Friday our school had a "Disco" and we have been working on a Picturetrail about our awesome night. Everbody had lots of fun especially us because it was the first time I have been to a Senior Disco (RD).

This is our Picturetrail we have created, we tried to make it a bit discoey. Before we could put this together we had to re-size our photos. Now we think we are experts at Picturetrails and hopefully we can show other people how to use them.

We hope you enjoy it.

RD and AB

The Flood

Today it was bucketing down at SPS, for about 45 minutes during maths it rained and rained and rained. We looked out the windows and water was overflowing from our drains. Our fields were totally covered in ankle deep water. We have rivers and streams flowing across our concrete paths.

We think it is really funny that this has happened because this morning we wrote about "What if .... All our roads were rivers!!"

If all our roads were rivers we would have to fly in planes for buses or helicopters for taxis! Jet skiis would be handy for runners and mini life boats for cycles. Every day when you step out the door remember the boat!!! You'll get loads of water when you live next to the road... You'll have a great swimming pools... You'll need a gate (not a holey gate) a gate with no holes.

Here are some of our stories. From TT, NV, TC

Saving Our Stormwater Drains

Today our reading group read a story about the importance of keeping stormwater drains clean by making sure only rain water goes into the drains and not waste like paint, oil and soapy water. This is because the storm water flows straight out into our harbour or Cockle Bay Beach. We were interested to find out what our stormwater drains looked like ...

So AT and MQ went on an adventure around SPS with a digital camera and took some photos of what our drains looked like. We were horrified to see what our drains were like. Have a look at these photos.

We have brainstormed some ideas and will keep you posted - Can you share any ideas you might have?

AT, MQ and AT

3 States of Water

This afternoon our learning intention was to explain what the 3 states of water are. We poured liquid into different sized containers and the liquid took the shape of the container. We looked at the ice and discussed that when liquid is cooled to below 0C it becomes a solid. Then we boiled a jug of water and watched water vapour (steam) come out of the top. We put a mirror over the jug and collected the steam, when the steam cooled down it turned into small droplets of water called condensation.

Here is a website that we used to learn more about the 3 states of water. Can you answer the questions on the quiz?



This activity sourced from http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/materials/changing_state/play.shtml

Living and Non-Living Things

We have looking at the difference between living and non-living things. Did you know that ALL living things have 7 characteristics the same. All living have to be able to move, grow, breath, excrete, reproduce, eat and are sensitive to their environment.

Here are our living and non-living wordles that we created:

ed.

My Life in Sudan

Hi Everyone

Before I came to Shelly Park School I lived in a country called Sudan. I have made a photostory with lots of different photos that my family took when we lived there. We lived there because my dad needed to work their because he is a doctor and also to see some of our friends. I still write to my friend who lives there and yesterday she sent me an email.

I hope you enjoy my photostory. Thanks AT

Kerry's Double

This week our Rivers Reading Group were working on another kidpix retell called Kerry's Double.  We had to write what had happened in the story in our own words.   This time we were really excited because we were going to use the easi-speak to record the story. We went one by one so we all didn't crowd the room.    It was important we used a very clear voice and not talk too fast.  While we were waiting for our turn we practised what we were going to say.  We were so happy to have finished on the easy speak, we still want to do more easi-speak on different books. 

Tagxedo Verb Cloud

Today as part of our literacy program we focused on using verbs in our "5 Senses" Poem. Verbs are words that explain an action, sometimes we call then "doing" words. KC has broken her wrist and couldn't do phys ed today so instead she used wordle.net to create a "verb" word cloud but Mrs P closed the website before she had saved it. So instead we used tagxedo.com to create another word cloud. We really liked this website especially when you run the mouse over the words.

Dance in Room 11

Dance is happening in Room 11. We have been learning a variety of dance elements in the last few weeks. Here is a video showing the NZ Royal Ballet dancing a Lady Gaga song "Bad Romance". Can you recognise and name any of the locomotor and non-locomotor movements? What about the different pathways they are using?

Tall Tales - Our First Kidpix

This week our reading group Rivers used kidpix for the first time to retell the story Tall Tales. First we buddied up and one of us created the picture and the other person wrote the words, then we swapped over for the second picture. In the story Phillip and Anna were penpals and they wrote letters to each other and told a few Tall Tales. Finally in the end they met each other and ended up being good friends.

We hope you enjoy our kidpix retell.
AS, KC, BD, LB, AT, AT

Bookweek 2010

During bookweek we had a special visitor come to our school. He was Terry Sleator and he is a "Storyteller" and a bushman. He writes amazing stories about different fish and lots of others. He gave us some storytelling stones and told his to read 4 lines each time and that way we would remember them.

When he sees a dead possum of the road he stops and picks it up and throws it over the fence - if a logging truck has run over it he leaves it there. He throws the dead possum over the fence so that the hawks don't get run over when they are eating the dead possum.

KK, AM and BD

Our New ActivBoard

A WESOME
C AN'T DISSAPOINT YOU
T WO PEOPLE CAN WRITE ON IT
I T'S REALLY FAST AT LOGGING ON
V ARIETY OF GAMES
B EST WE'VE HAD SO FAR
O UR BOARD'S FANTASTIC
A CTIV
R EALLY
D ELICATE

AD & AS

Crystal Clear Water Again

Awesome! There is crystal clear water in Mrs P's stream once again. Mrs P called the council after some men said that they would flush out the dirty murky water. What would Mrs P have done if the men hadn't flushed the water out? Probably her theree cats would have got ill because they drink from the stream.

When they flushed the water out all the tall grass bent down as if the grass was touching it's toes. If it rains it will be a miracle because it will help to wash out the dirty water. Luckily for the eels hopefuly there won't be any other dead animals.


KK

Mrs P's Contaminated Stream

I have a little stream that runs behind my house. Sometimes when it rains very heavily the water flows down it very fast and it can be very noisy. We haven't had alot of ran lately and it has been very quiet until .....

This Saturday when I was hanging out my washing our little stream was making lots of noise, so I went down to see why??? Lots of very dirty water was running into our stream and it was very murky and it had lots of bubbles in it. In fact when I walked a little further down the stream something very sad happened, I found 3 dead eels. Our lovely stream was polluted.

I quickly got on the phone and within 2 hours a very important van arrived and two men in bright orange jackets came to see what was happening. They found a stormwater drain was blocked - it was very smelly and slimey. They were going to flush out the stream further up the road with clean water but .... they haven't - what should I do?

Snake & Lizard

This week is book week and our focus is on "kiwi" books and "kiwi" authors.

In room 11 our teachers are reading aloud "Snake & Lizard" by Joy Cowley as an introduction before they read the sequel story "Friends" by Joy Cowley.

This story is one of many books competing in the NZ Post Children's Book Awards. Here is the link that you can visit if you want to vote for this book.

Our Water Inquiry

Today Mrs P showed us our inquiry model again and this time we were able to explain to each other what stage of our model we were up to. In Room 11 we have doing lots of "Setting the Scene" activities, we had a water day, watermelon afternoon tea party, created some water art on our netball court and we have a little surprise happening this week on Thursday. I wonder if you can guess what it might be?

She introduced our big question - How can we be responsible for conserving our fresh water? Then we went away in groups and brainstormed "Water Conservation" - it was very tricky because alot of us didn't know what conservation meant...

Telecom Bagging

Last week was one of the busiest fundraisers we have all year. It was telecom bagging week and our school was busy bagging and delivering new telephone directories around Howick. Here is what we got up to...


It was a late late night - it was telecom bagging night...

I was so excited. When I got there it looked like a big job. Some people weren't even helping, they were just riding a skateboard down a hill.

At first I didn't know what I was doing then someone told me. It was pretty easy, I was just putting books on tables

Water day

WOW Its water day! At first me and my friend went to do a few jobs for Mrs D. After that we went to the swimming pool for a swim. We first did a warm up our warm up was a whirlpool. Then we went for a jog around the little field and from the field we went to are classrooms to get a towel. Next we went to play a game of water babies. It was so fun. Then we went to do water art, I loved doing water art - it was the best!!
A.M

The Food Factory

Pie, Pie I like Pie
Pie for breakfast, pie for tea,
Everyone likes pie just like me.
Oh no!!! the pie company exploded ....
Don't worry we can just have
Beans, Beans I like Beans
Beans for lunch, beans for tea,
Everyone likes beans just like me.

CM

How Responsible Are We???

We worked together in groups to come up some ways that we could be responsible for ourselves in room 11. Over the next few weeks we will focus on understanding the importance of "being responsible" and how this can help our learning.

Welcome to Fabulous Room 11

Hi everyone

Our first day back at school was super exciting, we got to make lots of new friends and our year 3's are now in a new pod. Our fabulous year 4's have been working hard helping our new stars settle into their new classes.

We hope you enjoy visiting our blog and we would really like you to write lots of interesting comments for us to read.

Thanks
From Your Room 11 Friends