The day it snowed at school!!!

UPDATE: Monday 3.30pm

During the day on Monday

Snow at sea level? You better believe this was a 'once in a lifetime' event!!!!!

Dinosaur Maths

This week for Maths we have been investigating the sizes of different meat eating Dinosaurs. To do this we had to learn how to compare and sort information.

Once we had graphed the different sizes of the dinosaurs, we took some chalk outside and, using metre rulers, worked out how high the smallest and largest dinosaurs stood. We drew them in chalk, and had our photo taken next to our drawings.

Last Space Shuttle flight :-(

I am very sad. The last Space Shuttle mission.

Our "Mystery Stories"

We have been reading the picture book "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" by Chris Van Arlsberg. In the book, each page is a new story, with only a picture and a sentence of writing to tell the reader the story.

Here are some pictures from the book:

So we in Room 7 decided to take a page/story each, and fill in the missing parts! We have been writing our mystery stories for the last couple of weeks, and have recorded some of them on Vocaroo to share with each other. These can be found over on the "Class of 2011" blog.

We also plan to publish our stories on A3 paper and make a 'big book' called "Room 7's Big Book of Mysteries'. We will share the book with our buddy class when it is finished.

Other writers have been inspired by 'The Mysteries of HB" as well. In 1993, Stephen King published his solution to the mystery of The House on Maple Street in a story collection entitled Nightmares & Dreamscapes.

For those children who have LOVED writing their mystery stories, there is an official 'Mysteries of Harris Burdick" website for you to explore. It even shows what happens afterwards to the hovering Nun!

UPDATE: I recently found this website, where other children have written stories to solve 'The Mysteries of Harris Burdick'.

Making and lanching our rockets!

This week we have been making, then launching our water and air pressure powered rockets. We have been designing our rockets to minimise drag and weight, which has presented some challenges!

The launching of our rockets was alot of fun. We had to watch our launch carefully to see what our rocket did, and how far it flew.

Too fast for the camera! But you can see the trail of water as the rocket blasts off!

We then used this information to re-design our rocket to make it fly even higher! 

The 4 Forces of flight

 We are winding up our study of the 4 forces of flight. As a fun assessment activity, Room 7 students have been using a 'free' (up to a point!) on-line application called 'Go Animate'.

The children have each made a short animation showing what they have learned about the 4 forces of flight. These animations have been posted on the 'Class of 2011" blog. Please take a moment or two to head over there and leave a comment on an animation or three!

Here is an example of one of Room 7's animations:

GoAnimate.com: Samantha's funny animals. by muritai7

Voices in the Park

We have finished recording our "Voices in the Park" stories and have posted them for you to listen to over on the "Class of 2011" blog.

This story by Anthony Brown tells the simple story of a trip to the park, through the eyes of 4 very different characters- Charles, his mother (who we call "Mrs Charles"), Smudge and her father (Who we call "Mr Smudge").

We have chosen one of these character 'voices' to tell the story of the trip to the park.

We hope you get a chance to listen and leave a comment.

The power of 'Thrust'

We have been investigating the power of thrust. We made balloon rockets that run on a string cable.


We measured how far the balloon rockets would run vs. how much thrust they produced (i.e. how much air was in the balloon). We are learning how to be good scientists by making sure we are testing using 'fair test' principles.

Making a tea bag rocket

This week we have been exploring the 4 forces of flight- lift, drag, thrust and weight. In this demonstration we can see what happens when the force of lift finally overcomes the force of weight!

Our seedlings are now plants!

In Term One we grew spinach, cauliflower and bok choy seedlings in tea bags. We planted them in Room 7's garden and watered them every second day. Now, six weeks later, they have grown so much! They should be ready to harvest in time for Matariki later this term.

Next Weekend's Telethon for Christchurch

PS22 Chorus: Awake My Soul

PS22 Chorus: Awake My Soul: I wish my school choir when I was at Primary School all those years ago was like this! Well done kids- you've done it again!

Making piklets, the "Samuel Show" way!

Here is the link for "How to make Piklets"- the "Samuel Show" way!

Welcome back- Term Two has started!

Welcome Back everyone!

Did you know that this week is "National Primary Science Week"?  In Room 7, term two got underway today with a really exciting science demonstration to get us thinking in a scientific way. 

Then we are celebrating as a whole school on Tuesday with the FIRST ROCKET LAUNCH using our new rocket launcher.

The science focus will continue all term, with an exploration of 'flight' and 'weather'. The Year 3-4 newsletter has all the details!

This week for homwork, instead of Spelling and Basic Facts, there is an ANZAC Day task for each child to complete. Details are in the homework book, as well as on the 'special homework' blog .

As always, a really busy and exciting time in Room 7! 

End of Term One- 11 weeks of learning!

Today (Friday) marks the end of a fantastic 11 weeks of learning in Room 7. While we are all feeling a little weary, we have managed to tie up all the loose ends nicely this week- finishing a recount all about "The best party ever", completing some art, topic and PE portfolio pieces, having a fun "Healthy Sandwich" making lunchtime on Thursday, and completing some amazing self-portraits in pencil and charcoal.  We have been busy!

Room 7- enjoy the 2 week break! See you next term!

Healthy Sandwiches

As promised, here are the photos take at Lunch today, when Room 7 made the healthy sandwiches. They all looked delicious!

Using a ranking ladder as an assessment activity

This afternoon we started an assessment piece for this term's topic, "Happy Healthy Me".  Rather than individually writing a report on what they have learned, children worked in small, co-operative groups to brainstorm ideas about what they can do each day to stay happy, stay healthy and stay fit. They recorded their ideas on post-its. A couple of children chose to illustrated some of their ideas, if they felt they didn't quite have the words to describe their thinking.

Next, the children worked together to discuss the 'importance' of each idea. Each group used a ranking ladder to do this. Rules for using the ranking ladder include:

• each member of the group must be satisfied with the place of each idea on the ladder.
• If disagreement occurs, each person must explain why they wish to rank that idea the way they do
• If disagreement continues, then the idea is placed to the side.

Finally, they numbered their most "important" idea as number one, and then worked down, in terms of importance.

This activity promotes lots of oral discussion and negotiations skills. It also allows for students to support each other with the remembering of key moments of learning.  Rather than 'sinking or swimming' individually, collectively the group can all work together to achieve a successful outcome.

New student work on Class of 2011 blog

Recently Room 7 have written description of people we know really well. We have started to record these descriptions and post them on the Class of 2011 blog (link to the right). This is our first time using Vocaroo, but we hope to get much better as the year goes on!

Using Vocaroo to record a story

Learning about the digestive system

Over the last 2 weeks we have been learning all about our digestive system.

We spent some time exploring the insides of our body using a really good interactive website. We then summarised what we had learned about each part of the digestive system. 

adding a description to each part of the digestive system

Reading what others have written

Checking with a buddy for accuracy

We also had fun replicating the digestive system using a banana, some papertowels and a plastic bag.

Thomas and Dylan being 'teeth' and munching the banana

Milly being the stomach, and mixing stomach acid (we used vinegar) into the banana.

Edie and Charlotte squeezing the banana nutrients through the small intestine

We were also very lucky to have Dr Beena Hegde (Max's Mum) come into class and teach us all about the intestines and how they work. 

Dr Beena Hegde using her son Max as a medical model!

Listening for

Borborygmi!

The class is being the digestive track, and the ball is a piece of food. Where does it go? What happens to the food?

The word of the day is 'Borborygmi', otherwise known as tummy grumbles. Listening through the stethoscope was lots of fun!

Yesterday's trip

We spent a wonderful day yesterday in Wellington at the Capital E Arts Festival. Excitement rose when we were picked up at the school gates in a double decker bus!

The first show we saw was at Downstage Theatre and was called "Grimace" . It was a mix of different nursery rhymes and fairy tails all jumbled up, wit wonderful actors who jumped, climbers and raced all over the stage. The musician for this show was fantastic!

Next we went to Paramount Theatre and watch the fantastic presentation "Passing Wind". Linsey Pollak

is a very talented composer who makes musical instrucments out of every-day objects- like camping stools and carrots! Amazing!

Linsey Pollak playing the carrot

Last show of the day was in the  Capital E auditorium. "Boats" was a humourous, sad tale of lost love at sea. There were some amazing scenes, my favourite was when the actors made a real 'storm in a teacup'!

We had a really great day. Thanks to our Capital E host and the others a Capital E who have worked very hard on this years festival.