Saturday, January 1, 2011

Hello and Goodbye!

Welcome to the new year!
All the kids in Room 8 have officially graduated to Year 4 and have moved on to other classes. Some of them will be in Room 12 with Kerry and Sandie, and the rest will be in Room 13 with Andrea. Mrs Hamilton has moved too, to Stonefields School in Mt Wellington.

Thanks to all our readers for your comments and engagement with us all through 2010. We hope you have enjoyed watching us grow and change over the year. Please follow us to our new blogs so that you can keep up with our learning!

Ka kite,
Room 8 2010.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Puriri Celebration Picnic

Here we are at the Puriri Celebration Picnic at Grey Lynn Park. We had lots of fun! Hope you enjoy looking at the pictures, thanks to Maddy for taking such great shots!

Monday, December 6, 2010

EOTC Day!

On Friday, it was the Puriri Team's EOTC Day. EOTC stands for Education Outside The Classroom. We went on an amazing race around Grey Lynn. We were given old photos of buildings in the past and we had to walk to them and complete a challenge in order to get the next photo. Finally we ended up back at school! It was lots of fun. Watch the slideshow to see some photos of one team competing.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Reading Groups A and C perform Three Billy Goats Gruff

Here are Groups A and C to show you their fantastic retelling of the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. We hope you enjoy watching!

Monday, November 22, 2010

Room 4 and 8's Zoo Trip

On Friday Room 8 and Room 4 went to the Auckland Zoo as part of our inquiry into changes in the Grey Lynn area in the last 100 years. We got to see lots of changes, even since some of us had last visited! Check out our photos to see what a great time we had, and see if you can recognise any changes to the zoo since the last time you were there!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Charlotte's Writes: Clare and the Seven Witches

For narrative writing this week, Room 8 kids were given a book cover. They were then told to work with a friend or on their own to write a narrative using the book cover. Here is Charlotte's one. See if you can find her orientation, problem and resolution.

Clare and the Seven Witches
Once there were seven witches. They lived in a small cottage far away in the jungle. The witches were mean witches, but they were nice to each other because they all knew they had to stick together or die in the terrible jungle.
One day, a little girl passed their cottage. Her name was Clare. In the window Clare saw a pizza and she felt really hungry, so she went into the house to take a bite. Clare didn't know that the witches were hiding in the little cottage. They were hiding up on the roof. When they saw her take a bite of the pizza, they jumped down the chimney behind her. They reached out and grabbed her. "Oh no," she said. "It's a trap."
The next day she woke up in a cage. Then she saw one of the wicked witches and the witch said, "ha ha, you have to do our cleaning for the rest of your life." "Oh no," said Clare. "I don't want to be here the rest of my life."
Clare had to wash the dishes, the floor, the walls and everything else in the house. It was hard work. Two days later she was still cleaning without a break. She was so hungry and tired of all the world. She started to think of a plan for running away. She said to herself, "I am going to try to get away tomorrow." So all night she washed, did the dishes and cleaned until it was almost the morning. Then she checked to see if the witches were still asleep. They were!
Her first job was to find the key to their bedroom so that she could lock them in and then to find the front door key. She looked in the wardrobe and found a marvelous gold key. It said "bedroom" on it. She kept it in her hand and very silently she looked in the bookcase to find the other key. At the end of the shelf was a hollow book shaped like a diamond. Inside she found a very clean silver key that said "front door."
Quietly she went to the witches bedroom and locked the door. Then she went to the front door, which was locked. She got the silver key and unlocked the front door. She crept through the door silently, locked it again and then raced away, chucking the key into the bushes on her way. She sprinted all the way home and into her own house. When she got there, she thought, "well I guess I learned my lesson about stealing." After that, she lived safe and happy in her house, never doing the dishes again.

The Ngarara: A narrative

Here is the Ngarara narrative written by James. Check and see if he's used any time connectives, adjectives and similes to make his writing interesting. If he has, leave him a comment saying so!
Once upon a time there lived two girls called Molly and Sophie. They wanted to paint a Ngarara on the wall because they had learned about him at school. First they drew it on a piece of paper for a rough copy. It looked as good as a real painting. Then they started to paint it on a blank space on the wall.
When they were finished, they thought they heard an earthquake! They heard a rattle and a shake and a thunk. Then suddenly they heard a swish that came from the wall.