Narrative Writing: The Great Big Enormous Turnip

Here are Nathan and Arlo to share their orientation and the complication of their story with you. They were given a book cover and told to make up the story that went with it. Leave them a comment if you'd like to hear the end of this exciting narrative!

The Great Big Enormous Turnip

One Saturday evening a man had just remembered that the King was coming to his cottage to have turnip stew for dinner the next day because he had won a stew contest and the King wanted to try it. He had all the ingredients for it, EXCEPT for fresh turnips, so he walked to the seed store to get turnip seeds. On the packet he took it said, "Magic seeds in this packet." "Yeah right," the man said to himself. When he got home he planted his seeds, then went straight to bed.
When he woke up in the morning, there was a great, big, enormous turnip blocking the window. He went outside and mumbled, "Wow!" then said "this could serve a million people. I could invite the Queen, the Prince, the Princess and thousands more!" He ran up to the turnip to pull it out but the problem was, it wouldn't come out! He twisted and turned and tugged all about but it just would not come out...

Spring Tapestries

Here are some of our finished spring tapestries. Once the border had been sewn, we went stick hunting and found a stick to thread through the material at the top of our tapestry. Then we plaited wool, using colours that would compliment our work, and tied it to the stick to give us something to hang our tapestries with. Next we took them outside and placed them in natural surroundings. We took photos of our tapestries in three different locations and then chose the best photo. Watch the clip to see the results!

Term 4: Looking Forward

Here are some more Room 8 members to share with you what they are looking forward to.

What I learned in Term 3

We have been reflecting on Term 3 this week, especially on our learning. We made a list of ALL the things we have learned this term, and then we went away and wrote about the one that we felt was the most important to us. Here are some of the answers - the rest will be up as soon as they are recorded!

How To Fight Pirates

Elijah, Nathan and Ernie have written a very imaginative explanation about pirates. See if they have an identifying statement, explanation sequence and a summary statement!

How Can You Fight Pirates?

You can fight pirates with a sword.

To fight off pirates, you will need a ship to sail in. Then you will need to sail your ship out to sea. Make sure you have enough food and water to eat and drink on the way.

To find the pirates you will need to use a magic compass. The compass will point the way to their ship. Then you can find their ship and attack.

When you attack the pirates, use swords to fight the pirates because they will have swords too. You will need to be a good swordsman to beat them.

To fight pirates you will need a ship, a magic compass and a sword.

By Elijah, Nathan and Ernie.

Measurement: Taller and Shorter

For maths, we have been drawing Kid Pix pictures showing at least two things, one tall and one short. We could choose to draw anything we wanted. Some people chose to draw shapes, others drew flags, and Toby even drew dinosaurs! Watch the movie to see our amazing pictures, and don't forget to leave us a comment if you think we got it right!

Writing to explain: Who was Michael Jackson?

Who was Michael Jackson?

Michael Jackson was a very famous singer.

Michael Joseph Jackson was the King of Pop, a dad, a recording artist, a father, a man, a great singer and a fantastic dancer and also the best moon walker so he was very famous.

Michael Jackson was a singer and a dancer. He also gave money away. He was a part of the Jackson Five. He wrote lots of songs and he had a monkey called Bubbles. He owned a theme park because he had so much money. He made music videos.

When he died on June 25th 2009 a billion people watched his funeral on T.V. He died because something was happening with his heart. He took drugs and he had a heart attack. He died at home when he was sleeping. His home was called Neverland.

Michael Jackson was a very famous singer because of all the music he wrote. He died in 2009 but is still famous now.

By Syris, Benjamin and Nathan.

Can you see the text connectives (that means words like "so" and "because") that this group has used? If you can, they have been successful in their learning! Leave them a comment and tell them so!

Measurement - Tallest to Shortest

In Room 8, we are learning to order things from tallest to shortest at the moment. This week our topic activity for maths was to use a camera to take a photo of our maths group standing in order of tallest to shortest. To do this, we made signs that said "tallest" and "shortest" and gave them to the tallest person and the shortest person to hold. So Mrs Hamilton would know who ordered the group and took the photo, we got the middle person to hold a sign saying who the photo was by.

Have a look at our photos and see if we got it right!

More goals for Term 3

But wait, there's more! Here are the next learning steps that Arlo, Ernie, Syris, Nina, Nathan and Isobel have decided on for either Reading or Writing. We are working on our Maths goals right now!

Team James' Popcorn Procedure

When James, Syris, Juanita and Nathan were brainstorming ideas for their procedure, they decided to take photos of the materials needed to make popcorn, as well as photos of themselves following the steps of the procedure. Then we put the photos into imovie and used the Ken Burns effect to make the camera zoom to the part of the photo that we thought was most important. Then we did a search to find songs about popcorn and found a really funny song called "Hamster on a piano eating popcorn." We put it all together and that made our cool movie.

Group A Reads "At The End Of The Day"

"At the End of the Day" is a story all about a class who sometimes have a massage circle just before school finishes because it's fun and it makes them happy. 

This week, Group A are learning to retell stories in different ways.  Because we are doing procedural writing at the moment in Room 8, Group A's goal was to make a list of instructions from the story, "At the End of the Day."  Nina and Nathan wrote their procedure on a whiteboard and then they instructed the rest of Room 8 to see if we could be great listeners and recreate the story.

Watch the movie to see part of what happened!