Nonsense Poems

We have been writing poems during draft writing here in Rm13 for the last couple of weeks. Today, we had a go at writing nonsense rhymes. Here are a few to share with you.

Almost every day,
I eat pickles in a stack of hay.
Every day right at one,
I eat pickles in the sun.

Almost every morning,
I eat pickles with a warning.
Every day right at six,
I eat pickles with lots of licks.

By Bella.
 
Almost every Monday,
I eat pickles while I play.
Every day right at eight,
I eat pickles with a mate.

By Veeral

Almost every midnight,
I eat pickles with a light.
Every day right at three,
I eat pickles when I agree.

Almost every morn,
I eat pickles with corn.
Every day right at seven,
I eat pickles stacked to heaven.

By Nandani

Almost every day,
I eat pickles with hay.
Every day right at eight,
I eat pickles- they're great.

By Simraj

Almost every night,
I eat pickles while I bike.
Every day right at nine,
I eat pickles because they're mine.

Almost every night,
I eat pickles while I write.
Every day right at three,
I eat pickles up a tree.
By Amber

 Aren't they great? Perhaps you could try writing one, too!

Learning to say a Mihi

The class has been working really hard in to learn to say their mihi. To help remember it, everyone wrote their own mihi down on a strip of paper. And now they are displayed in our class... so anytime anyone wants to practice their mihi they can take it down from the wall and say it. Ka pai, Room 13! Whaea Kara will be so impressed next time she comes to our class!

Reading new words

In  Room 13 we have been looking at all the different things good readers do when they get stuck on a word. This poster shows how you can use strategies to help you figure out how to decode a new word.

How long is a minute?

On Tuesday, we started an investigation into how long a minute is.
We began with all of us standing up and sitting down when we thought one minute was up. Some children sat down way too soon and some stayed standing for over two minutes! But at exactly one minute, Gurnoor, Joanna and Inderveer all sat down. Good estimating from these three!
I asked how they knew when to sit down and Gurnoor and Joanna said it was because they counted to 60. Well done guys... but let’s test that. So, Gurnoor turned away from the class and the clock and counted to 60 but this time she finished her counting at just 35 seconds. So we tried counting bananas. One banana, two banana, three banana, four bananas and so on.... But we couldn’t get that quite right either. It will take a bit of practice to get that right and you will have to be good at counting, too!
Next, we tried to guess how many  beads we thought we could thread onto a string in a minute.
“59” said Veeral.
“15” said Jason.
“30” said Caleb.
So let’s get threading! Anusha, Hafsah, Andy, Sahibdeep and Jason all threaded as many beads onto a string as they could in one minute. Everybody threaded between 17 and 26. Caleb explained it was because it would take longer than a second to thread one bead. Gurnoor worked out that it would take around two minutes to thread 60 beads.
Okay then, so how many hops do you think you could do in a minute?
“60” said Anikesh.
“25” said Nandani.
“30” said Aayush.
“50’ said  Bhavik.
Alright, let’s find out. We chose Simraj to hop as we know he is very fit. We set the timer to one minute and Simraj started hopping.  At first, we all counted together but Simraj was so fast that I had to take over. In one minute Simraj hopped 153 times! At the end, he was very tired. And so this how we discovered that some things can happen in much less than a second. (Our athlete Simraj nearly did three hops in a second!)
It was really interesting finding out how even though a minute is always the same amount of time you can do more of some things and less of others!

Supporting your child with meeting the National Standards in reading, writing and maths.

 

Click here  to go to the Ministry of Education website where you can get ideas or download this booklet.

Honesty

This term our value is HONESTY. Honesty is so important- if you aren't honest then people can't trust you. You should always be honest in everything you do as telling the truth is always the best policy. We also are making sure to mean what we say and not tell lies or mis-truths (eg "I'm going to tell on you" when you don't mean to. We also are learning not to "fess up" when we do something wrong as people would always prefer to hear the truth than not know who is responsible. We feel proud of ourselves when people think we are trustworthy.

Term 2

Term 2 2013 is well under way and we have been very busy in Room 13. We have been learning about our schoolwide topic of Waste Not, Want Not and have learnt a lot about ways to care for our planet by remembering the Three R's (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) We were very interested to find out what happens to paper when it gets recycled and how we can help to save the trees by recycling paper that we have used. We have even tried reusing old newspapers to make baskets (photos to follow) Later in the term we are going to be finding out about Fiji. Every class in the school has chosen a Pacific Island to study so you will see lots of interesting displays all around the school about the different Pacific nations. We would love it if any of our parents are able to share some of their knowledge with us or bring in any items to show us from Fiji. It's going to be a busy term!