Our Spring Poems

Finding out about our Adopted Countries

Each student in our class has 'adopted' a country that is participating in the Rugby World Cup.  We are lucky because there are 20 countries participating in the World Cup and there are 20 of us! 

Flags of Every Country is a site where you can hover over your country on the map and  find out more about your country's flag.

Please click on the link to find out a bit more information about your country.  Go to the bottom right hand corner of the page and click on your country, then on 'Toolkit'.

What are the official languages in your country?

What has been the most exciting fact you have found out about your country?

How is your adopted country different to New Zealand?  (Tyler S - how is New Zealand different to some of the other countries taking part in the Rugby World Cup?)

I Wonder - Poetry Voicethread

For Reading and Writing we are focusing on Poetry. We have been inspired by the start of a new seasong - all the joys of Spring! 

Today we found a post from our blogging buddies the Roadrunners, in America. They wrote poems with each line starting with 'I wonder...?'. So we have made our own whole class poem with each student contributing a line to the poem. You can read it below and also listen to it on our Voicethread. 

What do you wonder?

I WONDER

A COLLABORATIVE POEM BY ROOM 1 TOKOMARU SCHOOL

I wonder how and why God made us?

I wonder why we are alive?

I wonder why the grass is green?

I wonder why my great granddad died?

I wonder why tractors have different sized wheels?

I wonder how metal is made?

I wonder where I hid?

I wonder why dogs bite?

I wonder how you make lollies?

I wonder how the flowers grow?

I wonder why we have concrete?

I wonder why my fish died?

I wonder why schools got built?

I wonder why my cat Topaz died?

I wonder how God came alive?

I wonder what it is like in Australia?

I wonder what it would be like to be at war?

I wonder why some of my pets died?

What do you wonder?

ICT Club

ICT Club starts Wednesday during lunchtime at 1pm.  I am looking forward to introducing you to lots of new ICT tools and ideas.

http://tokomaruictclub.blogspot.com/

Keep up with what we are learning about at our ICT Club Blog.  There will be lots of links and ideas for you to check out!

Due to the limited numbers of students I can take at once many students missed out this term, but please try signing up for next term.

Lego Rugby World Cup Clip!

Fractions - Pizza

Pizza Fractions party! Do the quiz at the end of the slideshow...

As an end to our Fractions unit, we made pizza with Room 2 on Friday. We cut the pizza into halves first, then as we had 6 people in each group, we cut the pizza into sixths - an equal share for everyone. Each person got 1/6 of the pizza that their group made. They were delicious!

Check out some of these links that have activities with fractions:

Pizza Fractions

Pizza Party

Rugby World Cup Clips - How the World Cup Balls are Made

Skype with Extreme11

We had a Skype chat with Extreme11 from Hokowhitu School on Friday.

We asked several questions and then we got asked some questions. By listening well, we found that there were some similarities and differences between Extreme11 and Room 1:

Similarities:
- We both have year 3 and 4 students in our class;
- Both classes experienced the recent snowfall;
- Our classes both do Art;

Differences:
- Room 1 has year 2 students in it;
- Extreme11 has a pirate ship to play on!
- Room 1 has a fort to play on!
- Room 1 has a teacher that likes to dance to 'Firework';
- Extreme11 has 26 students and Room 1 has 20

Are there any other similarities and differences you can think of?

Leave a comment if you can think of some...

Our morning in the snow at Tokomaru!

Our morning in the snow at Tokomaru! on PhotoPeach

Snow at School!

We were all a bit shocked to find snow at school this morning.  It was all over the bark areas, our shade area, and our slide!  Some of us made some snowballs out of it, but unfortunately the sun came out and melted it all before morning tea.

Do you know how snow is made?

Where else did snow fall in New Zealand?

School Speech Competition

We have been writing and practicing our speech for a number of weeks and after all of this we shared our speeches in our class competition yesterday.  There were so many excellent speeches and some students really challenged themselves to get up and share their speech with confidence.

Six students were selected to go into the school competition on Monday.  A big congratulations to: Annabelle, Charlotte, Corey, Lukaz, Meghana, and Ryan.

Our parents and community are welcome to come and support these students on Monday at 11am in the school library.  Best of luck to you all!

Extreme Eleven - comments

A few of us left a comment for our blogging buddies in Extreme 11 at Hokowhitu School as part of our writing. We have got a couple of replies with questions we can reply to:

Hi, Extreme 11. Cool conversations. It is fun seeing you making conversations with animals. The bird looked like a hawk! I liked the bird and hawk one. It was a crack – up! Cool blog. I like it. Our class has 20 people. How many people do you have in your class? We have 3 classes in our school. How many do you have? I live in Tokomaru. We have lots of farms. I am 7. How old are you guys? I love going to India! It is really fun for me. You get to watch TV in the aeroplane!

Can’t wait for a reply!
Yours sincerely,
Meghana

Hi Meghana
Hi I’m Ethan in room 11 at Hokowhitu schoolWe have twenty four people in our class.We have 14 classes at our school but one is a music and japanese class.Our class has year 3′s and 4′s so our class has 7 year olds and 8 year olds but only a few are 9 and I am 8 years old.Meghana do you know how many people live in Tokomaru .

hi my name is Lukaz I am from Tokomaru School. i like your movie it’s COOL!!!!!!!!

Hi Lukaz
Hi I’m Ethan thanks so much for all your comments we liked them so much !!!!!

Nice dress up’s Extreme 11. My favourite thing to dress up in is my witch costume. It is black all over it is cool. What is your favourite thing to dress up in? Good bye for now .

Hi i am Domonic From Tokomaru school. Do you do art? We do art.

Hi Domonic
Hi I’m Ethan we do art because once we did one about a myth .Are you in the same class as Meghana?

We now need to think of some questions to ask them for our Skype session coming up next week. 

Leave a question that you would like to ask the students of Extreme 11 in the comments section below...

Think about open-ended questions that will give us more information (not just yes/no answers)

Vowel Bat!

Today we did a spelling activity where we had to write our spelling words without the consonants in them. To do this we needed to know the vowels. Check out this cool Vowel Bat video to help you remember your vowels!

A Thank You from 2D at Yugumbir State School, Australia

After reading 'It's Lovely When You Smile' (the book 2D sent us) we created some pictures inspired by the story on ArtPad.  We thought about what makes us smile and then drew that using the online tool.  Then we sent the links to the pictures so they could watch them appear before their eyes!

Here is a link to the thank you on 2D's class blog.

Share the Joy

We watched and listened to Share the Joy' today. The best thing about it is that it is made up of sounds from New Zealand like water at the beach and a tui singing. 

What do you think about the song? 

What sounds can you hear? 

What sounds would you include if you were making up a song like this?