Goodbye Room 18 2010

Today was the last day of the school year. All the children will be moving onto their Year 2 classes in 2011. All the best, Room 18 children! You have been amazing! Miss Brookshaw will continue using this blog next year with her new children, so don't forget to check what we have been up to!!!

Merry Christmas Norway!

We have recorded a special message for our friends at Bodo Videregaende Skole in Norway! We hope you have a lovely Christmas!

Fairy Tales in Space

As part of this term's reading programme we have been working in small groups of four children to compose some Space stories. Each group had to pick a traditional tale that we had read last term, and then write a similar story set in Space!!! The children shared their ideas and took it in turns to scribe them in some big books. Then they drew some illustrations to go with their writing. The final step was recording their stories and remembering to use clear voices. We hope you enjoy listening to our work!

Moonerella

This group based their story on "Cinderella." What differences and similarities can you find?

Jack and the Hairy Alien Ogre

Can you guess which famous story this was inspired by? "Jack and the Beanstalk" of course!!!

Spacebow Bird

This story was inspired by the Australian traditional tale "Rainbow Bird."

Space Rabbit

Last term we read a North American traditional tale called "How Rabbit stole the Fire." This group decided to write a story which had a rabbit as the main character, and the poor rabbit had had its jewellery stolen by some aliens....

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

This story is of course based on the well known tale "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," but it is set in Space!

Planting Lettuce

We have been talking about how the sun gives us food by helping plants to grow. Mrs Elmore, the Environmental Education teacher and Mrs Bracewell helped us to plant some lettuce. We are going to use our lettuce to make some yummy sandwiches later on this term. Miss Brookshaw did some filming of our planting! Here is a little video of what we did.

Our Place in Space

Our new topic is "Our Place in Space" and we are finding out about the sun, the moon and Planet Earth. To start the term we brainstormed all our ideas about these things to see what we know already. Miss Brookshaw typed up what we said on the smartboard. She was really amazed by what we came up with! And at the end of the term hopefully we will know lots more! You can see this picture better by clicking on it.

Comparing two stories

Recently we have read two traditional tales from different parts of the world. We read "Rainbow Bird" from Australia and "How Rabbit stole the Fire" from North America. We found that there were lots of differences and similarities between the stories. Here is a compare map we have made about them. You can make it bigger by clicking on it.

Trolls

This term we read the traditional tale "The Three Billy Goats Gruff." We found out that the story comes from Norway originally, and we have started writing letters to some students who live in Norway. We have also been finding out about trolls (which come from Norway of course)!!! We designed our own trolls and wrote some descriptions about them. Our mums and dads can come and have a look at our amazing troll pictures in our classroom after the holidays, but we thought that we would record our descriptions so that we can also share them with our new pen-pals in Norway. We wonder whether our trolls sound similar to the trolls in Norway?!!!

Little Blue Fin

As part of this term's reading programme we have been learning to be storytellers! The Seals reading group have written their own story based on "Little Red Riding Hood," but they decided to change the characters and the setting. What differences can you find? What similarities can you find? They worked really independently with very little help and wrote up their story together on big sheets of paper. Then they drew their illustrations. This took quite a long time! Miss Brookshaw took pictures of the illustrations and then today the Seals recorded themselves! Miss Brookshaw was really impressed by how well they collaborated with each other, and she also loves their great storytelling skills!

Maui and the Sun Art

We have been reading the Maori myth "Maui and the Sun" this term and we made these pictures using crayon, vivid and dye for the suns, and then we painted the sky for the background. We mixed blue, white, black and glittery paint together to create different shades. We then cut "ropes" out of wool, and Miss Brookshaw helped us to stick these on using a hot glue gun. We put these pictures up in the hall for our school art exhibition. You can see us visiting our own display in the picture above!

Artwork For Sale

Next week it is our school art exhibition and each class has produced a special canvas to sell in the auction. Our canvas was based on the story "The Rainbow Fish" by Marcus Pfister and each child designed a fish. The fabulous Mrs Stuart helped us to create our canvas. If you would like to own this work of art, please don't forget to come along to the art exhibition and bid for it!!!

Dressing up as fairytale characters

Last week we had a special dress up day in Year 1. We could come to school dressed up as a fairytale character. This is because we have been learning all about different traditional stories and fairytales. Can you work out who we are dressed as?! In the afternoon we went over to the hall for a fairytale ball. We played some games and did some dancing. The teachers even put on a show for us! They acted out "Cinderella." Miss Cockcroft was Cinderella and Mr Subramoney was the fairy godfather!

The Travelling Bears

We have a team of travelling bears in Room 18. Their names are Barnaby, Basil, Gertrude and Bertie. They love going on trips with the children around Auckland, New Zealand or even overseas. Luckily they all have special bear passports just in case they need to hop on a plane and visit a different country. The children then come back and tell us all about their adventures!

Check out all the places within New Zealand where the bears have been to so far this year!

Each bear has a special scrapbook for their pictures and news!

The bears have enjoyed visiting some exciting places overseas! There are more trips to Australia and Rarotonga planned too - how fabulous! Lucky bears!

Construct a Word

Check out a new game to help you with your spelling!

Battle of the Mountains

We have been learning how to be really good storytellers! We read the Maori legend "Battle of the Mountains" by Peter Gossage, which lots of us really enjoyed. We then retold the story as a class and Miss Brookshaw wrote down what we said. We made some pictures to go with each part and then recorded the story. We hope you enjoy it!

When Room 18 met Harold the giraffe...

Recently we had a visit from Harold the Giraffe and the Life Education van. It was the first time for many of us, and it was such good fun getting to go inside the van. We had two sessions with Harold, and we learned lots of things about keeping ourselves happy and healthy. Here are some photos from our first lesson.

Making Bread

In class we have been reading the story of "The Little Red Hen." We decided to make some bread, just like the Little Red Hen did! Here is a little clip of what we did.

Old MacDonald's Farm

Yesterday we had a visit from Old MacDonald's Farm. We got to see many different animals, including chickens, ducks, sheep, rabbits, guinea pigs, goats, cows, a pony and even a kune kune pig! We got to pat the animals and even feed them too!
Old MacDonald's Farm Visit on PhotoPeach

Stepping Out with Constable Paul

This term we have taken part in the "Stepping Out" programme with Constable Paul. We have been learning how we can keep ourselves safe when crossing roads. We learned a poem to help us remember what to do...

Stop, look and listen
Before you cross the street
Use your eyes, use your ears,
Before you use your feet!

Stepping Out on PhotoPeach

Maths

We have been learning lots of different things in Maths and would like to share some of what we do with you. Each maths group in the class is going to share something different. We made these photo stories over two lessons.

Counting to 20

We are great at counting in 1s. Why don't you say the numbers with us as we count from 1 to 20?

Counting backwards from 20

Counting backwards is always a bit trickier! Have a go at counting from 20 back to 1 with us!

Skip counting forwards in 5s to 100

We have recently been learning how to skip count in 5s. Let's try counting forwards in 5s to 100. Perhaps you can join in with us?

Skip counting backwards from 100 in 5s

Now let's count backwards from 100 in 5s! This is a little bit trickier!

Pairs of Numbers that make 10

We have been learning pairs of numbers that go together to make 10. This is very useful to know!

Pairs of Numbers that make 100

Here we look at the tens numbers that go together to make 100! We noticed that they are very similar to the numbers that go together to make 10. They just have 0 on the ends!

The Farm

Now it is Term 2 and we have started a new topic! We are going to be finding out about some of the changes that might happen on a farm. To help us get started we made a define map about the farm. Miss Brookshaw gave us all some pictures and we had to decide whether they were relevant to a farm or not relevant, and say why! We stuck the pictures that we thought had something to do with a farm in the middle of the map and the other pictures around the outside of the map. We might well change our minds though as we go through the term, so some of these pictures may change places! Click on the picture to see it more clearly!

Comparing Jobs and Responsibilities

After our visits from the police and ambulance officers we made a compare map with Mrs Jones. This shows some of the things that are similar and different about their jobs and responsibilities. You can see our ideas more clearly when you click on the photo!

Responsibility at Home

This is a define map that we made about the responsibilities we have at home. We sat in a circle and thought about all the jobs we do at home to help out our families. We had lots of good ideas. Miss Brookshaw wrote down all our ideas and we illustrated them. After this we talked about them some more. We decided that although most of them were jobs, a couple of them were not! We sorted our illustrated cards and stuck all the jobs in the middle of our define map in the "relevant" box. Then we stuck the things that were not jobs around the outside of the define map in the "not relevant" box. You can read our ideas by clicking on the photo to see it more clearly.

School Visits

This term we have had many visits from interesting people to tell us more about their jobs, including ambulance officers, police (and police dogs!), fire fighters and a Westpac helicopter rescue pilot. We have been able to find out about some of their responsibilities at work. Here are just a few photos from some of the visits:


One of our mums came in to talk to us about her responsibilities as a volunteer ambulance officer. We all got to have a go at putting some bandages on each other, which was good fun!


We also had a visit from another St John ambulance officer. We talked about how to dial 111 in an emergency.


A police officer also came to talk to us. We got to see his police car, and we listened to the siren and saw the flashing lights. We will get to see him again next term when he comes in to do some more work with all of Year 1.

Fire Engine Prints

In Art we made some block prints of the fire engine that came to visit our school. This also linked in with our Maths, as we have been learning about 2D shapes, and we got to use a lot of different shapes to make our prints! Maybe you would like to try some printing too? Here is what we did in case you would like to give it a go yourself!

How did we make our "Mr Gumpy's Motor Car" photo story?

In reading we have been learning how to retell a story in our own words. We started off by reading the story "Mr Gumpy's Motor Car" by John Burningham.

Miss Brookshaw then covered up the text in the book with post it notes so that we could only see the pictures. Over the next week we started off our reading lessons by retelling parts of the story while Miss Brookshaw wrote down what we said.

When we had finished writing the whole story Miss Brookshaw cut it up into 21 pieces, and we all got part of the story to illustrate. We used pencils, vivid pens and crayons to draw our pictures, and then we used dye for the backgrounds.



The final step was reading our pieces and recording ourselves. We discussed why it was important to use loud, clear and exciting voices! After we had finished our recording we watched our photo story on the smartboard. Don't forget to leave us a comment on what you thought of our work!!!

Mr Gumpy's Motor Car

We have made our own version of the story `Mr Gumpy's Motor Car` by John Burningham as part of our reading programme. We hope you enjoy our story.

The Fire Fighters visit Meadowbank School

Last week we had a visit from the fire fighters at Remuera Fire Station. They came to talk to us about their job and responsibilities, and we had a lot of fun! We even got the chance to climb up inside the fire engine to have a closer look. We have made a photo story about their visit, which we hope you enjoy looking at!