Merry Christmas Room 16!

To all my amazing Room 16 students,

I hope you have a fantastic Christmas and New Year with your fiends and whanau.  

2012 has been a very busy year and you have been a wonderful class.  I have enjoyed having you all in my class.

Good luck for Year 5.  Stay safe and enjoy your holidays.

See you next year :)

Arohanui,
Mrs Melville

Shared lunch and Secret Santa

Well the End of Year Assembly is over.  

Three people in our class got Excellence Awards...

Ka Rawe to AM (Sport and Reading), BW (Reading) and ET (Reading and Maths).

HN and MN got book awards from the PTA for being great school citizens.

Now it's time to enjoy the last few days of school, have our shared lunch and give out the Secret Santa presents.  

Yay!!!!

Christmas kupu - Meri Kirīhimete

Here are some Christmas words in te reo Māori for you to use:

Year 4 Swimming Carnival

Tornado warning in Auckland

Warning there has been a tornado in west Auckland.Three people have died and many injured.
It is very rare in NZ, we havn't have one in ages.



WATCH OUT EVERYONE!
IT COULD SPREAD!



Here some stuff About tornadoes.

WHAT IS A TORNADO?

A tornado is defined as a violently rotating column of air extending from a thunderstorm to the ground. The most violent tornadoes are capable of tremendous destruction with wind speeds of 250 mph or more. Damage paths can be in excess of one mile wide and 50 miles long.

Tornado Event	Date	Area	Tornadoes	Casualties	Notes
Frankton (Hamilton) tornado	25 August 1948	Waikato, New Zealand	-	3 fatalities, 80 injuries	F2 damages; 163 buildings and 50 businesses[citation needed].
Halswell tornado	19 January 1983	Halswell, Christchurch, New Zealand	-	0 fatalities, unknown injured	Part of a severe storm to strike Christchurch. Authorities didn't believe reports made by citizens. Few buildings were damaged.[citation needed]
Albany tornado	May 1991	Albany, New Zealand	-	1 fatality, unknown injured	Local church destroyed. One man driving a bulldozer was killed by flying debris.[73]
Waitara tornado [1]	15 August 2004	Taranaki, New Zealand	-	2 fatalities, 2 serious injured	The casualties occurred when a farmhouse was demolished by the tornado. Several power lines were taken out, affecting 6,662 consumers. Media reports included debris ‘spread over an area 400 metres long by 50 metres wide’, although other media outlets described the track length as being greater than 1 km.
New Plymouth tornado	4 July 2007	New Plymouth, New Zealand		0 fatalities	A series of tornadoes ripped through the New Plymouth district of New Zealand, damaging 50 homes and rendering 70–80% of them uninhabitable. One person was injured, and several were trapped inside vehicles by powerlines.[74]
Auckland tornado	3 May 3, 2011	Auckland, New Zealand	-	1 fatality, 14 injuries	A tornado struck the Auckland suburb of Albany, killing one person, and injuring many others.[75][76
New Plymouth tornadoes	19 June 2011	New Plymouth, New Zealand	2 confirmed 1 unconfirmed	0 fatalities	Two tornadoes struck New Plymouth damaging businesses in the Central Business District, St Mary's Church Hall and a hotel.[77]  by BW & AM

SAVE THE KIWI

We have been learning about Kiwi Conservation over the last few weeks.  We went on a LEARNZ field trip and learnt lots of interesting facts about Kiwi.  We wanted to share what we learnt with others so we designed some posters to teach others about how to care for Kiwis.

Here they are...

Poi E girls

R20 and 16 Poi Girls wow the crowd at the Celebration Concert on Friday night!

Fantastic Christmas links...

Try out some of these fun interactive games and activities:

Connect the Christmas Tree lights
http://www.primarygames.com/holidays/christmas/games/xmastreelightup/

Christmas Word Scramble
http://www.storyit.com/wgames/chrstscram.html

Christmas Gift Stacking Game
http://www.akidsheart.com/holidays/christms/giftstack.html

Scratch and Guess Christmas Game
http://www.akidsheart.com/holidays/christms/scratchch.html

9 piece santa tile swapping puzzle
http://www.akidsheart.com/holidays/christms/tileswapchrst.html

6000 PAGEVIEWS YAY!

                THANK YOU !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WOW, we have reached 6000 pageviews.  This is very exciting for R16.  We are very proud of our blog and happy that so many people have visited and viewed all the amazing work we have been doing over the year!!

We will be putting some more work on the blog so keep going on following us!

Wallwisher Kiwi link

Please click on the link below to add questions to ask at our Audioconference for LEARNZ:

http://wallwisher.com/wall/vc2c9zlpt6

Make sure your questions are ones that are open questions and the information is not already in the LEARNZ pages.

Sparky Teaching Map

We are on the Sparky Teaching Mind Map.  Maybe we will get some more visitors commenting on our blog!!  Check it out:

http://www.sparkyteaching.com/resources/mindmap/index.php

3D Shapes

We have been learning about solid shapes, such as cuboid, rectangular prism, triangular prism, and cylinder. We have been learning about the number of sides, edges, and corners of each shape.

Check out our 3D shapes!

Diamante Poems

We have been learning how to write a diamante poem.  

A diamante poem is a poem that follows a pattern.  It has 7 lines.  This first line has one word (a noun), the second line has 2 words (adjectives to describe the noun), the third line has 3 words (verbs to describe what the verb is doing), the 4th line has a phrase and then it works back agin to 1 word.

We decided to write about daffodils because it is Spring time. 

Check out our daffodil poems.  

Some people used keynote, some used kidpix and others published on paper.

What do we know about Seals and Penguins?

Here is a couple of brainstorms we did today about what we know about Penguins and Seals.  We did this using Wallwisher.  It was heaps of fun!

I will be a hummingbird...

• What message do you get out of this video?
• How does it make you feel?
• Would you rather be a hummingbird or one of the animals standing watching?  Why?

Sing

Some words they can’t be spoken only sung          Singles
So hear a thousand voices shouting love

There’s a place, there’s a time  Year 3
In this life when you sing what you are feeling
Find your feet, stand your ground
Don’t you see
Right now the world is listening to what we say

Sing it louder, sing it clearer                  everyone
Knowing everyone will hear you
Make some noise, find your voice tonight
Sing it stronger, sing together
Make this moment last forever
Old and young
Shouting love tonight

To sing we’ve had a lifetime to wait Year 4   Year 3 W A I T
And see a thousand faces celebrate  Year 3 CELEBRATE

You brought hope, you brought light                    Everyone
Conquered fear, though it wasn’t always easy
Stood your ground, kept your faith
Don’t you see
Right now the world is listening to what we say
Sing it louder, sing it clearer
Knowing everyone will hear you
Make some noise, find your voice tonight
Sing it stronger, sing together
Make this moment last forever
Old and young
Shouting love tonight

Some words they can’t be spoken only sung      singles
To hear a thousand voices shouting love    Year 4
And light and hope

Just sing x4 2 classes come in each line
(Come all and sing Remove)
Sing it louder, sing it clearer
Knowing everyone will hear you
Make some noise, find your voice tonight
Sing it stronger, sing together
Make this moment last forever
Old and young
Shouting love tonight

Hear a thousand voices shouting love 

LEARNZ - Penguins and Seals

Next week we are starting a virtual learning inquiry about Penguins and Seals through LEARNZ as part of our reading rotation.  

What you will do

In preparation for this field trip you will learn about

• penguins in general
• New Zealand penguins
• little blue penguins in particular, including their life cycle
• seals in general
• New Zealand seals
• NZ fur seals in particular, including their life cycle
• the threats to penguins and seals and their conservation

During the field trip you will

• get up close to penguin chicks and adults and seal pups and their parents
• use technology like a burrow scope
• take part in daily and seasonal conservation work
• carry out a population count and apply estimation techniques
• catch a one-year-old seal pup
• get close to a fluffy blue penguin chick
• find out the life stories of pups and chicks so far
• assess the health of individual animals by taking measurements and samples, then process and interpret the data
• explore the rocky shore and discover what makes up the local food chains
• discover the reasons why penguins and seals are under attack from local and global threats, what steps are being taken to conserve them and what you can do to help
• relate our marine life to local and global issues like sustainability, climate change, food webs, water, interconnectedness, the land/sea interface and human activity

Where you will go

Charleston, near Westport is home to many little blue penguins/kororā - the smallest penguin in the world. The population and range of the little blue penguin has been declining in areas not protected from predators. Cape Foulwind, a half-hour's drive from Charleston, is at the north-western tip of the South Island where it is home to the New Zealand fur seal/kekeno.

Explore these links and learn as much as you can about penguins and seals so you are ready to contribute your learning in class:

http://www.ehow.com/facts_4926780_seals-kids.html

http://www.facts-about.org.uk/facts-about-seals.htm

http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/penguins/facts.htm

http://www.squidoo.com/penguin-facts-for-kids 

Current Events - Fun on the iPads

Today we looked at the current news events on Kiwi Kids News.  Each group decided on a news item they wanted to study and took notes on an app on the iPads called Popplet.  Popplet is a great mind mapping or brainstorming app that we can use to record our ideas and facts that we discover.  Here are some of our brainstorms.

Our next step is to use this information to create some keynotes on the iPad to share with our classmates.

NZ Conservation Week 2012

This week is NZ Conservation Week 2012.  Check out the website.  There are some fun games and lots of information...Have fun!

http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation-week-home/kids/