ICT with Mr Gover

What a fun way to start our Fantastic Friday!  Today's lesson started with a game of 'Who Am I?'  We randomly handed out our 'Who Am I?' Comics and had to guess whose was who.  There were some exciting comics and we particularly enjoyed looking at them and discussing what made each of them an impacting comic.

Next we discussed our project which will be a 4 page comic on an environmental issue that we are passionate about.  It could be about protecting an endangered NZ species (animal, plant or tree), it could be about saving an environment around NZ or the world.  It could also be about the importance of recycling or the benefits of being sustainable.

Mr Gover is back first thing in Monday morning, so over the weekend we are going to work on our list of possible areas to research.  We each need a list of at least 10.  On Monday morning, one of those ideas will be highlighted and we will begin preparing our comic to tell the our important story.

Senior Assembly 23 / 10

Senior Assembly Certificate Winners Week 2

Congratulations to Liam and Iris for winning the class certificates.

Liam, for making a special effort to publish your 'Crash Landing' novel. You thought carefully about your content to make it an exciting adventure.

Iris, for your commitment and enthusiasm to participate in two cultural dances at the Year 6 Cultural Dance . 

Congratulations also to Adam and Anandi for winning the Class Reading Bingo challenge last term.  They read the most books of all the children in R21 - great effort!

And Congratulations also to Cole and Chloe for receiving certificates for their amazing efforts in the Australian English Competition.  A credit is very impressive you two - well done!



Looks like ice-cream all round for you guys tonight!

Our First e-learning lesson with Mr Gover (Wahoo)

Today was a very exciting day!  For the next 6 weeks, Mr Gover will be coming into our class to teach us some amazing new skills in e-learning.

As part of our Sustainability unit this term, the children will be learning how to make a comic strip using the programme, Comic Life, about a topic they are passionate about that relates to helping our environment.

Today we learnt the basics and our challenge over the next week is to create...

A one page comic about yourself, but the catch is......you can't have your name in it.  Why you ask? Well, this is the fun part - next week after Mrs Whitehead has printed them all out, we will mix them up and hand them out during our next lesson.  Your job will be to see if the comic you're reading tells a good story and work out who the comic was written by.

The comic will tell a story about yourself.  It has to include things you like and don't like, you also have to include speech bubbles to help you tell the story. So how clever can you be?  Can you put in hints to let the reader guess it's you without giving it away too quickly?  There's your challenge Room 21 - go to it!

Nuke's Ukulele Concert

Thanks so much to Mrs Leyland and Mrs Sinclair for organising the extremely talented Nuke's ukulele band to visit MVS.

Katrina, Janalee, Anandi and Tyler were lucky enough to be a part of the children's workshop throughout the day.

Our whole class enjoyed an entertaining show at the end of the day.  Check out these photos below.

Specialist Mandarin Language Lessons

Today, we started our first of 6 specialist Mandarin language lessons with Miss Xie.  Miss Xie taught us Tai Chi last term and we are very excited to have her back in our classroom to teach us how to speak in Mandarin.

We first looked at why it is important to learn the language of Mandarin.  The children came up with some very good reasons including,

Then we looked at what we already know about the country of China.  The children had heard of lots of things about China - including the Great Wall of China, Chinese New Year, and that is it famous for it's beautiful traditional clothing.

We located China on the world map and noticed that it is in the Northern Hemisphere (NZL is in the Southern Hemisphere of course). China is a very large country, but it isn't the largest.  Russia is the largest, and the second largest is Canada.  China is the third largest country in the world.

The children found out that some of the countries that are near China are: India, Mongolia, Japan and Korea.  They really enjoyed looking at the World Map.

Then we looked at a map of China.  Miss Xie showed us how the map of China looks a little like a chicken.  They noticed a red star on the map that signified the capital city of Beijing (it is also the biggest city on China).  It is an old city with a history of over 500 years.  In comparison Shanghai has a history of 100 years.  Did you know that once the British owned Hong Kong?  China is 9.6 million square kilometres.

New Zealand' population is just over 4 million.  Did you know that China's population is in the billions?  1.3 billion people live in China!

Then we discussed the Great Wall of China.  It is over 2000 years old!  It took them 1000 years to build the entire wall. They built the wall to protect themselves and their country from their enemies. The children were intrigued to find out how the soldiers to communicate to the capital that the enemies were coming. The soldiers in the Watch Towers would burn something to create smoke. Each soldier would see smoke from the previous watch tower and start their own fire to send the message onto the next soldier in the Watch Tower.

This was an exciting lesson, filled with very interesting facts, and one which the children were very excited and engaged about their new learning.  We can't wait for our next session next Wednesday!

Welcome to Term 4

Welcome to Term 4 friends and family of Room 21.  I trust you all had a relaxing and fun-filled holiday with your loved ones.

Term 4, like all the rest, is going to be action packed and full of excitement, adventure, and great learning.

Camp is perhaps the most talked about event this week already.  We are SOOOO looking forward to it.  Camps are such a valuable experience for the children - a chance for them to step out of their comfort zones and experience the thrill that adventure brings.

We're looking forward to investigating what Sustainability is for our Inquiry this term and what we can do to care for our home, school, local and global environments.  We have already looked at what it means to be sustainable and have identified how our school is trying to be more sustainable (recycling, worm farm, vegetable garden etc).

In Reading, we will continue to enjoy shared novels.  The Fruit Bursts and Kit Kats are almost finished their novels, Dragon Rider and The Castle of Mirrors.  The Jellybeans are totally intrigued with The Loblolly Boy and the Marshmallows are about to delve into the crazy world of Jesse and Harry from Average Primary School.  They have adventures like no other and this time have invented a Time Machine!

In PE, we will be looking at a range of skills needed for a variety of Summer Sports and we will continue our Year 6 Syndicate Sports competition on Thursday mornings.  Which team will take out Term 4?

In Art, we will complete our cultural masks from last term.  Check out the photos below of us making great progress on them.

Here's to a brilliant last term of 2015 Room 21!

Remember - Life begins at the end of your comfort zone!