How to 'Elaborate!'

Today the Pencils had a go at this website to show them how to add more detail to their writing. You can see the words 'unfold' as the story gets bigger.

Have a go! You can create your own by clicking on create.

Research Write up!

The Pens and Quills writing groups will be using this interactive to help guide your writing about your passion project research. Great design starts with great research!

Writing Masterpieces

I'm writing some comments on everyone's blogs and I thought, Wow! There has been some amazing progress last term with your writing!

Here are some highlights from two great posts... What do you think makes these posts great?

This is by Gabby (her name is no shown at the top).

100 Word challenge - Totara

Here are two of the stories from Totara (when I was relieving in their class) for the 100 word challenge. This is a website that sets a chalenge for the week. This week's task was to write 5 sentences about this picture. Here are the stories from Nick and Bailey.

Nick
One day a lady went pushing her pram and a wheel started wobbling. She started to think it was broken so she went to check it. It rolled down the hill into a pond but a man jumped over like a cheetah and saved the pram. The man said that the water was cold.

Bailey
There was a gardner making his flowers perfect. He was thinking about the roses because he was worried. He was feeling worried because he wanted to win a prize to Hawai. He was gardening as fast as a leopard running. The roses were as red as lava!

Digital Modeling Books

Have you had a chance to look at our digital modeling books? They are another way you can be involved with what we do at school.

The modeling book blogs are linked from our pages at the top of this blog. There is one for maths and one for literacy. Here's an image from our literacy modeling book.

You can have a read of your child's group work by clicking on their tag at the bottom of a post - all of their group posts will come up on the blog (if you ask your child which group they are in they will know.)

Some of our posts are videos, some are photos but most of them are created using an ipad app called 'paper'. I hope they give you a window into what we are up to - you can even comment or ask a question using the link on the right.

I'd love to hear how you find it or even suggestions of how it could be improved or changed!

Animal Habitat Report

This week our writing task is to write a report about the habitat of our chosen living thing. Some of us have picked snakes, wombats and even the extinct 'Bear-dog.'

Here is how we find out how good our report is. It's called a solo matrix and we move our names up the matrix if we have met that level. At the highest level, the extended abstract level, we need to explain how our animal interacts with 'other' living things in it's habitat.

We can also use this criteria to help us form a great report structure. You can help us research our animals at home if we need it. We've learnt how to use key words in the search bar and to use the most important word first.

Speeches!

This week the students all gave a speech on something they're passionate about. They were practising how to use gestures, maintain eye contact and use expression - among lots of other things!  Well done, everyone. It's a scary thing to give a speech in front of your class and I know for that many of you it was your first time. You should be very proud of your efforts.

Everyone had their speech recorded and you can listen to them here on our soundcloud account (some will be uploaded early next week). Next week we will be posting our speech and the assessment sheet we get on our efolios. Each student will reflect on two things they will improve for their next speech in 3 weeks! I'm sure they will all improve!

Here is Amy's speech that she gave about her love for Dalmatian Dogs.