Happy Holidays!

Hello Room 16 Explorers ... this is your captain :-)

Check out something new we will be using when school starts back

Feel free to add your own sticky note about your holiday on the wall wisher!

Enjoy the break everyone :-)

See you on the 19th
Ms Wills

Our malicous moving Mountain

Here in room 16 this week and last, lots of people have made it up our Te Maunga O Panekiretanga(The Mountain Of Excellence). Just in case you didn't know, we have small photos of ourselves and we get to move up or down if we're good or bad. Once we get up for our 4 th time we get a prize:)! Here are some photos of people with them:

Matthew's parachute men and a bouncy ball.

Jerome and his wallet."Oh man, no money!"said jerome as he opened it :(.

Jess M and Victoria.

Zack and his magic sand.

Wow! look at those prizes!

By Diana's friend(heard of her on this blog?), Nikita:)

Newspaper hunt

Yesterday after lunch we got to go in buddies and we did a newspaper hunt. The tricky part was that we had to use the Dunedin times. It was so hard. The winners were Nikita,Emma and Keira. Second place was Molly(me) and Caitlin. Third was Zack, Jacob and Scott.

Here are some pictures:

look at the mess.Papers were everywhere. :)

By Molly

Everything in the past couple of days

Yesterday on Tuesday we got MAIL!!
guess what it was ,it was from the japan class our penpals. :) Most people got a letter but some got lost or they didnt get sent. Everyone has been starting to write explanations. these are on machines. no they are not toothbrushes they are ipods and radios and elevators ect. I am trying to find how a heatpump works but some info isnt very helpful. Sharing the planet has been great everyone is learning a lot. school is just about over yay!!! Mrs edwards millie was sick so mrs edwards couldnt teach us. everyone booed. Today we also had 2 library slots, lucky us. Alot of people have been making chair name tags because we are getting rid of the spear ones. I better do some work now.

see you
by molly your journalist and photographer

The Amazing Science Alive Visit

On Moday the 14th Yr 5/6 were lucky enough to get a visit from SCIENCE ALIVE. They came all the way from christchurch. It was great fun we got to make simple machines to help things. Some cards said this machine has to help mix the largest cookie dough in the world. there was also help pull a truck out of water the easiest machine was a pulley. They also brung down a rather large pulley. Let me tell you it was sooo heavy. We also got to have a look at a gear game, it was awesome, if you put 1 gear in the wrong place the whole chain would stop.

here are some photos:

this is a pulley here is a gear train

the boys are busy working :p

this is the pulley pulling a truck.

by this weeks new journalist and photographer- sani is away in Fiji

by molly

Pin-pin Jr

Yesterday Jacob got another pupa or a cacoon and they bought it to school when it was black. It hatched at night time, but very sadly, fell on the floor, which made the wings crumple up and not dry. Very VERY sadly though, he/she died yesterday. We held a funeral and sung a Kapa Haka song. It was very sad.

Explanation writing

And a word from the teacher.... It's great to read the blog posts you guys have been writing. Keep it up! Feel free to update the blog from home if you can remember the log in and password :-)

In class we are learning how to write explanations. When we first started, students got together in two groups to work out what things they needed to focus on during the unit. They chose some WALTs ( things We Are Learning To do) and made up a rubric that they will use to evaluate their explanations. Here is one of the groups talking about the process.





Everyone has been busy this week writing explanations about simple machines. We used books and some cool websites (edheads and brainpop) to learn about simple machines (levers, pulleys, gears, inclined planes, wheels & axles), then we wrote our explanations. Some students tried publishing using xtranormal but forgot to save their work! Oh dear :-( Others have had more success using vocaroo- recording their explanation orally. Have a listen to Caitlin explain pulleys, Diana, Jacob or Tessa explain about levers. Hopefully we can add other links when other students get a chance to record their explanations.

Although they are 'simple' machines, some of them can be quite tricky to explain. So well done everyone for having a go.

Keep up the good work - From Ms Wills