My Favourite Things

Today in our Cybersmart lesson we made a movie about our favourite things. We talked about the kind of information we can share online and decided to share our favourite food, our favourite drink and our favourite animal. Some of us worked really quickly and added something else that they liked.

We had to do an image search to find our favourite things. We used the microphone to enter our search terms with which made it really quick.

Here are some of your movies.

Fiske likes really yummy things to eat and drink...

Lily added one more favourite to the end of her movie. I wonder what it was?

And Vincent told us about a super hero he likes. Who is your favourite super hero?

Ruma Waru's Bug Hotel and Bee Garden

We have FINALLY erected our very own bug hotel near our bee garden! Phew! Huge thanks go to Mrs Wagner for putting it all together! Now we need to fill it full of things that our bugs would love to live in.

If each child could please bring 1 pinecone OR an empty toilet roll OR a handful of straw OR part of an empty egg carton OR a small piece of wood (or something close to these) then everyone will be able to contribute to filling our buy hotel. 

Our school has a bug house down by the butterfly garden which we will also be dismantling later this term with Mrs McCormack so anything we don’t use in our hotel will be used down at the house.

We will also be planting out our Room 8’s “Bee Friendly Garden” within the next week or so. As you can see the students have had a great go at weeding, now we will add compost and then plant some seedlings. If you have any flower seedlings that you are willing to donate to our garden that would be greatly appreciated!

Photo Editing

Today in our Cybersmart lesson we were editing photos. 

We took a selfie on our iPad. We duplicated the photo and then edited 2 of the photos by using the editing tools on our iPad. 

We were able to use filters, draw with a pen, add text and some of us found the magnifying glass which was a lot of fun!

Here are Giannina's photos...

 

Creating Stories in Scratch Jnr

This week in our Cybersmart lesson we were learning how to create a story in Scratch Jnr. 

Scratch Jnr is an app on our iPads and you can download the app for free and use it on android tablets as well. You can use Scratch Jnr to program your own interactive stories and games. When we are doing this we are learning to solve problems, design projects, and be creative by using our computational thinking. 

Today we were starting a story with a sprite a moving and bouncing 4 times.

Room 8 Love Poems

 We hall have a Poem book. Today we found a poem we like and recorded ourselves reading it. We had to remember how to open explain everything, get a new project, use the camera, lasso the bit we wanted and then record ourselves.

Here is Seb's poem...

Here is Kanishka's poem...

Ollie's Blog Post

Hi my name is Ollie and I am in Room 8. I like to build things with my friends with the blocks.

Here are some pictures of us having our Fitness in the mornings. I like do the running at Fitness!

You can see the children doing their jump turns. We pretend we are on skateboards and do big turns

                                     You can see Avery in this picture doing his jumping jacks!

 At reading we are trying to make our reading sound like talking and to make sure that what we read makes sense. Here is a short video of me in my reading group!

Kanishka's Blog Post

I am Kanishka and I have taken some pictures of people doing their learning in Room 8.  My favourite thing to do in class is to play with the playdough!

Here is Avery working with the blocks and making a creation!

Eli and Ollie are showing off their hard work! We were learning the 'oi' sound! It is tricky!!

Seb is working hard on his learning too!

Abel is dressing up during our Discovery Learning. I think he looks like a magician!

I liked being the blogger of the week and using the Ipad to take photos of our learning

Time For Dinner - a Puppet Show by Avery

This week in our Cybersmart lesson we carried on making Puppet Shows with our reading books. We are getting really good at using the scalpel tool.

Here is Avery's work from today. 

You can tell who is talking in his puppet show because the pigs move when they are talking. Avery made his voice different too for each pig. Ka pai Avery!

Elijah's Post for the Week

   I am Elijah and I am in Room 8! I am the blogger for the week. My favourite thing to do is art and crafts.

After we have phonics we have to do our table activities. Giannina and Lily are learning about the sounds in words and covering the words that have the letter sound on them.

Crystal is doing her iPad learning. She is in our independent reading rooms that Mrs Rowell has made for us to use.

Fiske is learning to read and count out sets. Can you see what number he has read and set he has made? Did he do it right?

Here is Emily working hard on learning her word of the week. I wonder if she knows it now?

On Thursday we are having the St Mary's Has Talent night and we are having a class full of art for our mums and dads to buy. We made funny germs with faces and googly eyes. Here is  picture of some of us making our art.

Bubble Trouble Puppet Show

We have been reading Bubble Trouble in Room 8.
Today in our Cybersmart lesson we made a Puppet Show in Explain Everything.We had to remember how to take a photo and lasso only the bits we wanted. Today we learned how to use the scalpel tool to do this. We cut the monkey and the corcodile out like a surgeon. 

Here is Juan's Puppet Show. Mrs Torrie made a video with it.
Can you see how carefully he cut out the characters?
Ka pai to mahi Juan!

Abel's Blog for the Weerk

Here is Abel. He is the Blogger

for the week in Room 8

I like to make things with the blocks and play with my friends. I am really good at reading!

When we use our ipads we hug and hold and put them away carefully. Then we hang our headphones on our class headphone tree! I think our headphone tree is pretty cool!

Here are Eliana and Sebby  learning how to write their names using the chalks.

I think Indigo drew a great picture of herself!

Kawa of Care

This week we were reminding ourselves of how to look after our iPads.

We had to work with our friends and ask them to show us how to use the iPads carefully.

We took photos of our friend's doing the right thing.

We could remember how to use the camera in Explain Everything, lasso our photo and some of us added a background. 

Wow! What a lot of things we can remember now.

Here is some of our work...

Fiske's work

Seb's work

Elijah's work

Giannina - Our Blogger of the Week

Giannina is a student in Room 8. She is our first blogger of the week.

I am learning a new song in Kapa Haka.

Here is Avery. He is learning about phonics.  Phonics is when we learn about the sounds letters make.

Orlando and Indigo are at their table and they are learning the word of the week which is going.

I liked being the blogger for the class because I was the Special Helper and the blogger. I got to use the iPad to take pictures of the students learning!

Imaginative Play on a Wet and Windy Day

          Imaginative Play on a Cold and Wet Day

Today had us letting loose with the play items in the room. We had dress-ups and blocks, dinosaurs and playdough...a little something for everyone! Lots of fun and I was super impressed at how well everyone collaborated in getting the room cleaned up at the end of the session!

Numeracy Project with Auckland University Students

Numeracy Project from our Auckland University Students

We were fortunate to have a group of five students from Auckland University design a compact numeracy website for one group of our Room 8 learners. 

We really enjoyed listening to the instructions which enabled the students to work at their own pace and to 'rewind' the learning if they needed to hear it again!

Below you can see Ollie and Giannina working out their answers and the group working on their iPads and the big screen.

Animations in Explain Everything

Today we learned how to make things move on the screen and talk and record so it makes a video.

We had to learn how to record our voice.

It was tricky talking and moving the object on the screen 

at the same time.

Here is Lily's work...

Learning about the Letter 'P'

Today we were learning how to download 
Explain Everything to our iPads.

We did the letter 'P' today.

We used our stylus and held it like a pencil.

Investigating our New Virtual Reading Rooms

This afternoon we took some time and investigated the new independent reading tasks in our virtual classroom! We used the iPads and found our class site on the home page then navigated to the reading page then into the sight words, read aloud stories, sing-along sight word activities and listening stories. We used our headphones as WOW without them our class was pretty noisy!

We think we will be able to do some of these activities by ourselves as independent reading activities! Here are some photos of us learning on our iPads today.

Celebrating the Birthday of our Church - Pentecost!

Pentecost

Last Sunday we celebrated Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down onto the Disciples. It came as flames of fire and hovered over the disciples heads. We made our own flames of fire headbands and talked about how we are blessed to have the Holy Spirit in each one of us!

Abel thought God was magical for the flames not to burn the disciples - then we thought maybe the words "all-powerful" were better!

Here we are with our bands of Holy Spirit fire!

Room 8 Photo

We are Room 8 at St Mary's Catholic Primary School.

We live on the sunny East Coast of the North Island.

We are all New Entrants.

We love learning on our iPads.

First Day Back and Loving It!

Room 8 kids are back in class and having a great time being together after a long time being apart!

 We got out the bricks and blocks, the dinosaurs, the train sets and we reconnected through play!
                                                We also did some reading and word work!

 Fenn and John were creating with the blocks                                      too!

 Giannina and Lily were making wonderful              creations with the lego!

 Ollie and Abel were shopping in the classroom and designing a blocked off corner!



 Eli and Seb were having an amazing dinosaur adventure!

The big blocks were a huge hit with Crystal,   
                           Elijah and Vinnie!





               Fiske found the train set and was having a blast!