The Sun

The sun glares at me from the sky.
Looking me in the eye. 
Its warm breath touches me,
As it dawdles across the sky. 

By Liam 

School Disco

Colourful costumes shimmering in the spotted light,

Sparkly globe turning slowly,

Circles of white light floating across the walls,

Excited children shrieking,

Little movie characters shouting, jumping, twirling, running, sliding, 

Busy people behind the counter, distributing treats,

Loud music playing,

Mums and Dads chatting,

Another school disco. 

Poetic Writing About a Familiar Place

We are learning to... 

• Identify nouns, verbs and adjectives  in text.  
• Use adjectives and activated nouns to create poetic writing about a familiar place. 

Here are some of our poems:

Big cousins playing in the front yard

Black cats creeping up on birds

Cuddly Nan knitting clothes for my (toy) animals

Funny friends joking

Bright sun shining on me

Native birds flying softly in the air

Red butterflies twitching their wings

Purple presents waiting to be opened

I had fun at my birthday.

By Rocky

I saw an old house

Flowers growing in the garden

Fluffy cats on the roof

Bees on flowers making honey in their home

Beautiful butterflies flying in the sky

Birds singing in the tree

Ballerinas with flowers and white dresses

Spinning around a pool filled with fresh flowers.

By Raukura

Tracks long and dusty

Tree-house torn and smelly

Lake wavy and full of junk

Ducks loud and fast

Boats fast doing jumps

House big, smoking away

At tree-house bay.

By Finlay

Angry dogs barking

Sounds of my cat scratching

Baby brother crying

The wind dancing above in the sky

My cat moaning for food

Birds singing to the trees

I love my house and my back yard.

By Tristan

Painting A Water Scene

We are learning to paint a water scene.

Success Criteria: 
We will know we can do this when we look at our painting we will see:
• a horizon line
• the sky will touch the horizon or the land or the sea.
• there will be water in our painting. 
• We think about the way we use colours and line. We use different shades and colours. The lines will be long and wavey or short and straight. We will layer the colours. 

Antoinette

Finlay

Mackenzie

Max

Raukura

Rivah-Jayne

Rocky

Sam

Tai

Tristan

Flower Arranging on Calf and Lamb Day

One of the activities we enjoy on Lamb and Calf day is arranging flowers. Children also made bird feeders and wove flowers from flax leaves. 

Hit It! Tennis Coaching

We've been having lots of fun learning some skills for playing tennis. Thanks to Henry, our coach, we have learned the names of the different parts of a tennis racquet and how to hold it properly. 

We have fun learning through playing games like; bumper cars, scoop the ball, and flip-flop. Next week we will try our hand at Badminton. 

Life Education

When the Life Education Classroom came to our school we learned about the circulatory system. 

Harold the Giraffe took us on a journey through the body on the "Heart Central" train. We shrank to the size of a piece of fluff and travelled through the arteries and veins. We visited the heart, the lungs, the brain and the muscles. It was very exciting. And of course we all got to give Harold a special hug!

Who's the Best?

A short film by Liam, Scott and Jacob based on the play 
"Who's the Best?" by Trish Puharich in School Journal Level 3  February 2012. 

The planets gather together to decide which one of them is the best. 

Writing to narrate

We are learning to write a good narrative. We learned about five elements which make a story more exciting; plot, character, setting, conflict and theme. 

We wanted to write about an alien visiting Earth. 
First we planned our story using a hamburger planning sheet. 

Here are some of our stories: 

Once an alien visited Earth. His name was Jayton. Jayton’s space ship crashed. He wanted to make friends with people. People thought that he was scary and dangerous. I thought he was nice. He crashed into a power line. He wanted someone to fix his space ship. I helped him fix his space ship. He gave me a ride in his flying saucer. I went home. By then he was gone.

By Tristan.

 I looked out the window. A little alien ship crashed into my house. I need to fix it. The alien had yellow eyes and its body is green.

He said, “I’m going to take over the world.”

He was in the space ship and went to town taking over the world. I shot him dead but I saw six space ships of aliens. “Oh no,” I thought.

They crashed into a tree. “I have just five guns.” Then I shot five of them. There was one more. Then I cut him. He was dead. I saved the world.

By Raukura

One day Wobble the alien crashed his space ship on Earth. I was excited. I went running outside shouting, “Wobble!”

I said, “Are you alright?”

He said, “Yes, but you are going to have to help me fix my space ship.”

It took all day. He grumbled. He said, “I am so hungry.”

I said, “I will get you something to eat.”

He said, “Yes please. I want a banana.”

“Ok.” I went inside and got one. When I came out I was inside. I looked at the walls. They shook. We went around all of the planets. Then we came home. I said goodbye and then went home.

By Quinn

On Friday an alien named Freddy was cruising in his space saucer. Suddenly a meteor hit his saucer and sent him shooting to Earth. He crash landed in a tree when I was walking in the organic gardens. He jumped out at me. I could not believe my eyes. He had razor sharp claws and five blade looking t-t-t-teeth. There we met Max. Max screamed when he saw the alien. Then Max came back with a burger. He calmed down and made friends with the alien. When we got back to the saucer there were evil aliens. They were killing people with cannons and missiles. Max shouted and the aliens stopped. The master came up to Max and said,
“You are not very nice.”

Then Max saw Scott. Scott built a machine and shrunk the aliens. Suddenly they grew bigger and bigger. Then an alien got Mrs Arnott. Mrs Arnott was smacking an alien with a frying pan. Then the aliens ate Mrs Arnott. I said, “Stop it!” Then we all saw Mrs Coleman. She was looking cool. Her hair was red and she had long nails. She got rid of the aliens with magic. Poor Mrs Arnott was still in the alien’s tummy. Then we all went home.

By Finlay

One day some aliens came to Earth and they crashed their space ship. My family, my friends and I helped them fix it. First we said, “Will you destroy our land?” They said, “No,” so we helped them and we played together. It was so fun. Then they said, “We better go.” So they went. We all went back to the space station. We all walked into the space station, we talked all about it. We were wondering if they were going to come back, or if bad ones were coming. I was so, so scared. There were more aliens. They had red eyes as red as blood. They had two fingers and on the end of their fingers they had super long and sharp claws. I was so scared that I screamed. I was going to run into the space station. The aliens all came and they flew away. It was so fast I could hardly see it. It was just white flames. My heart was still pumping so fast. I was so glad that they were gone. I went back to my job and I was hoping that they weren’t going to come back and the nice ones were going to come back. But no aliens came all week. I was so happy that they were gone. It was so quiet I would not stop working on my job. Then someone said, “I think we should have a day off.” So that day we played ball. We had so much fun.

By Kaya

Kapa Haka

We love Kapa Haka. Here we are dressed in our costumes and ready to perform at the Reporoa Cultural Festival. The festival is held every year in Reporoa. All the schools in our local cluster participate. 

Ko Tarawera te Maunga

Ko Rerewhakaaitu te Moana

Ko Ngati Rangitihi te Iwi

Ko Te Arawa te Waka

Ko Rerewhakaaitu taku Kura

No reira

Tena Koutou, Tena Koutou, Tena Koutou katoa. 

Finding My Friend By Antoinette

Building Bridges

The story of the Gingerbread Man has inspired our learning in a number of curriculum areas over the last two weeks at school. 

We have been learning to measure by comparing two objects. 

We made a gingerbread person out of paper, and used our gingerbread person to find objects around the classroom that were bigger, smaller or the same size. We recorded the objects in a table. 

We made bridges for the Gingerbread man so that he could cross the river. Our challenge was to make a bridge out of paper that was strong enough to hold up a toy car. 

Mackenzie and Raukura made this bridge by folding along the edges of the paper. 

Finlay and Max made this bridge by folding the paper into a tube. 

Liam and Scott supported their bridge with triangle-folded columns.

This bridge has rolled up paper tubes to support it. 

This bridge has cylinder-shaped columns to support it. 

Story Maps

We are learning to record the events in a story in the order that they happened. 
We made story maps for the book "Hairy Maclary's Bone" by Lynley Dodd. 

We drew pictures showing everywhere Hairy Maclary went and what happened to the other dogs in the story. 

Here are some of our story maps:

By Raukura

By Scott

By Liam

By Rivah-Jayne

Welcome Back to School

 We have had an excellent start to our school year. Everyone was at school for our first day. It was lovely to see all the students back after a great summer holiday. 
Our learning for this week will focus on getting to know each other better and learning the rules and routines of our classroom. 
We use the "show me five" rules from the "Incredible Years" programme.