Room Four's Rock Pool Research

At Values Assembly on Monday we started focusing on the importance of 'liking our insides' as Campbell in Room 5 put it.  We listened to Dr Seuss's "The Sneetches" and talked about how it feels if someone looks down on you because your clothes or toys aren't as expensive as other people's.    You can have a go at sharing the video clip we enjoyed later in the week. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMolzESn4oI

I'm very pleased to say that the super dooper cool kids in Room 4 'like the insides' of their classmates and didn't really need much of a reminder about this.  Go Room 4!!!

Walk and Wheel Week

Kerrianne and Matthew were lucky enough to have their Walk & Wheel cards drawn out of the bag for a school prize and everybody who 'walked or wheeled' every day is now in the draw for a voucher for sports gear.  Good luck everybody.  

The highlight of our week was definitely the trip to Warrington Beach on Friday and there are some fabulous photos coming up but first ...

Make yourself comfortable and imagine you are at the bottom of a rock pool like we did on Wednesday last week.  We all pretended to be the creature we had been researching and wrote some cool stories from their perspective.

I am a starfish.  I eat little fish.  They are hard to catch.  The fish is yuk.  
by Caitlin

I am a crab and I eat sea-snakes.  Sea snakes taste yummy.
by Steven

I am a sea-star.  I eat fish.
by Matthew

I am a chiton.  I like algae.  It tastes good.
by Kahnye

I am a starfish.   I eat fish.
by Thomas

I am a crab.  I eat fish.
by Tom

I am a sea-star and I like hermit crabs.
by Salesi

I am a starfish.  I eat mussels.  Mussels are easy to eat.
by Koby

I am a starfish.  I eat mussels.  They are soft.  I float in water.  I like mussels and I am spotty.
by Lindsay

I am a sea-star. I eat mussels.  They taste yucky.  They are disgusting to eat.  They are soft and mushy.  They live in a shell.  I never eat the shell.  It's yucky to eat as well.
by Tigue          

On Thursday we carried on our investigation into time.  We looked at how long a minute is and made some one minute sand timers so we can check out what we can do in a minute.  

What do you think you might be able to do in a minute? 

 

And now HEAPS of photos of our fabulous Rock Pool Research on location at Warrington.  

We started with some sand art before morning tea.

Tom is engrossed in his art

Salesi and his fish

What a gorgeous day!

Steven created an awesome crab (with 10 legs of course!)

Lindsay and a couple of jellyfish

One of many of Dakota's creations.

Finally ... the Rock Pools!!!

Luke and Steven found a sea-star under a rock.  This one is a cushion star. 

Matthew, Isaiah, Charlotte and Koby were very keen rock pool researchers with Charlotte's dad, Andrew.

Charlotte was very observant and noticed what she thought looked like a bird's tail.  Mrs B thought it was seaweed but then she had another think and wiggled the rock just a little.  A fish that was the same length as Charlotte's arm from her elbow to her wrist darted under this big rock.  Can you see it's nose?

Koby found a cats eye snail.

We found a few tiny crabs. 

Baylee found a sea tulip. 

Dakota found a chiton

Kahnye found this rock with two chitons.  We compared them to our rocky shore guide and discovered that the bigger one at the bottom is a snakeskin chiton and the smaller one is a green chiton.

Sora found this cluster of shells and slimy blobs.  The shells are limpets and the dark red blobs are red beadlet anemones. 

Here's a link to show what a red beadlet anemone looks like when it is eating.  Cool eh!!

http://www.otago.ac.nz/marinestudies/database/newdatabase/694/index.html

As for Room 4's Star of the Week - well, we didn't have Star Circle on Friday because we were away for the whole day.  But we will all find out first thing on Monday morning.  It's someone who has been making great progress with the Key Competency of Managing Self ....

Tom

You're getting fabulous at Showing 5 skills for great listening.  Go Tom!!!

Swimming starts this week.  We'll all be really tired but we're sure there will be fantastic photos so don't forget to come and see.

An obstacle course, a zebra and the school cross-country race

Another busy week in Room 4

It was Walk & Wheel week during week 5.  Lots and lots of Bradford students walked or scooted to school last week.  Many of them managed to do this EVERY day so they will be in the draw for some cool prizes.  On Wednesday some seniors helped Mrs B set up an obstacle course for scooter riders. 

Here are some of Room 4 scooting around the court.

Annashay who returned to Bradford just last Tuesday.  Great timing Annahsay - just in time for the obstacle course!

Friday was incredible busy.  There was a zebra at the gate to meet us in the morning.  Strider came to give all the active walkers and wheelers an extra big hello.  He had a really soft face and enormously big, white teeth.

Salesi and his brother saying "Good Morning" to Strider

Dylan gave Strider a big hug.

Thomas & Kerrianne stopped for a photo with Strider and some girls from Room 3 and Room 6.

Friday afternoon was all about the cross-country race.  Room 4 had representatives in 2 categories because most of us ran the Year 1 & 2 race.  But some of us ran the, even longer, Year 3 & 4 race.  An especially well done to those Year 3s. 

I'm really proud of all of you in Room 4.  You all ran so much faster than when we first started to practise the course.  Room 4 rocks!!!   Mrs B

Our Year 3 boy coming second in the Year 3 & 4 race.  Well done Luke!

Caitlin (middle) who came third and Briah (right) who came second in the girls section of the Year 3 & 4 race. 

Tigue (left) ran a great race.

The Year 1 & 2 runners take off.

Isaiah took first place in the boys year 1 & 2 race.

Second place - Salesi.  

Dylan was third with Matthew a close fourth.

Nika was first in the girls year 1 & 2 race.  Baylee was second and Lindsay came a close third.

 

 

 

Some more hard working runners from Room 4.  Tino pai tamariki.

Our new Star of the Week is ...

Someone who has a 'can do' attitude.  She gives everything a go and does it with a smile.

Congratulations Dakota!!!

Rocky Shore Beach Trip this coming Friday 9 March.  

We'll be leaving school sharply at 9am to get to Warrington in time for the low tide so make sure you get to school by 8.45 because the bell will go at 8.50!!!!   

See you there.

Sorting it all out

Our trip to the aquarium was FANTASTIC!  We saw all sorts of amazing creatures with some very strange features.  Room 3 and 4 mixed up and split into 2 groups to check out the touch tanks and to learn about how scientists sort and classify creatures according to their features.

We saw crustaceans (animals with crusty outsides and jointed legs)

Isaiah takes a close look at a crab that is trying to escape!

We saw molluscs.  They have a shell and ONE big sucker foot.

The yellow team classified the cats eye snail as a mollusc pretty quickly.  Here you can see Tigue, Luke & Isaac thinking really hard about this tricky animal.  It was a mollusc but the hard shell was hidden under a soft black coat.  Tricky indeed!

The orange team was looking for echinoderms.  (Pronounced ee-kine-o-derm)  These animals are tube feeders and have spiny skins.

Charlotte, Caleb, Kahnye & Josh are inspecting the underside of a sea star to check out the tiny feeding tubes.

Dakota (& Maka from Room 3) have a close look at the sea star's belly.

The touch tanks were very, very cool.  Here are a lot of very interested, potential marine scientists checking out the array of creatures.

Check out the GIANT sea star!

Come back and have another peek at the blog in a couple of days.  The authors in Room 4 have written some awesome aquarium stories.



Speaking of stars.  Here's the new Star of the Week.

A young lady that is great at Managing Self.  She takes responsibility for her own learning and is a ready and willing encourager of other learners too.

Way to go ..... Briah!!!!

It's TIME for another blog entry

One o'clock it's quiet in the house.
Tell me a rhyme about a mouse.

We've been reading the rhyme Hickory Dickory Dock to practise reading with fluency and rhythm.  We've also been working on reading the time on an analogue clock.

When the big hand is on the 12, we know it's something o'clock.   

When the big hand is on the 6, we know it's half past something.

We also started tuning our brains into Life On the Edge and asked ourselves 

the Question - What interesting things can we see in books about the rocky shore? 

We found a few things we knew just a little bit about and quite a lot of creatures we'd never seen before.   We saw crabs, starfish, sea anemones, interesting shells, seaweed and cockles.  Plus a few totally unexpected creatures like shore skinks, triplefins and even lugworms!  This coming Tuesday we're going to the Marine Studies Centre aquarium at Portobello and hope to see and even touch some of them.  Yipeee!

This week's Star of the Week has been demonstrating the Key Competency of Participating and Contributing.   

Salesi makes a positive difference to the team in Room 4 with his fabulous smile and awesome attitude.

This coming week we'll be flat out.  Monday 20th we have a session on scooter safety with Constable Heather Rei,  Tuesday we go to the aquarium, and Wednesday afternoon we have a PE session with Ginny from Sport Otago.  On Thursday morning Mrs Mitchell-Bain will teach both R3 and R4 while Mrs O'D & Mrs B go to a special workshop all about our new writing and spelling programme called Sounds Alive.  

Then it's Friday again so quickly with our second session of Passion Projects.  We chose from photography, gardening, play production, computers, Japanese, science, woodwork, trolley making, art and treasure box creation.  Hopefully we'll have some photos to show you soon.

Whew - what a week!  See you again soon.

Room 4 

 

Busy, busy Week Two ...

Room 4 has had such an awesome week.  We've been visiting learning some fabulous new maths games, reading a big book about a boy that had to 'Keep Trying' to get the hang of new things, visiting Harold the Giraffe, painting portraits and getting the hang of the course for our school cross country race.

Luke adds to the train to Heart Central in Harold's mobile classroom.

Harold whispering to Richard.

On Friday morning some of us played charades and tried to guess what actions we were showing.  The were all things that we had to Keep Trying to get good at.  Some of them, like learning to tie our shoelaces we are still trying.  We'll Keep Trying until we can do them.

Isaac's action was writing his name.  It was a bit tricky to get the answer just right but he gave us a really helpful clue.

This week's Star of the Week is someone that has been trying a lot of new things. He's getting better and better at taking responsibility for himself and his learning.  A big round of applause for ...

... Koby. 

 Tino pai Koby.  Keep it up my friend!  

Ka kite ano

from the Fantastic Room Four.

Welcome to Room 4's 2012 Blog

Wow - I can't believe Week 1 is really over already!   

We have 23 fabulous students in Room 4 and I am looking forward to working and learning with them.  We will try to use this blog page a lot so please have a regular check to see what we've been learning.

Here is an slightly enlarged version of the photo on the school homepage.  What ARE the children holding?  Click on the photo to enlarge the image a bit more ...

All those little blue lines that look like a slightly crazy spiderweb are made up of one long piece of blue wool.  If we hold the wool firmly but carefully it is easy for everyone to be part of the group.  If we pull on the wool, we might get more for ourselves but we make it hard for others.  In Room 4 we are all connected, just like we are with the wool, because our words and actions affect others.  We are going to try really hard to choose words and actions that help and support others. 

Room 4 - you have already shown me that you can be awesome at this.  Lets keep it up.

The Star of the Week in Room 4 for Week 1 is a lad who is already showing himself to be a bit of a superstar with the Key Competency of RELATING TO OTHERS.  

Caleb is great at choosing words and actions that help others.  Go Caleb!!

We LOVE to read comments from readers.  So please do us a huge favour and leave a comment whenever you can.  

Hope to see you again soon.

Mrs B & all the crew in Room 4

Sorry for the delay

Hi everyone
Sorry for the delay. But Ms Little left us to have her wee baby. Then we got Ms Allison who had a goal for this term to actually blog because she has never done this before! We have had many learning adventures, like a Marae Visit, a puppet week, learning about our safety plus many new art activities. Next time we might even be able to post some photos!