When Santa got stuck in the chimney

We watched part of this movie and then we had to write the ending, how we think Santa got unstuck.  Our stories were VERY creative!   Then we published them and created our own works of art.

NZ Money - Money Matters

This week as part of our Money Matters theme we researched, read and took notes on various aspects of New Zealand money.  After we collected our individual notes on our specific money or topic, we collaborated with our group to write a script for a news broadcast to share our findings.  Once we had written our script and practiced it a few times, we filmed our news broadcast and published it to YouTube. On our individual blogs you will find the link to our video and to our collaborative research notes and script. (next week this will be posted on our individual blogs)


NZ Original Coins by Chloe, Emily, Jack and Ben
LINK




History of NZ Money by MacKenzie, Tony, James and Parinaz
LINK



Current NZ Coins by Juliet, Jordan, Chelsea, Amelia and Andy

LINK 

Current NZ Notes by Judy, Jade, Maria and James
LINK




Original NZ Notes by Josh, Brad, Charlotte and Michelle
LINK

Creativity abounds!!

We chose a few lines from our favourite poems and illustrated them. It was difficult to make our letters and words fill the curved lines perfectly. Then we used dye to add a rainbow of colour. 

We have finished painting our clay fish. They are ready to go home. We love how colourful and quirky they all look. 

Rugby World Cup Research

For the past two weeks we focused on the upcoming Rugby World Cup. We each researched and then wrote an information report on one of the countries participating or one of the All Blacks. Our published reports can be found on our individual blogs. Some reports have been printed and are on display in our cloak bay. 

Story Boards and Movie Making

Today we learnt how to write a story for a movie using storyboards.  We looked at a sample of one that someone quickly sketched to begin to plan their movie.  Then we looked at one that more detail had been added to both in pictures and words.  We also talked about how Disney and Pixar use storyboards in their movie making process.

We talked about how we would create our first storyboard that had place for three pictures. We talked about the first box being about the two characters in our movie.  The second box was for the setting that we would create using items from around the room or outside.  The third box was for the problem or conflict in our movie. 

Once we knew the task, we were randomly put into groups to come up with our storyboard.  We also had to assign our roles - who would be the camera person, who would be the sound person, who would be the puppeteers. 

When we were finished making our movies and they had been uploaded and viewed as a class, we took some time to reflect on what made a good movie and what we could have done better.  

These are our reflections about our movies:

• team work - we have to work together as a team
• make sure that the volume on the microphone is correct
• put the actor in the middle of the screen
• careful with camera work because of the case getting in the way
• make it the right length - not too short and not too long
• don’t get your fingers in the way of the camera
• the movie doesn’t have to be perfect
• have a storyboard to plan
• have a good setting
• sometimes there were other people's voices in the movie
• sometimes people were in our movie in the background
• in another movie we would like to choose our own characters, settings and groups

And here are our movies!  Enjoy!

The Jungle Adventure by Tobey, MacKenzie, Jack and James

https://youtu.be/_C_oZOVRysE 

The Great Dino Chase by Tony, James, Daniel and Liam
https://youtu.be/RlNq-ImnE9s


The Missing Giraffe by Amelia, Chloe, Emily, Parinaz and Judy
https://youtu.be/vPI0rgBKz3k


The Transforming Ball by Charlotte, Maria, Jordan and Ben
https://youtu.be/OOWMN6qjd7M


The Angry Elephant by Jade, Brad, Blake and Michelle
https://youtu.be/coZeqjvjUjg


The Lion That Never Gave Up by Juliet, Chelsea, Oscar and Andy
https://youtu.be/BtjemK2YjSo

Speech practice

We have been working diligently on preparing our persuasive writing for our speech competition. Everyone has researched facts to support their arguments. We are just about all at the stage to begin practicing reciting our speeches in preparation to present them. Today Michelle and Josh had a trial run and we discussed the important aspects of our presentations like eye contact, clear voice, expression, etc. We will all be presenting our speeches in class next Friday.

Leadership Week

Lessons in Leadership - Dream Team Visit to the Kakapo Team

Chris Quinn, CEO of Spark

Some of the ideas that Chris shared with us that we need to remember if we want to be a good leader are:

How to negotiate for a win win

- Prepare

- Make them feel good about it

How to explain things really briefly 

- Take the most important part out to explain to others

How to get along well with others 

How to tell great stories 

- inspires people to do it 

Leadership is not about being given the job. What matters is how you behave when you're a leader. 

Leaders don't always win. What you do about the loss is what matters. 

Connect with people. Care. Listen. 

Be clear about what they want people to do. 

Act on feedback. 

We also spent time today writing down our own dreams and goals for our lives.  We used Google Draw to share our dreams.  Please have a look at our personal blogs to read what our dreams are.

New app

Today Mrs Gundesen taught a new ipad app to many children from different classes.  MacKenzie, Emily, Jordan and Liam went from our class to learn the new app and share it with us.  The app is called iReadWrite and it helps us find the correct words for our writing and then it reads our writing back to us.  It's a fantastic app that can really help us with our writing.  The children who went had fun teaching us and posting their stories to their individual blogs.

Booktrack Classroom

Today a year 3 student from Room 2 next door came into our year 5 class to teach us how to use a new programme on the computer. Oliver taught the children how to publish one of their stories into Booktrack Classroom and add music and sound effects. Our stories can now be read and shared with Oliver's class and others in our class.  Thanks Oliver!  You're a fantastic teacher!

Reading & Writing in a Different Way!

This week we practised our memorising and listening skills.  We worked together in partners to copy a story that was posted in different locations around the classroom.  One person was the dictator whose job it was to read and memorise a portion of the story and then tell it to the person who was the transcriber, the one who wrote everything down.  Between the two of them, they had to be as accurate as possible with words, spelling and punctuation.  It was tricky but really fun!  Next time we do this, we will swap places and finish the story.

Te Tahawai Marae

We have finished publishing our writing about our visit to the Te Tahawai Marae. We began our writing prior to our visit, writing about what we anticipated would happen. Following our visit we wrote about our experience. As part of our publishing we drew and coloured a marae. Make sure to pop in and read our stories. 

Team assembly

Congratulations to MacKenzie and Emily for being awarded certificates for their fantastic writing about camp.

Congratulations to all the children who read their amazing 'moments in time' about camp at assembly today.

Nicole and Michelle played the song they learnt from the Chinese musicians on their new instruments. Such talent!!

Our Fabulous First Week!

What a super week we have had starting our learning journey together in this, our penultimate year at Cockle Bay School!  One of the first things we've done this week is learn what 'penultimate' means.  Ask us to see if we can remember and use it in a sentence.

We spent time this week talking about what is important to take along with us on our learning journey this year.  We talked about how everywhere we go on our journey we leave footprints.  We are making our own learning journey pathway display in our classroom.

Here we are working together brainstorming what we know about the Cockle Bay 4Cs


Our Ready Steady Go learning wall is off to a great start filled with our shared ideas.

One of the definite highlights of our week was the welcoming of our class pets - 17 tadpoles!  One has already turned into a frog and we are having fun feeding him with a record of 9 flies given to him in one day!  This is a picture of our first frog and his first fly.  They sat like this for about an hour before the frog zipped out his tongue and ate the fly!  Juliet was the lucky one who saw it happen.

Our class writing wall has our first quick write activity on display.  Make sure to stop by often to read what we've been working on.