Kakapo Cultural Kaleidoscope

On Friday all of the Year 5 students visited each teacher in their Year 5 classrooms to take part in our cultural kaleidoscope.  Each teacher shared facts about their culture, or another culture, and then they did an activity together.

In Room 3 the children learnt about Canada and made inukshuks.
In Room 5 the children made Chinese lanterns.
In Room 6 the children learnt the importance of being able to tie knots and plait as they made New Zealand pois.
In Room 16 the children learnt about Holland and made a windmill.
In Room 17 the children learnt about South African bead crafts and made their own.

All of the children as well as all of the teachers had a tremendous day and really enjoyed visiting the other rooms and getting to know each other in our team.

The children in Room 3 were given an ipad and microphone and were given turns at taking video footage, photographs and doing interviews of their day.  It has been put together into a movie to share our day with you.  Watch the embedded video below or click HERE to view.  (Sorry for the sound quality - to quote Parinaz in this video 'It's really good to learn new things and this is one of my new things')

Generations Morning Interivews

 Jack, Tony and Josh did a great job interviewing our guests during our Generations Open Morning. Watch the movie of their interviews.


Watch the embedded movie above or click HERE  (sorry for the sound quality - a work in progress)

Generations Morning

We had a tremendous time at our Generations Morning.  It was great to see the children, parents and grandparents interacting and sharing stories about their home countries, cultures and history.  The children had prepared excellent questions to ask our guests and enjoyed their conversations and the items that were brought along to share.

Thank you to all who came and thank you to everyone who provided delicious food for our shared culture lunch.  Everyone enjoyed trying all of the different foods!

Oral Presentations

We've been sharing our poems this week practising our oral presentation skills. 

Maths - position

We designed houses by drawing and writing a description of the plan. We then traded books with a friend and built a house using their plan. We are master builders and designers!

Getting ready to interview

Getting our questions ready for our guests for Generations Morning. 

A busy week in review

Another week has flown past!  Here are a few highlights from the week.

FITNESS

For fitness this week our focus has been 'games', so we made up one.  The children named it 'Hide and Guide'.  All of the children found a hiding spot in the nature walk behind our class.  Two children were 'it' and they had to close their eyes and be guided by a friend who gave them instructions to find the children who were hiding.  A lot of fun was had by all!

  

ART
Another layer of paper mache and newspaper went onto our letters.  This coming Wednesday will be the final day of paper mache when we add our last layer of plain newsprint.  Thank you so much to the parents who have been able to help us out!  This is the last week that we really need parent help for completing our paper mache.  If you are able to join us between 1.30 and 3 on Wednesday, it would be greatly appreciated!

MATHS
We have learnt a new game on our iPads.  It is called Maths Slide and can be played with 1 to 4 players.  It can be played using multiplication, division, addition, subtraction or place value.  Here are Juliet and Liam playing a game together.

THEME & BLOGGING
We have been busy posting to our blogs this week, as well.  The children have all completed a Google Slide show in which they researched a country and its culture and created their own slideshow.  Some chose to work independently and some chose to work with 1 or 2 friends.  Their slideshows, along with their Learning Intention, Success Criteria and Self-Assessment, have been posted to their blogs. Please be sure to stop by their blog and have a look and leave your own comment.  Here is one of the slideshows made by the students.

Blogs and QR Codes

Next time you come into our class, bring your smart phone with the QR reader app to scan our QR code to be linked to our personal blogs.

Book Breakfast

Today was the Kakapo team book breakfast.  We enjoyed hearing our teachers read their favourite stories; we watched interviews of our favourite authors; we learnt about our book challenge; and we enjoyed croissants and milo for breakfast.  

We each have accepted a book challenge to read either 30 or 40 books by the end of the school year.  We need to try to read a variety of genres.  Check out our individual blogs to see our genre bookshelves.  (Please ask your child for their blog address)

Ready for our reading challenge

We are ready for our book challenge! For each book we read we will record it on a slip of paper to put in our suitcase.  We are also going to record it digitally in our google drive on a Google draw bookshelf for each genre. We are going to compare the two methods to see which we prefer. 

 

Shelter Box

Today Juliet shared with our class all about the Shelter Box project that will be for our school's next mufti day fund raiser.  For $1500 we can sponsor a Shelter Box for a family in a disaster zone such as Nepal.  Everything that a family would need for shelter and cooking is included in the box.

On Thursday the tent was set up by the library. When we went to look at it, a Year One class was also there, so Juliet and Josh told the children all about it.

For more information about Shelter Box, please click this link.  >>HERE<<

Let the Paper Mache Begin!

Today we began to paper mache our letters.  They certainly are big and will take us awhile to finish but we are excited about our project!

Watch us in action HERE

Readers' theatre

On Friday our buddy class came to visit and we performed our readers' theatre plays. The plays were variations of classics: 'Slurping Beauty', 'Goldilocks and the Three Bullfrogs', 'Cheetah and the Sloth' and 'Brementown Rappers'.  Room 3 are natural actors and did fantastic job holding the attention of the Year 1 class. 

Art expo projects

Today we began our art expo projects. We are creating large paper mache letters.  Today we joined the front and back and made them 3D. Thanks to the mums who were able to come and help and a huge thank you to the mum (and dad) who designed and cut all the letters for us!!!  More parent help will be needed over the next few Wednesdays as we continue to create our masterpieces. 

Symmetry

In maths today we carefully followed instructions and used measurement to create a mystery symmetrical pattern.