Mindfulness

This afternoon we participated in some mindful colouring. We played soft, relaxing music quietly in the background as we coloured in our independent spots. This really helped us to relax and focus after a very busy lunchtime.

We got the idea from Rimu Class at Yaldhurst Model School and we realised that one of our teachers, Mrs Bush is an expert in mindfulness! Next we would like to try Mindful eating, it sounds like fun!

Identity Masks

This week in literacy we have been discussing our identity and how we express our identity to others. We realise that some aspects of our identity are more obvious than others. We also discussed how we show different parts of our identities in different situations to other people. In response we made masks - one side that illustrated how others perceive us and the other that represents the aspects of our identity that are more subtle, or lesser known.

Check out our progress so far! Some are from the front and others the back of our masks.


                 

April Fools!

Today was the first of April, or April Fools Day! Mrs Stone took the opportunity to play some pranks on her literacy class and they came up with their own as a prompt for writing!
First Mrs Stone gave the prank task to her literacy class. She had two word searches - one was real and one was a prank. Most of the class completed the real word search so the students with the prank one would feel especially confused!

At the end Mrs Stone asked the students to put their hands up to indicate how many words they had been able to find, again there were puzzled looks before Mrs Stone announced her mischievous trick. There was an uproar! The class thought it was very funny and a few hatched some plans to pull pranks on Mrs Stone in return (which she welcomed as a writing prompt).

King pranked Mr J by casting this image as Mr J turned the TV on

Now literacy time was over. It was morning tea. Mrs Stone had an idea to prank her maths class as well. She decided to look up questions that had the answer 4 and made a mini test. She had 15 questions down and ready for the 2019 April Fools Day Maths Test. 

As her class waits quietly at the door ready for the invite to enter, Mrs Stone got all the papers ready. She was ready to prank Room 4 Maths. Once Mrs Stone announced that we were doing a test, everybody was 'thrilled'. 

Nasibah and Maria pranked Mrs Stone with a fake paint spill

Firstly she explained to us how may feet were in a yard because she knew that none of us knew the answer. Next she set us in place to do the test and handed out the test sheets at the same time. Mrs Stone also told Chastyti to hand out the pencils. She gave us 10 minutes to complete the test. Mrs Stone had planned this prank really well.

10 minutes later...

The test had ended and everyone was desperate to know the answers. Mrs Stone ran through the answer with the help of Marika and Maanas. The answer to each question was the same: 4! At the ended you should have guessed what Mrs Stone said... April Fools! She also said it bang on 12 o'clock. It was too late for the class to respond - they applauded and laughed - she got us!

By Chastyti

Taste Poetry

This week room 4 literacy have been focussing on using effective vocabulary in our writing. After writing a poem about an object last week, we are writing taste poems about food - being able to experience the subject in this way has helped us heaps with our ideas!

To force us to use precise vocabulary our poems were very short; they only had four lines and each line either contained 3 or 5 words! For example:

Palms are sweating

apprehensive about the impending sourness

warhead in mouth

sourness dissolves and sweetness ensues 

Watch this video to see us recite some of our poems:

                      

Write your own story

We had a wonderful moment of success in Room 4 Literacy this morning as we completed our Get NZ Writing activities and put our post cards together. It had been quite a journey - the highs of writing our poem, the low of thinking we had misplaced some of the postcards and the high of finding them again and making the shared artwork!


These activities have really stretched us to consider the vocabulary we used. We needed to pick words precisely as we only had a few lines for our poetry (see an example below)

Each postcard had a picture on the back and when we put them all together it spelled out a message.

The power of words

Today in Room 4 Literacy we have been discussing the power of our words. We considered that words are the buiding blocks of language; we cannot write a thing without them! We know that we can make our writing more effective when we use our words precisely.

Then we made a word wall of our favourite words - we called them juicy or sticky words, because we like the way they look, sound and the meaning behind them.

After making a class poster that was filled with different sticky words (cheers school kit for this!), we were given objects and we had to think of words that went with them.

What words could you think of that relate to this tiny ship in a bottle?

What words could you think of that relate to this compass?

Kia Kaha

Today we had an assembly to honour those who lost their lives last Friday. We flew our flag at half mast and sang a longer version of the national anthem. We really enjoyed the second English verse of this anthem, as its message was very relevant to the event:

 Men of every creed and race,

Gather here before Thy face,

Asking Thee to bless this place,

God defend our free land.

From dissension, envy, hate,

And corruption guard our state,

Make our country good and great,

God defend New Zealand.

In our home class in the afternoon we discussed what we wanted to as a class. We decided to make a wall full of our hopes, thoughts and prayers out of post it notes. Everyone in the class created at least one and we will continue to add to it (this will improve the shape of our heart).

Our thoughts are with our Islamic community, the people of Christchurch (especially our friends at Yaldhurst Model School) and our country.  Kia Kaha New Zealand.