My Teacher's Secret Life

We watched a YouTube clip called 'My Teacher's Secret Life'. Then we used it as motivation to write our own stories about Miss Gentil. Here is the story that Grayce wrote. 


I know almost everything about my teacher, Miss Gentil. She likes to travel, has lots of animals, likes reading on rainy days, has lived on a farm and hates growling kids.

At school we have to do our best work. We play fun maths games and we read cool class books too. At 3.00 pm we go home, but Miss Gentil stays at school for half the night. She goes to the staff room with the teachers. They all eat sweets like lollipops, brownies, cakes, popcorn, chocolate and ice cream. 

After a long, long snack Miss Gentil plays girly computer games. Then Miss Gentil goes to the hall for a game of freeze tag. Miss Gentil always gets tagged! When everyone is tired the teachers march like a marching band up to the library, where Mr T (the principal) reads all the teachers a book for the day. 

All the teachers are happy and relaxed, so they all go home from a long day of work, even Miss Gentil. No one knows what Miss Gentil does when she goes home. Do you know what she does? 


By Grayce


Here is the YouTube clip that we watched.

Room 8's First Tadpoles

This morning when I walked into the classroom I saw the tank by the window and I thought Miss Gentil was getting the tank ready for when the tadpoles arrive. Then I walked closer and saw the tadpoles swimming around. I felt excited and I was very impressed because I didn't think they were going to arrive until next Monday.

I watched them until the bell rang. They look like baby eels and they swim like fish. I put a pinch of fish food into the tank and they went crazy. They swam up and nibbled on the fish flakes. 

We bought the tadpoles for Adventure Learning so my group could learn about how tadpoles turn into frogs. We are also going to learn how to create a good environment for frogs. One afternoon when I was waiting for the bus we ordered them on Trade Me. They cost $1 each so we got ten for $10. One of them already has legs and his name is Lewis. I can't wait for Lewis to turn into a frog. I think that will take 8 more weeks until he is a frog. We are going to make a diary about the tadpoles to keep track of how they grow. 

By Harley

Creative Ways to Practise Spelling

In Room 8 we have been coming up with creative ideas of how to practise our spelling words. Here are some ways that we practise learning our words...

• Window chalk
• Using playdough
• Whiteboards and whiteboard markers
• Rainbow writing (writing in different coloured pens)
• Practising our words in NZ Sign Language
• Making them out of Lego pieces
• Writing the word down, chopping up the individual letters, mixing them up and then trying to put them back in the correct order.
• Coloured chalk on the concrete
• Using paint brushes and water on the concrete
• Writing with a stick in the sandpit
• Using a glow stick to write our words in the air, once it's dark (one for home). 
• Writing in invisible ink. To do this you will need to squeeze lemon juice into a cup. Use a cotton bud to dip into the lemon juice and then write your words on paper. Wait for it to dry. Then to see your secret spelling words you can hold the piece of paper underneath a lamp. Remember to make sure that you hold it at a safe distance. 

Here are some of the ways we practised our spelling at school today. 

                               

                                Window chalk on our class mirror. 

Paint brushes and water.

Writing in the sand.

Using coloured chalk to write on the concrete. 

The Adventures of Ollie

Today Ollie turned 3 months old. A lot of the children in Room 8 have had questions about Ollie, so I promised to share a few photos of his adventures with you. When Ollie isn't at school he gets himself into a bit of trouble. Right now he is sitting on my laptop, which makes it a bit tricky to type because his tail is hanging down across the screen. Once he even pooped on the laptop, but don't tell Mr T that! 

Ollie was my Christmas present. Paul bought him off Trade Me and we picked him up a couple of days before Christmas. The present that he is sitting on underneath the Christmas tree is his cage wrapped up. 

Merry Christmas Ollie!! 

When he was four weeks old he was so small that he could fit in your hand. He also didn't have all of his feathers yet. 

Ollie was just under four weeks old when we got him. He was too young to eat bird seed so we had to feed him formula through a syringe. The Kaytee's formula is a powder that we had to mix with water. To start with Ollie had to be fed three times a day. Then we slowly started to wean him. This meant cutting him down to two feeds a day, then finally only one at night. 

Ollie had his first bath in the budgie bath. He wasn't too sure about this at first, but liked playing with the toy in the bath. 

Here are some of Ollie's favourite things to do when he is not at school. One of the first things he discovered was that he could annoy our cat, Buttons. 

He also likes to get rides around the house on the dog. 

Ollie likes to fly around the house. Sometimes he has a crash landing into the turtle tank and has to dry himself off in the sunshine. 

Ollie comes to school with me every day and then comes home again at night. I live close to the school so take him home so that he can fly around and stretch his wings. Ollie loves spending the day in the classroom with Room 8. He gets very spoilt. Last week Caitlin brought some watermelon in for Ollie. Today Brooke gave Ollie a bell shaped treat for him to nibble on. We love having Ollie in Room 8. 

By Miss Gentil 

Water Fun!!

This year our overarching school theme is community. To celebrate our school community and to get to know the rest of the kids in our house we had a water fun day on Monday. We all dressed up in our house colours for the day. There were lots of awesome activities including: a water slide, sponge activities, team challenges, Star Wars, relays and fill the bucket. One of the highlights of the day was watching our teachers get dunked! Check out the awesome photos of Miss Gentil and Mr Delemare. 

Quadblogging

Next week is our first week of Quadblogging. Quadblogging is when we are grouped together with three other classes. Each week one class is the focus class. When it's our turn to be the focus class, the other three classes leave comments on our blog. The other weeks we comment on their blogs. That way everyone gets a fair turn. 

We're lucky to be the first focus class. The reasons we're participating in Quadblogging is to provide our blog with an authentic audience, enable us to connect with other classes around New Zealand and to learn more about positive digital citizenship. We can't wait to get to know our buddy classes and share our learning with them. You can find the links to their class blogs on the side of our blog. 

Baa Baa Smart Sheep's First Adventure

One of our class mascot's is off on his first adventure. Baa Baa Smart Sheep's next stop will be Auroa School, where he will visit two year 4 classes. We can't wait to see what exciting things he gets up to. You can follow the adventures of Baa Baa Smart Sheep by clicking the link on the side of the blog. 

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day from Room 8!! This afternoon we worked hard to create a present for someone that is special to us. We could either make a heart with a glow stick or a butterfly. We put the glow hearts in the cupboard so we could see them glowing. Some children even gave Miss Gentil Valentines Day presents. Don't forget that Monday is the water fun day to celebrate community. Remember to dress up in your house colours. 

     

Meet Baa Baa Smart Sheep

This week a very exciting parcel arrived in a shiny, gold bag. Inside we found the story 'Baa Baa Smart Sheep', a soft toy sheep and a packet of smarty tablets (pebbles). Miss Gentil explained that this would be our class mascot for the year. We are going to see how many different schools we can send him to this year. We're hoping that he might even get a trip or two overseas. If you would like to host Baa Baa Smart Sheep in your class you can find out more by clicking the link on the side of our blog. Keep checking our blog to see what Baa Baa Smart Sheep gets up to this year. He's all ready for his first adventure and will be off to Hawera next week. 

'Little Baa Baa is bored. When Quirky Turkey arrives on the scene, the opportunity to make some mischief proves too hard to resist. With snappy dialogue and hilarious illustrations, Baa Baa Smart Sheep is a laugh-out-loud story that will leave you thinking sheep aren't as stupid as we might think.’

Saving Fred

One of our favourite team building activities we have played over the past two weeks was Saving Fred. To play Saving Fred you need a gummy ring, a plastic cup and a few paper clips. 

Fred (the worm) can’t swim so he needs a water ring (gummy ring). The problem is that his boat (plastic cup) capsized before Fred could get into his water ring. The water ring is now stuck underneath the boat (cup). Your challenge is to work together with your team to save Fred by putting his ring back on him. The catch is that you can’t touch Fred, his ring or the boat with your hands. Instead the only thing that can touch any of these three items is a paper clip. 

At the end we discussed why teamwork is 
important, strategies we used and what we would do differently next time. We had an awesome time working together to save Fred.

It Started With a Squiggle

In Room 8 we have been working towards starting our Adventure Learning projects (more information about Adventure Learning will be coming soon). An important aspect of Adventure Learning is the ability to be creative. Today we learnt that creativity takes time. 

We each got given a piece of paper with a squiggle on it. It looked like one of the photos below. 

  

Miss Gentil told us that we would be given some time to turn our squiggle into a picture and that we had to be creative. What she didn't tell us was how much time we would have to do it. We all started drawing and then after only 10 seconds she told us to stop. There were a lot of shocked, frustrated and even some upset faces. Miss Gentil then asked us what we thought about having 10 seconds to come up with a creative picture. Here are some of the comments. 

'I felt confused, because how can we draw a creative picture in only 10 seconds?' ~ Jacob 

'I felt quite upset because I wanted to draw some more and I wasn't finished.' ~ Jemimah 

'I felt mad because I thought we had to stop until the next day.' ~ William


We were then given ten more minutes to work on our pictures, before we had to share them. Once the time was up we talked about just how important time is when you're being creative. Have a look at our slideshow to see the difference between what we created in ten minutes, compared to ten seconds. 

It started with a squiggle - slideshow

This lesson was inspired by the YouTube clip 'Creativity requires TIME'. 

Happy Birthday Hannah!!

Happy birthday Hannah!! Today Hannah turned 8 years old. We sang her happy birthday in class today. Hannah and her family gave each child a special party bag. Each bag had a packet of chips, a lollipop, balloon and a glow stick. Room 8 were very lucky and all said a big thank you to Hannah. We hope that you had a special day and that you enjoy your McDonalds for dinner tonight. 

From Miss Gentil and Room 8 

Meet Ollie

Ollie is our class pet. He is a 10 week old cockatiel who loves to make lots of noise, shred paper and play with his toys. Ollie also enjoys head rubs and snacking on cold cucumber, watermelon and millet spray. 

Roasted Marshmallows

My family and I went to the beach. I went into the freezing, cold ocean and swam out into the deep water. I hopped on my aunty's shoulders. She lifted me up out of the water. As she lifted me up I fell into the water. I made a big splash and water went up my nose. It felt disgusting! 

When my family and I got out of the water we got changed and put our stuff into the car. We camped the night at my aunty's house. My cousin, Dolly got a packet of marshmallows. We were going to roast them, but Dolly ate them all. It was a fun day. 

By Josiah 

The Adventure Begins

Welcome to Room 8! We have had an awesome first week of school together. We have spent the week getting to know each other, establishing classroom routines, setting goals and participating in team building activities. We also watched this YouTube clip on the first day. There is a lot to look forward to this year, including a school camp in Term 4!! We will be using our class blog to share our learning and adventures with you. We love reading your comments so please remember to leave us one. 

By Room 8