We're Room 24 from TIS - we love to learn and do our best!
Join our class of 29 amazing learners as we share our learning journey and connect globally with other classes around the world!
Just over two weeks ago, we watched a video tutorial by the puppet genius, Jim Henson, about how to make puppets from regular household items. Room 24 were inspired at how he brought the puppets to life - treating them as real characters with their own personalities and mannerisms.
As our main writing focus this term has been narratives, we decided to create puppets for our lead characters.
The requirements for our puppets were that they would be made from readily available items and that they would be a true representation of our main character. They needed to show the visual qualities of our characters and, in some way, demonstrate behaviour that our characters would typically display.
We LOVE writing with our puppets close by as they are a source of inspiration and creativity.
Stop by in the next two weeks to read excerpts from our writing and to see some guest appearances by our characters/puppets.
Can you recall your most favourite character that you've ever created and written about?
Have you made a puppet before? What was he/she made of?
Or, if you were to make one, how would you create him/her?
During
literacy our reading groups sometimes get the opportunity to make origami. Our learning
intention is to follow new, written instructions interdependently.
We asked a
few students from our class, how they felt about this project. They answered,
“our challenge is folding accurate lines and following the instructions.”
To overcome
this challenge we are measuring, and if not successful restarting, and making
accurate folds.
Have you made Origami animals or objects before? What Habits of Mind did you use?
Kia Ora to all you wonderful readers out there. This is our FANTASTIC flash mob that you read about in our post last week. A huge thanks must go to Mr English for the time he took to edit the video for us. We're now convinced he's a die hard Kawekian!
We hope you all enjoy the video as much as we enjoyed performing.
After watching our flash mob, what 'dance and drama' ideas do have for your class, your team or your school?
Do you have any favourite songs that make people want to just get up and dance?
It's a marvelous opportunity for us to become familiar with the many aspects of blogging and, we think most importantly, to connect with other classes around the world.
We are in the second week of the ten week challenge. Week One focused on "About Us" and Week Two asks us to share "About My Place". The amazing thing is that these two weeks are fitting perfectly into our inquiry question for CULTURE & IDENTITY, "what makes us us and what's unique about ourselves as Room 24, students of TIS, from Hawke's Bay, and as Kiwis (New Zealanders)?" ... whew, what a big question!
So far in the Challenge, we've had comments on our blog from Ohio and Maryland as well as new visitors from around the globe. Yesterday, we connected with Room 6, St Mary's School in Mosgiel, NZ, and Mrs Jundef's Tech Class in New Jersey, USA. One of our class goals this year is to be involved in a global project with other classes from around the world, so Room 24 sees this as the first step in achieving our goal.
The Student Blogging Challenge has been on the go since 2008 and runs biannually in March and September, so if you're not involved in the March challenge we really encourage you to enter the one beginning in September.
Have you connected with other classes from within your country or around the world?
What global projects have you been involved in, if any? And what are the benefits of global projects?
Have you any ideas or plans for future global connections?
At our last Kaweka team assembly, Room 5 surprised us all with a flash mob. They performed it to the song, Everything's Gonna Be Alright by the Babysitter Circus. We all thought the flash mob was FANTASTIC so the Kaweka teachers decided it would be a brilliant idea for our students to 'flash mob' the rest of the school.
We used the same song and same choreography and yesterday Room 5 led the way in the flash mob. We had so much fun and it was definitely a success! Who knows what will happen next ...
An enormous thanks to Ms Brooks and Room 5 for the inspiration and talent you showed! Also, thanks to Kate (whose arm is out of action) for taking some TERRIFIC shots.
Have you ever been involved in an outdoor performance? If so, what was it?
What other performances or events do you think our Kaweka learning team could plan in future?
Yesterday our class celebrated . To do this, most of us bought books from home. The books we bought in were "old favourites" - the ones we've read over and over. We also bought our favourite novels and shared either an excerpt or gave an overview of the plot. We talked about how family memories of reading books also makes them special.
We now all have several books that we're wanting to read. Books become even more exciting when we see how much enjoyment others have got from them.
Miss McLeod read the Mudmen chapter from Andy Griffith's book, Just Crazy. It was hilarious with lots of crack-up moments - the reader had to work hard to read on past her laughter at times.
We then got into pairs and started rehearsing poems to read to the class. Our task is to read/recite the poem expressively and with 'drama' in our voices. Stay tuned ... we may post a video or two of this.
What are your favourite books and why do you like them?
Do you have any special 'book' or 'reading' memories?
It’s been a while
since Miss McLeod has published a post on our blog. In fact, two weeks ago today we were arriving
back at school from camp. Room 24 all
agree that camp was awesome, excellent, exhilarating, exciting, thrilling, full
of happy times, grand, challenging, great, cool and fun!
Here are some quotes
from students about their camp experiences:
“My favourite part
was feeding the eels because I’d never seen so many slimy creatures before” - Kennedy.
“I enjoyed caving
because it included two of my favourite things; swimming and climbing” – Mackenzie.
“My favourite part
was caving – I loved walking through the water and the wetas” – Lisa.
“It was scary, going
into the caves. I thought it might
collapse on us and then we’d all be drowned” – Ben.
“I liked the caving
because I’d never been in a cave and it was exciting” – Jono.
“My favourite part
about caving was being in tight places with spiders and wetas” – Simon.
“I liked canoeing
because I liked being out on the water” - Jodie.
“My favourite
activity was canoeing because it was my first time in a canoe AND I liked the
swimming part” - Ryeogeun.
“I liked the caving
because I liked exploring around in the dark” – Connor.
“I took pleasure in
everything because it was fun and it was all a great challenge” – Johanna.
“I liked caving
because it was a new experience and I liked the feeling of having adrenaline
running through me” – Kellie.
“I enjoyed the caving
because it pushed me out of my comfort zone” – Ashleigh.
“The activity I liked
the most was seeing the glow worms because I’d never seen glow worms before” -
Arielle.
Where do you go to camp? What activities will you be taking part in? And, what do you think the highlight of camp will be for you?
