The Pukeko Song

The Kowhai reading group from Room 16 were reading a story from a school journal called "Paul and the Pukeko".  Sometimes we have to write a song, poem or rap about the story we have read.  Zach and Nishil wrote this song about Paul and the Pukeko, Mr Clark picked up his guitar, and we played the song!  Here it is:

Awesome story beginnings!

Here are some story beginnings from some of our writers.  They have done some great work introducing the characters and settings!!!

Amy was a young girl with long yellow hair.  She wears a short sleeve T Shirt and blue stripy pants with pink socks.  She was a happy and nice girl who loves eating juicy apples.

Amy lived in a grey wooden tree house.  It has lots of books and its hot where she lives.  The sky is always blue and she loves climbing the apple trees.
By Elliyah

Addin lives in a huge rainforest.  He likes climbing trees and he swings on the vines to get from one place to another.  He wears an orange and yellow stripy T Shirt with blue jeans and he absolutely loved to pick apples.  When Addin climbs trees he picks apples and cleans them in the sparkling cold river.  He gets tired quickly, and this is Addins life.
By Jake

Joe was a happy boy who had tiny eyes and huge ears.  He loved the juicy apples that grew nearby but he needed to hunt for them because they are very rare.

Joe lived in a huge tree house and he loved to climb the big apple trees that grew all around.  He sometimes fell down but he was still happy.  Joe never likes to go to the city because of his bad hair cut.
By Oliver

Paul was a small boy who loved to wear his stripy shirt and red pants.  He always went out and put on his pale blue shoes to play.  Paul loved eating pancakes for breakfast.

Paul lived in a small wooden house near a big forest.  He loved walking to the warm lake to have a big swim.  When it was autumn huge orange leaves would fall in his face.
By Rachel

ZOO TRIP

Term 3 newsletter

Link here to this weeks newsletter

How to write a great story

Today a famous author came to talk to us about how to write a great story.  Peter Millet has written amazing stories including BOY ZERO and JOHNNY DANGER!

1.  He talked to us about how a story must be INTERESTING.
2.  A story must have one STAR (HUMAN CHARACTER) that we care about and leads us through the story (like Luke Skywalker).  Choose a simple character and make them INTERESTING
3.  A good story draws the reader inside the story (like you are actually there!).
4.  Take something ordinary and make it extraordinary (like going on a boat ride with gran, a hole appears in the boat, and there are sharks around the boat).  Or
5.  Have an extra bonus feature (like a treasure chest on the boat) which is a twist in the story plot.
6.  Have a good nasty problem!  The main character is in trouble!  How would I solve this!
7.  A good story has SURPRISE solutions.

We then has to plan our LUNCH WITH GRANNY story.

Design

This term we are learning about design.  Later in the term we will be building and designing our own animal enclosures, but first we had to learn all about what design actually means.

Design is drawing and planning something before you make it.  So we had a go ourselves!

First we designed our bridges on a small piece of paper.  Then we used our designs to build them using lego and hexagon blocks.

By Caleb, Bella, Nathan, Miho, Eden, Elliyah and Room 16

Building our bridges

A design and bridge

Here is another design and bridge

Here is a design on the paper and the finished bridge

Teach me Tuesday

Last Tuesday Chelsea taught us about Diabetes and Ian taught us about Karate.  Its been fun teaching others and learning from other people in our class.  Below is Room 16 practicing our Karate with Sensei Ian teaching us how to block.