Last Post of 2013

Here is our final post of the year, a description and video made by Avalon. Thank you to everyone who has visited our blog! 9,000 page views is not bad for 3 terms  Don't forget you can still leave comments over the holidays.

Have a MERRY CHRISTMAS! We'll see you right here, with a new class in 2014!

The Weta, By Nox

Here is an illustration and report by Nox, about the NZ weta.

Cheetah Description, By Ebony

Ebony has used iMovie on the iPad to publish her description of a cheetah. She chose all the images and created the movie all by herself.

Ducklings, By Aroha

Here is an illustration and report about a duckling, by Aroha

Swordfish, By Stephen

Stephen has used iMovie on the iPad to publish his description of a swordfish. He chose all the images and created the movie all by himself.

Green Bay Kids Can Cook!

As mentioned in a previous post, Chris Fortune from the Kids Can Cook Kitchen visited our school for two days a few weeks ago. He was awesome, so full of energy and such a good cook! If you click HERE, you will see the highlights of Chris Fortune's visit on the Kids Can Cook website.

 Here are two videos made by the Kids Can Cook Kitchen team.

Here is the recipe that Chris Fortune used to cook his delicious crepes:

Apple and Silver Beet Crepes – the key is to get the kids to make them as well, crepes are easy and fun and you can fill with any filling – even leftovers!

250 g Plain Flour

1  1/2 cups of milk

2 eggs

Apples, Grated

Silverbeet or Spinach, Washed

Mix  milk and eggs, whisk into flour and leave to rest for 20 mins.  If it is too thick thin with a little milk.  Ladle into crepe pans and cook until golden brown, leave to cool.  Mix Apple and thinly sliced silver beet together,  and roll up into a tight cylinder.  Slice and serve cold or heat by placing in the oven with a little cheese over the top.  

Cook Chris Fortune

The Weta, By Gideon

Here is a report that Gideon wrote about the NZ weta.

Andrewsarchus, By Dennon

Have you heard of a creature called the Andrewsarchus? The Andrewsarchus is a carnivorous land mammal who is believed to have been alive during prehistoric times. Dennon has written a description about the Andrewsarchus and has used iMovie to publish his story. 

Events From the Past Week

Events R5-Medium from Savelina Lepou on Vimeo.

Caring For Animals

Our Learning Pathways topic for this term is Caring for Animals. We have been carrying out a lot of activities using the iPads and computers as part of our literacy programme. Here is a slideshow of some of our work.

Festival Practice

Today the talented groups at Green Bay School performed at the Corban Estate Arts Centre as part of the Pacifica Living Arts Festival. On Wednesday we got a sneak peek of the performances. Here are some highlights from their practice concert.

The Kapahaka Group

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The Jump Jam and Cook Island Group

The Jump Jam team are competing in the National Competition on Saturday. Good luck, you guys are awesome!

Little Duck Tales

Sam and Rook have used Little Bird Tales to publish facts from their information reports about ducks.

An Insect's Body

We have been studying a poem about insects.

Every Insect
Every Insect (ant, fly, bee)
Is divided into three:
One head, one chest, one stomach part.

Some have brains.
All have a heart.
Insects have no bones,

No noses.

Bu with feelers they can smell,
Dinner half a mile away.

Can your nose do half as well?

Also you'd be in a fix,
With all those legs to manage:
Six.

By Dorothy Aldis

Today we had to create insects using modelling clay. A lot of us created spiders, worms and snails and most of our insects only had one huge body part. Then we gathered some information about insects, including watching this video.

After that, we all reviewed our clay models to see if we still thought they were correct. We realised that none of them were correct insect models. We also found out that spiders, snails and worms are not insects! A lot of us decided to change our clay models. Here is a picture trail of our different models.

Spooky Narratives

Last week we worked on writing spooky narratives. We focused specifically on writing orientations that created suspense. Here are orientations and illustrations by Nox and Avalon.

As the sun was coming down, I went into a haunted hospital with my friends Jessley and Jayden. Everything was dark, we turned on the light switch. But the light didn't turn on. We heard a noise, it sounded like someone walking up to us. But the noise stopped and the lights came on, then...

By Nox

As the sun was setting, more zombies awoke and more clear white ghosts came out of hiding while we were stuck in an empty classroom. Then the girl said, "Quiet I hear something." It was a moan and they had to stay quiet as a fly. Luckily they survived...

By Avalon

We also had a go at creating spooky narratives on Puppet Pals. This first narrative is by Jayden and Gideon. They spent a lot of time drawing their characters and their weapons. They also got creative with their backgrounds. Great job!

Here is Jessley's story about a haunted car.

Duckling Palace

Green Bay School has a lot of ducks! Over the past few months we have watched a few duck families grow up around the school. They are always hanging around during lunchtime and they even peck us when we don't give them what they want. Today the Penguins reading group read a story called Duckling Palace. As a follow-up activity, they went outside to take some photos and videos of the duck families and used iMovie to make movies.

Melville Dewey

Sharon has a fantastic display up in the library about Melvil Dewey, the man who invented the Dewey Decimal System.


When we went to the library last week, Sharon showed us a great video about the Dewey Decimal System and here it is.

Camp Reflections

This week we have been reflecting on our camp experiences. One of our vocabulary building tasks was to think of any words that came to mind when thinking about camp. We then had to record each word or phrase onto a post it.

After that, we clustered the words and phrases that we thought went together and labeled each cluster. Some of the groups made Tagxedos with their words.

We have also been reflecting on our lowlights and highlights from camp. Jessley and Stephen have used Little Bird Tales on the iPad to record their thoughts.

More Highlights from Motu Moana

Some of the children in Room 5 took the camera with them to their activities. Here is a slideshow of what they experienced.

Motu Moana Day 1

What an exciting and tiring day we have had at Motu Moana Scout Camp. We have been orienteering, water sliding, team building, pioneering and much more! I was very busy doing team building all day, but here are a few photos.

More Futuristic Playgrounds on Minecraft

Future Playgrounds on Minecraft

As part of our Learning Pathways topic: Future Focus, we spent a big chunk of term 3 creating futuristic playgrounds on Minecraft.

We used our designs to create playgrounds on Minecraft, we then had to take screenshots of the most important features in our playgrounds and import them into iMovie. We then used iMovie to make movies about our playgrounds. 

Here are some of the movies.

Our cool minecreaft playground from Savelina Lepou on Vimeo.

Term 3 Picnic

To celebrate our hard work throughout the term, we decided to have a picnic on the last day. We made bacon and egg pie and lolly cake and ate them in the Rongoa Garden. Here is a slideshow.

A Spider's Web

The Ladybugs group read an article about how a spider forms its web. As a follow-up task, they had to present four facts from the story using Prezi. Here are their Prezis.

Disgusting Things

The Penguins reading group read a non-fiction book called, Disgusting. It is a book about animals that do disgusting things. As follow-up activity, the group had to make a movie about four new facts they had learnt from the book. They used iMovie on the iPad.

Here is Jessley and Stephen's video.

Here is Mariam and Avalon's movie.

Rubbish Rap

This week, we have been talking about things that have a negative impact on Earth. As part of our learning, our poem this week was a rubbish rap. We loved the rap so much that we decided to make a basic music video to go with it. Here it is.

Here is the original song.

Our Mathematics Learning

We have been looking at the different ways we can represent a number. We have been using the abacus, ice block sticks, money and whiteboards.

Some of the groups have been learning how to jump the number line. Here is a video of Jessley explaining this strategy using Educreations.

Here is Stephen explaining how to jump the number line using Educreations on the iPad.

Superhero Narratives

We have been writing narratives using a story arc to plan our stories. Our narratives have been based on the superheroes we created over the last few weeks.

We imported our superhero creations into Puppet Pals and published the narratives we wrote.

Technological Objects

As part of our learning pathways study, we have been looking at inventions. This week the children in the Kowhai syndicate had the homework task of bringing a technological object to school. They needed to describe its function and how it worked. 

Here are Jessley and Andrei talking about their objects.

Here are Ebony and Jaiden

A house fit for a Superhero

The children in Room 5 are Minecraft mad! We have been creating superheroes and Jaiden and Andrei have used Minecraft to create houses for their superheroes. They have taken screenshots of the most important features and made videos using iMovie.

Tree Man

Magma Man

Skateboarding

This term, we have been getting skateboarding lessons. Today Stephen and Jessley used iMovie to make a movie about the experience so far. They really enjoyed adding sound effects.

Superhero Descriptions

Flowers in a Vase

Last Friday, we spent the day doing some observational sketching and painting of flowers in a vase. We created some beautiful artwork.

Here is a slideshow of how we created our paintings.

Prezi Colour Poems

A few weeks ago we wrote colour poems. We have used Prezi to publish our poems. Underneath each prezi, is an audioboo of the poem being published.

What's Stopping You?

Here are some more Little Bird Tales explaining why we should wear seat belts. The first tale was made by Jessley and Gideon.

This tale was created by Jayden

Labelling with Skitch

As a follow up reading task, some of the groups in Room 5 used Skitch to label a picture from the book they read, to show what they had learnt. Here are the results. Click on the image to make it larger.

Wearing a Seatbelt

This week we have been writing explanations about why we wear seat belts. We have been publishing our explanations by making little flip books. Today Ebony and Mariam decided to use Little Bird Tales on the iPad to make short videos of the explanations they wrote. 

Mariam modified her explanation topic by writing an argument about why seat belts should be made of softer material.

The Friendly Robot

Jaiden wrote an awesome independent story today about a boy who made a robot. He really thought about how to write a good narrative. He has used PuppetPals to publish his story. He sketched his own characters to put in his show.

5-Frame-Storytelling

On Friday, we used the iPads to do some photography. We explored taking photos from different views. Here are some examples:

Photo taken from a baby's view

Baby's view

Photo taken from a snail's view

Snail's view

Giant's view

Close-up

We then had a go at some 5-Frame storytelling. The task was to create a story in 5 photo frames with no words, just images. Our theme was Being a Good Friend. Here is a video of some of the best 5-Frame stories.

We got a lot of the ideas for our lesson from Rachel Boyd. Check out her ideas on how to use digital photography in the classroom.

Pirate Movies

As part of our poetry unit, Avalon and Ebony both wrote excellent poems about pirates. Today they had a go at making movies on the iPad (using iMovie) using their poems and pictures they had taken from books. Here are their movies.

Here is Ebony's poem:

A boat, a sword, a skull, 
A treasure chest below the sand,
A shark waiting for a prisoner,
A bomb on a fake boat waiting for some crew.
So would you want to be a pirate?

Here is Avalon's poem:

Thieving Pirates

 I spy a pirate in their pirate ship,
their boots, their eye patch, gun and sword.
They're coming to my ship to steal all my treasures and gold.
They got here before I could hide all my gold.
The battle began and went on for days,
but finally, one had a dead skull.
It distracted the other pirates and all were dead.
We stood in victory!

Life Education

Over the past two weeks we have been going into a special classroom called the Life Education Caravan. We have been learning all about being happy and healthy and we met Harold the giraffe!

Today during writing, we jotted down some ideas about what we had learned. Then we chose the most important idea to record on the iPad.

Here is a video showing what we learnt about the human body.

Here is a video showing what we learnt about feelings and being a good friend.

Zombies and Dragons

Here are poems by Jessley and Stephen. They have tried to use expressive voices to read their poems.

Young Poets

We have been writing poems in Room 5. We have been thinking about how to describe an object by considering what it might look, taste, feel, sound and smell like.

Here is a poem by Mariam about a rose. She has used some amazing language.

This is a poem about strawberries written by Jessica.

Poem and Speech Competition

At the end of last term, our syndicate held a poem and speech competition. All of the children in Room 5 are Year 3 so they were able to choose if they wanted to present a speech or recite a poem. Here is a video of the children from Room 5 sharing their speeches and poems.

Quadblogging Aotearoa - Voyager 2

The blog in the spotlight this week is Voyager 2. They are a class made up of Year 3 and 4 students at Putaruru Primary School.

Check out their blog and leave a comment.

Making Finger Puppets

During the last week of school, Aroha's mum came in to Room 5 to share her puppet making skills with us. We had a great time and learnt some new sewing skills. Here is a scrapbook of our experience.

Disco Highlights

Here is a short video of some highlights from the disco on Friday night.

Powerful Learners in Room 7!

As part of our involvement in the Quadblogging Aotearoa community, this week the spotlight will be on the Powerful Learners in Room 7.

They are a Year 3/4 class from Vardon School in Hamilton. They have left us some excellent comments so go and check out their blog and give them some feedback.

Drop! Cover! Hold!

On Friday, Green Bay School had an earthquake drill. We had to think about how we would respond if there was an earthquake while we were at school. Sam has written a story about responding to an earthquake.

Disco Fever

The children at Green Bay School are all full of excitement about the school disco tonight. Jessley and Ethan have written stories with lots of information that they thought you might need to know.

We Are in 7th Place! Keep it up!

Today a national maths contest began on Sumdog. We are entered in the Auckland North category and we are currently coming 7th! 

The contest will be running for one week from the 5th of July until the 11th. There are not only prizes for schools, but individual prizes for students, so make sure you log in during the weekend Room 5!

Giant Soup, By Rory

Today the Dinosaurs reading group read the story Giant Soup by Margaret Mahy. Rory used PuppetPals on the iPad to retell the story.

R5's Trip to the Museum

Room 5 had an awesome day at the Auckland Museum. There were so many exciting things to do. We particularly enjoyed learning about natural disasters in the education room and going into the special volcano room. We learnt all about how to prepare for a natural disaster in Auckland. Wally had a great day, too.

Talking to Room 10 at TPS!

Today we talked to Room 10 at Tamaki Primary School using FaceTime. They wanted to see how their friend Wally the giraffe was doing and we wanted to check out their classroom/school environment. Here is a short clip of the highlights.

The Ladybugs reading group had a go at making Popplets today. They used the new information they learnt from reading the book Wood Storks.

Gideon and Nox

Jaiden and Ethan Lee