Book Character Day

What a super day it was on Friday when we dressed up as our favourite book character. Mrs Winklebottom (Little Red Riding Hood's grandma) was our teacher for the day.

Here we are all dressed up...

The parade was great fun!

Olivia's Grandma come to read us a story. 

And Mrs Steel (a.k.a The Witch in the Plum Tree) came to read us a Hairy Maclary Story.

Can't wait to see what characters turn up next year!

Our Favourite Books - Literacy week

What an exciting start to Literacy week.

Some children got to share their favourite books.
Griffin told us he loves tractors and that is why this is his favourite book.

Cairo thought that the Dinosaurs did some funny things in his favourite book.

Team 8 thought they were great books.
Keep checking the blog to see the rest of our favourite books.

E Papa - Maori Stick Songs (tī rākau)

As part of our cultural learning we have been looking at Maori stick songs.
Here we are trialing E Papa.

 What co-ordination we showed.

The Lions go Contraction Hunting

On Thursday the Lions went on a contraction hunt while they read to the teacher. They found lots! One isn't actually a contraction, but it did have an apostrophe in it!  

Well done guys!

Sensory Handwriting

Here in Team 8 we don't mind getting our hands dirty! 

Here we are learning how to form our letters correctly in shaving foam. 

Here's a challenge Team 8..... Can you show someone in your family how to form a c, a, d, g or 9? Remember that they all start in the same place and go in the same direction. Don't forget to not take you pencil/pen off the paper until you have finished the whole letter!

Anastasia and Jarrett

We are learning to make up words with the same endings...

Today during Reading Anastasia and Jarrett talked about how we can make up lots of words that have the same endings.  

Today we talked about 'at' words.

Here are our selfies that Mrs Grant took (I need some help with taking selfies!!) of the words that Anastasia and Jarrett made up at reading time!

Tom and Jarrett

I spotted Tom and Jarrett during reading on Tuesday making some great choices. 

They were working super hard on the sequencing pictures. 

Here they are with their successful end product. 

Well done boys!

Mrs Grant

Collaborative Writing

Today we ditched our writing books and decided to do our writing in teams. This was a first for many of us, and we did lots of learning around sharing, taking turns, staying focused and being brave.

First we were given a 'sea creature' to brainstorm. We had to write down all the describing words (adjectives) we could think of to describe our creature. Look at us writing all by ourselves!

       

We then shared our thoughts with the rest of the class to see if they could help us add more ideas to our brainstorms.

After that Mrs Turner showed us a little 'game' or 'riddle' called WHO AM I? 

She had written some clues for us and we had to guess what was under the flap. We were pretty clever at guessing hers, so she told us to write our own clues. Can you see us all taking part?

  

We did such an A.M.A.Z.I.N.G job with this writing that we then had some VERY special visitors come and test out our 'riddles'. Look at Mrs Driver AND Mrs Steel trying to solve the riddles that we wrote. Do you think they look impressed?

Annnnnd... Do you know the coolest thing? Later in the day (while Mrs Turner was taking groups for Reading), Ryan and Anoji felt inspired enough to write their very own Who am I description. WAY TO GO GUYS - you were putting your new skills into practice straight away!

Team 8, you are such super stars, and once again I am super proud of you! We will definitely be trying collaborative writing again soon. 

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Here are our Riddles... 

Can you guess what we are?????

Learning our Letter Sounds

Every Friday we have a special helper who comes in and leads our Alphabet song! (We are still learning what letters 'jump' and what letters slide!). 

Thanks for all your help Daimon!

Stop, Drop and Draw...

Today we trialed a new way to increase our reading comprehension called Stop, Drop and Draw.

First we read until Mrs Turner said STOP. Then it was time to DROP (close) our books, and DRAW  about what we remembered so far.

Jarrett and Tom are very good at drawing and could remember everything that happened in the story.

The BEST part was getting to talk about our pictures with a buddy. Mrs Turner was extremely proud of all the oral language that came out of this task. Maddie and William especially showed how brave they were at sharing their ideas and took turns talking about their pictures.

What great comprehension this group had! I think we'll give it another go next week!
Great work Team 8!