Collaborative Writing - Day 2

Today was our 2nd day of collaborative narrative writing with Year 3 students in Room 10 from Grey Lynn School in Auckland.

3 more groups were online using Google Docs to write a story together at the same time. Take a look at the completed narrative stories:

The Dog that couldn't bark

Names of story authors:
Nelson Central: Aria & Aulay
Grey Lynn: Amy and Anton

Once there was a big dog called Spot. He couldn't bark because he had a bad disease in his throat. He lived with his owners called Jack and Jazmine.

One day, when Jack and Jazmine were out shopping, Spot saw some strangers snooping around the house. Spot watched as they smashed the toilet window and went inside. Spot knew that they were being robbed! "What shall I do?" He thought. "I can't even bark to get help! I'll have to deal with this all by myself."

There was a trampoline standing next to the bathroom window. Spot jumped onto the trampoline, bounced really high and did a somersault through the bathroom window. He landed on the toilet seat, which luckily was shut.

Spot charged at the robbers and cornered them. Then he leaped as high as a kite and scratched them on the face really hard. He grabbed them by the pants and pulled them out the front door.

Just then, Jack and Jazmine came back.''Oh No!'' said Jazmine sadly. ''We have been robbed. I think we should call the Police." But Spot jumped up and showed them the robbers lying on the front step.

''Well done Spot!'' said Jazmine and Jack. Then Jazmine said "You are an amazing dog."

Jazmine quickly went inside and discovered that nothing was stolen even though the toilet window was smashed. They called the Police and got the robbers taken away to jail. Then Jack got Spot a big, big bone. "Here you go," he said. "Good job. We can trust you to guard the house even though you can't bark. You're the best!" Spot felt very proud of himself and happy to have such nice owners.

The Robot Cat Adventures

Names of story authors:
Nelson Central: Sheridan and Jacob
Grey Lynn: Jennifer and Cameron

Once there were two robots who were best friends. Their names were Flyer and Braike. They lived in a space ship with their cat called Max.

Flyer and Braike were trying to fly their space ship to Mars, but they kept getting stopped by big green aliens who wanted to take their beautiful cat, Max. The aliens had never seen a cat and thought it looked delicious!

Flyer had an idea. He said, "we should transform our space ship into a shield space ship so that we can get past the aliens." Braike thought that was a good idea, and Max was just glad that he wasn't going to be eaten! Flyer found some recycled material like metal junk that they couldn't use any more, and they made a strong protective shield.

Finally they landed on Mars , but the aliens were already there. "Oh no," said Braike. "What should we d

o now?" "Maybe we should talk to them" said Flyer. "They might not be as terrible as we think. Maybe they just want to pat the cat." "Ok," said Braike. "But we are NOT giving them Max."

''Greetings Aliens," said Flyer. ''What do you want from us?" exclaimed Max trembling. ''We just want your space ship and to take a photo of your beautiful cat so that we can make one like it back on our planet," said the big green alien.

"Well," said Flyer, "you can only have our ship if you give us one of your cool space ships. And we will let you have a photo, but you can't have Max. He's ours."

Braike was very proud of how Flyer stood up to the scary aliens. She thought that he was very cool. The aliens were also impressed with how Flyer talked, and they agreed to everything that he said.

So Flyer and Braike stood beside Max the cat and the Aliens took a picture of the three. Then Flyer and Braike zoomed off like a motorbike and said ''goodbye." Max said ''meeeow!" They thought it was a good day after all.

Where is Santa?

Names of story authors:
Nelson Central: Luke & Ethan
Grey Lynn: Stella and Ethan

Once there was a girl called Bella who lived with her very mean parents called Joe and Kim. It was December and Christmas was coming. Her parents were so mean that they weren't going to give her any presents for Christmas.

In her bedroom she decided to write a letter to Santa but he didn't respond, so she decided to go to him. She didn't know how to get there though, so Bella called out, "Santa, Santa, where are you?" But there was no reply.

Bella decided to call Santa's hotline to see if she could get him to come and see her. She picked up the phone and dialed the number but all she heard was his answering message. She thought she better leave a message, just in case.

"Hi Santa, it's Bella here. My parents are being very mean to me and I was wondering if you could come to my house and help me."

Bella knew one place that she could find Santa. It was the shops! She decided to look in the shop and to her suprise he wasn't there, so she walked sadly to her house. When she arrived, she called again "Santa, I need you," and suddenly he was there.

She said, "oh Santa, you're here!" Then he said " I got your message and I came as soon as I could. Here is a little toy for you. I need your help as well. Can you be a helper in my workshop? One of the elves has had to move away and I need another helper." Bella felt really excited about getting to live with Santa and also getting to move away from her mean parents. She went to tell her parents, but they didn't care anyway. So she went back to Santa's workshop in his sleigh.

The first thing she did when she got there was make a toy truck made out of metal. She was so happy to be with Santa and his reindeer at the North Pole. She was as lucky as a cookie, the luckiest person in the whole world.

Well done to the 3 groups who wrote their stories today!

96th days at School!

Today we have been at school for 96 days!

Every day we count how many days we've been at school. Then we count in 1s, 2's, 5's, 10's, adding 10s or odd numbers to get to the number of days we've had at school.

Today was the 96th day of school. Take a look at the video below to hear us singing our Days of School song. We are going to have a celebration when we reach 100 days of school

Ways to Save the Planet

This term our Inquiry topic has been "10 Ways to Save the Planet"

Here we have some of the completed posters we did with one of the changes or actions we could make to help the planet.

Next term when the rest of our class is back (we have had lots away sick) we are going to finish our unit and make our digital story full of ways you can help us Save the planet!

Room 9's Matariki Wishes

The 24th June was Matariki in New Zealand.
It is the celebration of the Maori New Year.

We had a great time doing three different rotations of workshops.
First we made fern prints with Rachel. Then we did knucklebones with Neroli. After that we did poi and rakau with Lesley.

In the afternoon at eLearning time we thought about our Matariki wishes for the world were. We used Kidpix to draw in pairs what our special wish was.

Our Trip to the recycling centre and landfill

Yesterday we went to the recycling centre and landfill as part of our Inquiry topic "10 ways to save the planet".

We wanted to find out what happened to all of Nelson's rubbish and recycling.

Here you can see a snippet of just some of the things Room 9 learned while on the trip (you'll probably also notice how popular the compactor was with the students too!)

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

Our Maori Legend Digital Story: Maui and the Sun

We have been retelling stories as part of our writing unit. We learned about some Maori legends including Maui and the Sun.

First we storyboarded all the ideas from the legend out into a 6 box storyboard. Then we wrote a sequenced retelling of the story. Next, with a buddy we each took a part of the legend to draw a picture on Kidpix of and to make a voice recording of.

You can see below the WALT and success criteria that we followed, and see our final product!
We hope you enjoy :)

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

Thinking Hat Tuesday - If there were no such things as trees

Our thinking topic this week was

"If there were no such things as trees".

We used the BLACK and the YELLOW thinking hats to examine the negative and positive aspects of this. You can see some of our ideas in the photo below, click on it to be able to see and read it much larger.

Thinking Hat Tuesday - If animals could talk!

Today for Thinking Hat Tuesday our Oral Language Talk topic was:

"If animals could talk!"

We used the Black & Green Thinking Hats to challenge and stretch our thinking.

When you think with the BLACK hat you need to think about the bad points, weaknesses, judgement and bad ideas.

When you think with the GREEN hat you need to think about new ideas, use your imagination and think really creatively.

Here are some of Room 9's best ideas from our discussion today:
(Click on the picture to see/read them bigger)

Thinking Hat Tuesday - If bees were as big as cats!

Today's Thinking Hat Tuesday challenge & brain extender topic was:

"If bees were as big as cats"

We focused our thinking by using the Red and the Yellow Thinking Hats.
The red hat is all about our feelings about the topic, while the Yellow hat is all about the strengths and good points/ideas about the topic.

You can see some of the great thinking Room 9 has done on te picture below.
(Click on the photo to view it larger)