Chapter Chat - There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom by Jessica

Our class has been participating in Chapter Chat. Chapter Chat is a reading programme that schools all over New Zealand have been doing. The class has to listen to the teacher read a book that has been chosen for Chapter Chat. After we listen, we answer a sheet full of 10 questions and choose some activities on the sheet (like redesigning the cover of the book or drawing the characters). We get the sheet of questions and activities each week and at the end of the week on Friday we go on Twitter to share our activities with everyone that is doing Chapter Chat. We can also comment on other people's activities and when we finish a book we move onto another one and do the process all over again. It is really fun!

Book Sharing by Renee

Today we had a book sharing session in Room 11. Everyone had to bring their favourite book and talk about it. The girls sat in one big circle together and the boys sat in another circle. The book I brought was Gangster Granny. The reason I chose it is because it was really funny because he hated going to his Granny's house because he had to eat pumpkin soup and he always had to play Scrabble. Miss Bateman made us a hot milo. I was so happy that I bounced around with excitement. It kept me warm and it melted in my tummy. Everyone enjoyed drinking the hot milo. I liked finding out what everyone’s favourite book was - a lot of the books looked interesting. When we finished showing our books and drinking our hot milo, Ema took a tray and she went around getting the cups and she accidentally dropped the tray. Suddenly I heard a loud smash and when I turned around the cups were smashed. I had a lot of fun today drinking the hot milo and sharing books - I bet everyone had fun today.

Aboriginal Art work by Emily

Today we started on our Aboriginal Art! Aboriginal Art comes from Australia, it is a piece of art made with lines and dots. We made this because our inquiry was on different cultures. We learnt that every symbol has a meaning. So when the Australians drew a picture it usually had a meaning or it’s telling someone something. We each drew an animal with symbols around it. For an example, Lian drew a big snake with some people at a campfire, showing the place the snake is at. Then she painted the snake with dots of red, black and yellow. The usual colours for Aboriginal art is black, brown, yellow and red. Though blue wasn’t a colour used in aboriginal art, some of us, like Rowyn, used blue because the animal she decided to do was a turtle. For the art we just used normal paint but the Australians had to make their own. I think the finished artwork looks awesome hanging up in our classroom - come in and check it out!

Cultural Projects by Fiona

Our BIG IDEA that we have been learning about this term is: people create opportunities to express their culture, beliefs and values through art. Some examples that we did in Room 11 were: African mask made by Rose, collage of the Tongan flag made by Villiami, Indian handkerchief by Prachi, Emily, Jessica & Fiona, Japanese origami by Tai & Daniel, a Hawaiian movie by Ruby, Emarina & Kaia, posters about Korea and Japan by Lian and Senna. We had to choose a culture (our own culture or another culture) and do a project about it. First, we had to plan - this took a while. Some of us brought materials from home and others used school equipment. Then we slowly progressed towards the ‘Finish line’. Most of us did really well, and everyone had FUN!

Tapa Cloth Art Work by Ema

We are learning about artwork from different cultures around the world. Today we made tapa cloths. We looked up lots of images of tapa cloth designs, which are from the Pacific Islands. Once we had some inspiration, we did a draft copy of our tapa cloth. On our good copy, we drew a pencil outline then went over the top with a vivid. Then we scrunched up our paper to give it some creases and used brown and red dye to cover the paper. Once we had all completed our own individual tapa cloth, our teacher joined them together to create one big Room 11 tapa cloth. This is displayed in our classroom and it looks really cool!

Procedural Reading Activities by Rose

Procedural reading is practically learning to read and follow instructions. Yesterday we made a hacky sack out of rice and balloons! What we did was put the rice into one of the balloons then put loads of other balloons over the top. It was so fun because it was super easy and only used two things. The day before that we made friendship bracelets using only thick coloured cotton and tape to hold it to the table. Then we chose what type of bracelet we wanted to make then we followed the instructions to weave and knot the string together. Next we did Paper Weaving! We cut stips of paper alll the same width and length. Then we followed the instructions to weave the paper together to make a small A4-sized piece of coloured, stripy paper. You could also do this with flax like the Maori tradition but we didn't have any flax. Last but not least, Room 11 made a paper heart basket. It was kind of like the paper weaving but a LOT harder. First you had to do a little bit of weaving and folding (which was REALLY HARD) then we did some hard stuff and it turned into a woven paper heart basket!