Room 3’s Blog

Monday:

Was a public holiday so everyone hung out at home enjoying the long weekend.

Tuesday:

We had maths in the morning but I had finished everything so got a little bit of freetime to work on my blog posts. After morning tea we had Tech Arts. The year 7’s are doing cooking and year 8’s are doing fabric. I made Banana Cake with chocolate icing(sooo healthy). It was soo yum though. After lunch we had a new task due on the following Monday. We have to write a report on either elephants or wetas using the notes that Mrs Crowe has given us.

Wednesday:

Today was pretty much a normal day. Maths in the morning, writing, all the usual things. But we had a huge discussion on China and Tibet and all of the things we think are going on there. We are starting a big study on the 2008 Olympics and how some people are trying to “Boycott” them. This discussion went on for quite a while and I’m pretty sure we all learnt at least one thing. Some of us learnt what the Dalai Lama was.

Thursday:

This was pretty much a normal day for me but most of the others went off to Band in the morning while the people who don’t do it stayed behind and did english with Mrs Shaw. After morning tea while some of the people went to Jazz band we did French. We all had to present a French play which was lots of fun. We had to say hello and ask someone what their name was and how to spell it. We got to add other things in if we wanted to as long as we could pronounce it properly. After lunch I would normally have Maori but instead we had Badminton. That was sooo much fun. It was really funny but we had to leave early so we didn’t get a full session.

Friday:

We had sport today which was great fun. There was a choice of hockey, netball, basketball, and some more which I can’t really remember. I was in basketball and we played for our house. My team won two games and lost one which was pretty good!

It was a pretty average week in Room 3 but there were a lot of things that were a LOT of fun!

I have just created another wiki for photos which will be totally private – only students in this class will be able to join it. We will then be able to use it to post some interesting photos of activities we have been involved in during the year.

It goes without saying that we will not be identifying individual students in the photos but will just give a general description of what is happening.

BTW Have you actually visited our updated wiki/s yet? You will need to next term as this is where all our work, rubrics, newsletters, science fair information etc is going to be stored.

Just to let you know that I have spent some time today updating our class wiki which I intend making a lot more use of next term. Ultranet has not been updated and it’s taking me sooo long to get anything posted there! We may still use the My Space feature of Ultranet if and when it is updated.

Please visit our class wiki and leave comments in the discussion tab. Year 7’s you will need to join wikispaces in order to leave a comment. Just click on the JOIN option at the top right hand corner of the screen.

Monday
On Monday, nothing too exciting happened. We had Assembly in the morning, and we caught up on some maths and english work after that. After interval, we did some more maths and english. We played softball after lunch, but the game ended when Ivan hit the ball over one of the houses fence! Luckily Winiata was able to clumb over the hedge and retrieve it. We did some work on the computers after that, and went on our blogs and Ultranet. After school, me, Holly, Georgia and Hannah had our jazz dancing lesson. We’re all in the same grade too, so that’s good!

Tuesday
In the morning, we did some more maths and english, but after interval, the year 7’s had their last Tech Art. We’ll still being doing Tech Arts, but not the same one. Our previous one was design (y7’s), and next we’ll be moving onto music/dance. The year eights have been doing science. After lunchtime, the whole school went out and did sport. We had chosen which sport we wanted to go to on Monday, and we all went to those. The 4 sports were Touch Rugby, Soccer, Basketball, and Softball. I was in Softball 3. My team won by a lot! But no one was keeping score sadly.

Wednesday
Quite a lot happened on Wednesday. In the first period, we had a farewell Assembly, for the Japanese Students that have been staying at our school. This involved singing, and presents. We gave the Teacher from Makuhari School a book, and we recieved a dinosaur origami pack. After interval, we did our oral retellings. That meant we had to read out a retelling of the fairytale ‘Cinderella’ in our own words. We didn’t have enough time to go through the whole class though, so we only did a few people. We went to the school library after that. At lunchtime, Winata and I had to go to the lab for our ICT (Information Communication Technology) club meetings. We aren’t in the same group, but both of our groups meet there every Wednesday lunchtime. My group got started on our powerpoint. We’re creating things on the computers to advertise the school. After lunchtime, we had a catch up period for english and maths. Also, the T.V. Show group had a meeting outside, to practise scripts in front of an imaginary camera.

Thursday
On Thursday, there was the usual commotion in the ALC (Arts and Leisure Centre) with the preparation for band. The Senior Band practised in the ALC, and the Junior Band practised in the hall. Jazz Band was after interval. The people that weren’t in the Jazz Band had French with Mrs Shaw. At 12:00, the whole school went down to the hall for weekly singing. The house that won was… Mangapiko!
After lunchtime, we had a Student Assembly. A police dog handler came in as a guest speaker, and talked to us about his job. He brought with him his police dog, Ted. Ted the German Short-haired Biter gave the school a little show, demonstrating how he sniffs out (illegal) drugs. The dog handler had purposely put a rag that smelt like a particular drug in one of our teacher’s pockets, and one student’s sock, so that Ted could show his technique. When he smelt the drug, Ted froze, and jabbed his nose at the rag. It was very interesting and funny!

Friday
Well, there is no school today, because it’s Good Friday! We have a 5 day weekend for Easter. School starts again next Wednesday.

By Week 7’s Scribe, Hayley.

We are mentioned in the side bar of this blog – yes it’s a blog rather than the real Twitter interface but it could be a useful tool for us. We need to find a class somewhere else in the world that we could do some collaborative work with. Imagine if we could link with a class in France and practice French or a class in Japan! Again, why should it always be the teacher who has to do the hunting??

Here’s some info from the Youth Twitter site:

We’re a safe, school-based twitter-like blogging network for students

How do I use Youth Twitter?

• Reflect on Daily Experiences/Class Projects
• Ask a Question/Seek Information
• Check out Interesting Tweets/Search for replies or key words/Follow a tag
• Comment on Other Tweets
• Promote Online Projects/Blog Posts
• Coordinate Real-Time Events/Skype Call

Who’s joined?

Well we have just passed 10 000 visitors to our site! It’s taken us 13 months. Can we get 20 000 before February next year? We need some interesting posts and it shouldn’t all be up to me, the teacher! What are you going to do about it?

I have been busy all day today (Saturday), while the sun was shining commenting on the two pieces of writing you have given me (well most of you have). I have left comments for you in your USpace stuff folders and on some of your blogs. You will get the work back on Monday.

Remember your next piece of written work ( character description) is due on Thursday morning because it is Good Friday the next day.

Who wants to be our scribe of class events for next week? And Iain, where is the current events discussion on Ultranet?

BTW Here is the link for the strange news item we were discussing on Friday http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/6/story.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10498197 

This week I am the weekly scribe and it has been yet another busy week for room 3. In the weekend the Japanese students arrived in New Zealand to stay with students from T.A.I for about 2 weeks. Two people in our class are hosting a Japanese student so we have had some very quiet people in our class most afternoons. Yeah! Our new technology blocks are starting to look a bit more like a structure as most of the framing went up this week! The inter-class softball carried on this week and our team played hard in all their games.

On Monday morning we had a Powhiri to welcome the Japanese students to our school, Powhiri’s are of the Maori culture and we have our schools fantastic Kapa Haka perform. Later on that day we were introduced to our new inquiry work. It is about ANZAC day and the great war. So far we are just editing our questions and getting on to the research part.

On Tuesday we did all our normal things like maths and English. We also had tech arts, ICT/Design for the year 7’s and Science for the Year 8’s. We had some students away from class on this day because they were at inter intermediate cricket.

On Wednesday we had our second R.I (religious instruction) assembly we had a pastor come and talk to us about Easter and that it is not just about getting chocolate. We also went to the lab for the first time this year as our ICT/Design teacher did not need it at the time. We got given our new maths work for our new groups and went to the library.

On Thursday we had Symphonic Band, Jazz Band, Kapa Haka and Guitar. Our deputy principal took us for our usual Thursday English and French lessons. We had house singing and Puniu won for the second time. At singing we had a farewell time for our Japanese teacher and the students running it gave her a present and a big card. And also on Thursday we had our second Maori lessons.

Today (Friday) We had tech arts and sport. Section A went first and we had lots of fun running about playing our chosen sport. We also got to have another go in the always occupied lab and worked on our inquiry. Today was our Japanese teachers last day. As she will go back to her family in Japan after teaching us all about her language and culture. We will miss her but thankfully we will be getting a new Japanese teacher in April.

Hopefully next week will be as exciting as this week.

Millly

This week’s student bloggers are: Megan 1 and Mitch. Hopefully they will get more comments from our class than Naveen and Ivan did last week!