A New Enviro Project at Muritai

These kids have begun work on an exciting new project at Muritai School.  Their aim is to grow vegetables in the school gardens and use the produce to create nibbles for an Art Auction.  The money raised will be used for more gardens and garden equipment.

 
Yesterday, some of these Enviro leaders researched which vegetables they could grow at this time of year.   They then drafted a letter to send to a local chef (Adrian Hornsby).  The children asked him what recipes they could use and if he could be part of the project.

 

 These three upcoming leaders helped begin work on a new project at Muritai School.  They spear headed a team of Year 4s who are in charge of clearing the land of weeds and old plants, making room for new vegetable seedlings.  

This week they will be finding keen gardeners to help dig compost into the soil so the plants have lots to eat and so the vegetables grow big and strong. 

WATCH THIS SPACE!!!

What makes RICH and INTERESTING Writing?

Room 10 have been analysing several different pieces of writing, tyring to figure out WHAT MAKES RICH and INTERESTING WRITING.

We found lots of different things help make writing interesting, but two things stood out for us:

SIMILES

DESCRIBING WORDS (adjectives)

SIMILES AND ADJECTIVES helped give us images when we read and helped to capture our imagination.

To practice using similes and adjectives Room 10 was set a challenge to describe Muritai's far field, pretending they just got off a space ship and landed on Earth and had never been there before.  We used our senses when we explored the field and described what we saw, heard, felt and smelt to a buddy before writing a descriptive recount of what the field was like.

Here's a few of our first drafts:
 

The Field

I wandered through the gate at Muritai School on the field I saw towering trees blinding me like beautiful emeralds shining down on me and seagulls with breasts as white as snow.  Cars and buses roared like lions.  Cicadas were creaking like doors in an old mansion.  The sun was as red as fire.  A mixture of happiness and excitement shot through me.

Written by Alexander

 

The Field at Muritai

 

I wandered through the far field.  I saw a tree with dribbly blood, a dead cockroach on a thick green branch.  I hear a roaring cicada like lions, I saw a blue flag waving to me.

Written by Jia Wei
 

Reading and Mind Mapping

A big part of reading this term is to FIND and RECORD SPECIFIC INFORMATION from non-fiction texts.  We are also learning to create MIND MAPS to record the main ideas in a logical and useful way.

This week we read an article about the world's rarest bird: the Kakapo.  We identified what the main ideas in the article were and then wrote short notes for each main idea on our Mind Maps.

We decided as a class to inquire into WHY the Kakapo is  so rare.   

We found some interesting information!

We then went on to read an article about some other rare animals at Wellington Zoo and attempted to find out WHY these animals were endangered.
Here's some clips of Room 10 working in buddies and recording their ideas on Mind Maps.
 

A Budding Artist from Room 10

Check out a talented young artists work and the steps they took to produce something brilliant.