Yay it's christmas!!

We have been doing an inquiry to get Santa to come to school and give us tree!! We had to learn, what is:

- 2D and 3D
- kiwiana
- flashy
- 10cm x10cm
- traditional
- traditional xmas colours
- durable
- appropriate hanging materials
- heavier and lighter than

We had $20 to spend at the $2 shop to buy materials to make decorations that fit Santa's criteria. We had to work out how many things we could buy and what we needed.

We planned and made our decorations to fit the criteria!!

Then we had to learn how to persuade Mrs Peck to let us put up the tree in the foyer!!

TODAY SANTA COMES TO CHECK OUR DECORATIONS FIT THE CRITERIA!! IF THEY DO WE GET A TREE FOR OUR SCHOOL!!

Let's celebrate!!

Joke of the Day!!

What is Kiwiana???

Lets ask Mia....

Have you been naughty or nice this Year??

Want to find out what list you are on for Santa??

http://www.claus.com/naughtyornice/index.php

Black Out Day!!

All those children that have made 'right choices' all term got to participate in Black Out Day!!

Interesting that the stickers that Holly and Alisha chose to put to represent their thinking around Mrs Harland was coffee and a fluffy bunny!! Right on target girls!

LC16 is amazing at independently thinking of topics that they would like to do a digital presentation of, taking the appropriate photo, match appropriate stickers, choose font and font colour, summarise what they want to their message to be and finally, e-mailing their presentation to people they think will enjoy, or learn something from their work.

I am so proud of our clever 6 and 7 year old learners!!

USA facts !!

* great facts you have researched about the USA rugby team Solomon!

* you even made your own flag!

* independent digital presentation of what you found out.

Good Work Solomon!

Digital presentation on NZ by Isabel!

You had so much information Isabel!! You did very well to decide which would be interesting for your audience and summarise it!!

Dylan's Tonga investigation digital presentation:

Great information Dylan!!

All Black Kiwi

These are our All black Kiwi that we made in support of the All Blacks who are playing France in the 2011 Rugby World Cup, this Saturday. GO ALL BLACKS!!!

RUGBY WORLD CUP Mission !!!

Well done Jayden, you have summarised your information and presented it digitally, very effectively!

Jayden's Reading Activity Lesson

Jayden asked if he could make a photostory to teach new children to the class what our independent reading activity choices were.

He completely independently:
- took all the digital photos of children actually in the act of doing their chosen activity.
- (Mrs Harland put them into photostory)then he decided which were good and which he would delete, until he was happy with the photos he had.
- decided not to do voice overs, but to type text onto each photo. He chose the font and described each photo.
- learned that the black text, in the middle of the photos made it hard to read on a lot of the slides, so he changed the font colours and placement on the slides to make them easier to read.
- edited the spelling.
- decided not to put music to the slides because he felt it was distracting.
- saved.

Wow! Jayden, what a lot of skill, decisions and persistence! Now we have a great slideshow for our new student. Thanks

RUGBY WORLD CUP Mission !!!

Our Mission is to:
- 'adopt' another country that is playing in the Rugby World Cup
- find out about the team and/or the country
- decide which three facts are the most interesting
- decide which picture and stamps best represent that country
- present those facts digitally using 'decosama'
- e-mail our presentation to friends and family

Wow!!! LC16 is bubbling with excitement about our mission.....and of course the Rugby!!

Story Making on the ipad

The Alien's Have Landed - By Kaia and Solomon



Kaia and Solomon have independently:

- choseen a paint and draw app. to draw a picture plan of their story
- created an appropriate title for that story
- planned an oral presentation
- recorded and checked their recording was up to their standards (using fotobabble)
- saved and e-mailed their story to people who they thought would enjoy their work.

Great story making, and co-operative working!

It's hard to plan an oral story with someone!!

Story Making on the ipad

Zach and Caitlin independently;

- chose a paint and draw app. to draw a picture plan of their story
- created an appropriate title for that story
- planned an oral presentation that included a beginning, middle and end of an narrative
- recorded and checked their recording was up to their standards (using fotobabble)
- saved and e-mailed their story to people who they thought would enjoy their work.

Great story making, and co-operative working! I'm impressed!

Ipads to record why we like to come to school...

Mia, Kaia and Beatriz independently:

- thought of something that made school fun for them
- took a photo of it (or her)
- chose stamps that they thought matched their thinking
- wrote down their thinking and reasons
- arranged all those elements on the page, including size, font, rotations etc
- saved and e-mailed them to someone they believed would enjoy their thinking


WOW girls!! You sure made good use of your independent literacy learning time!

This is what LC16 thinks SHOULD have happened in the Three Little Pigs!!

We Are Learning To:


- reflect on characteristics of different characters in fairy tales and offer opinions
on a better way to act/ react
- break down a story in a story map flow chart
- write a script for the characters
- design costumes and props that suite the story
- plan what the characters would be doing in the photos
- take the photos that we planned on the story map
- put photos into Photo Story 3
- add voice overs on the slides with character voices
- edit our voices so we were happy with them
- test if music was a good idea for our story
- tested some transitions to see which ones looked good for our story
- decide what voice over to use for the title
- save and put on our blog!!

PHEEEEWWWWWW!!!

RUGBY WORLD CUP !!!

YES!! We made it to Rugby World cup!!

Click on the link below to go to 'Ruggerland' for games and activities to enthuse you for the cup!!

GO THE ALL BLACKS!!!

http://www.ruggerland.co.nz/

Ipads for Learning

On 7th September there is a parent evening being held to demonstrate how technology is enhancing the learning of your children at Riverdale School.

Below is a slideshow that will be running during a 'workshop presentation' that I will be hosting, on the learning and curriculum links involved when you child uses e-mail to communicate his/her written thoughts.

I am looking for a couple of children who's parents are attending, to demonstrate how we use the ipads for e-mailing, as part of our written language programme. If your child would like to participate and you will be attending, I would love to hear from you as soon as possible.

Thanks for all the support, through your written e-mail responses, that the children receive. It makes a great deal of difference to their motivation to have an authentic audience to write to.

Dinosaur Day

We read a poem/song that taught us some new vocabulary!

- extinct
- carnivore
- herbivore

then we designed our own dinosaurs.

We are very proud of them. What do you think??

Three Little Pigs the Remix!!

We are learning to identify the important parts of a story, put it into a flow chart, work as a team to do the pictures for each part. Then we decided what the characters would say on each frame. Finally, we had to cooperate to record the voice overs for each slide. PHEW !!!! What a fabulous job LC16 did!!

Isabel's stop motion animation: The Accident!

Isabel listened so well at school that she went home and applied her learning to create her own photostory animation. We loved the matching sound effects Isabel!!

ToonDoo -' create cartoons!

Ask at home if you can sign up for Toondoo!! Then you can make story maps and comics for writing!! Yay!! =)

Click on the link below to register.


Login - Register at ToonDoo - World's fastest way to create cartoons!

Team Work!

Isabel and Thomas were showing great team work to create a scene of our story map.

Beatriz and Holly persisting!!

The girls spent all of reading time putting the homonyms together. They decided they showed persistence because they didn't give up when it took a long time.

Jayden, Solomon and Kamil showing resilience:

These boys showed initiative in asking to do a stop motion animation of the story they read today in reading.

They decided that they showed resilience in trying, trying again a different way and trying again!!

Mrs Harland's snow fun!!

The children and I have been talking about our exciting adventures in the snow!! Many had shared pictures. So.....I thought I would share mine. ENJOY!!

We are learning how to do stop motion animations

Rainddrop power point

View more presentations from nharland.

Can you figure out how we did it??

We wanted to teach the new entrants their maori colours

- The children decided to say the maori word twice, so that the new entrant children could listen the first time and join in the second time.

To kick start our study on character resilience we dressed up for the day

Japanese Friends

We were lucky enough to host some Japanese students for the afternoon. The children really enjoyed hearing about what school is like in Japan and comparing it our school.

Our names look Really cool in Japanese too!!

Thank you to our new friends.