Room 3 are very fortunate to have a new member of class join them and that is Kyle. Kyle has lots of challenges physically to deal with but we ALL LOVE his smile, cheeky nature and what he brings to Room 3!

We have been learning to describe a character and this is what Ashton wrote about Kyle!

Kyle is a good friend. He has sparkly eyes. He wears glasses. Sometimes I get to push him around the class. He plays with his ball. He has a very cheeky laugh. He is 6 years old. He makes noises to talk and he takes his glasses off lots.

Ashton and Kyle like working together

One of the LUCKY penguins

In Room 3 we have been talking about people who are helping the birds who have been affected by the oil spill at Mount Maunganui- here is Cameron’s recount

Oil Spill in Tauranga-by Cameron

There was once a boat who spilled oil at sea called the Rena. Then the boat nearly killed some penguins or all the penguins. Miss Bird helped unkill the penguins. She covered the penguins with canola oil and got all the thick black oil off them and then she put them in a bath of hot bubbling water and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed.

Lucky adult penguins!

Room 16 and Mrs Daniell show us the kiwi

Rare Albino kiwi

Brown kiwi collage

Kiwi

In Room 3 we have been sorting and organising all the information we have discovered about native birds. One of our favourites is the kiwi and we have done lots of activities based around our native bird.

One day we did “kiwi bread”- it was quite tricky to cut out the kiwi shape, then butter it and spread vegemite on however it tasted YUM!

We also did kiwi collage work, one group decided to do an albino kiwi. As we worked on this task we showed how well we work together in groups cutting and gluing little pieces of magazine pictures to produce our kiwi.

We were very lucky to get up close to a kiwi which a taxidermist had stuffed and placed in a glass case. Mrs Daniell and some children from Room 16 were very careful moving it round to the Junior classes as it belonged to the Department of Conservation.

These are a few things we’ve shared with Room 3 showing new knowledge and understanding. The next school newsletter – September 20^th there is more to see about Room 3’s native birds inquiry.

At Rainbow Springs the kiwi was walking in the dark. It was walking round and round looking for food. Kiwis are nocturnal.  Stella

Kiwis are flightless, they have really small wings. Deanna

Kiwis have long beaks to dig up insects especially worms. Jesse

Kiwi have nostrils at the very end of their beak to help them find food. Flynn

Making kiwi bread

We’ve been talking about birds especially native birds and today we heard about Mrs Gallloway’s next door neighbour and the suprise he got!!!!!!!!!!!! Isla wrote this AMAZING recount with interesting vocabulary, complex sentences as well as audience awareness!

The New Birds

Babies! Babies! Babies! Mrs Galloway’s neighbour was so excited because there in his tractor light hole where his light used to be, was a bird’s nest! The man who owned the tractor didn’t use the tractor for quite a long time.

Then he needed to use it to spread the fertilizer on the plants. So he removed the nest and put it on a big box. Then he chug, chugged his tractor to do his job, spread fertilizer. Then when he was finished with his tractor he put the nest back into the light hole.

I wonder if any other birds will do that again! 

The tractor with the nest

What a super ending to our inquiry in Term 2 we had with our amazing kite creating and kite flying day. What fun!

Room 20 are back in the swing of things for learning in Term 3. We have been learning about Keeping Ourselves Safe…obviously so important. A big component of this covers internet safety and I encourage you to visit the very good site provided for teachers, parents and children on this topic by the New Zealand Police. Please visit www.hectorsworld.com You may like to install the safety button on your home computers.

Sean has written some internet safety tips.

On the internet if anybody emails you and you don’t know them tell an adult and they will make it so they can’t email you again. You don’t tell them personal words, like your name, phone number, e-mail and the school you go to.      By Sean

Keanna also offers some internet safety advice.

There are some important things to remember on the computer. If someone sends you a message and you don’t know that person, ask a parent or a teacher to block that message. This will help keep you and your computer safe. There is a very good way to keep yourself safe on the computer and that is to not write your name, address, e-mail, phone number, password or school. Use a computer nickname instead.     By Keanna

The children wrote a story about a time they got lost. We have been focussing on adding an ending that relates to the beginning of our story.

“On no, I have lost my Mummy. Where is she? I looked everywhere.  I felt scared and worried, so I went to the counter and they said “there is a little boy here”. Next I saw my Mum come running. I was really really happy to see her. Maybe she was as worried as me.    By Jae

We are all looking forward to our wonderful trip to Rainbow & Fairy Springs on Monday. Watch this space and check our blog for stories and art around our BIG question “What relationship should we have with our native birds?”