Streeeeeetching Sentences

Throughout the year we are focusing on using description to enhance our writing across genres.  We have started writing descriptive paragraphs to go with our science inquiry.  Our initial sentences were a little boring so Mrs P set us a challenge.  In groups we were given one of the sentences that many of us had used in our initial paragraphs.  The sentence we were given was:  The Nikau Palm is a tree.  I think you will all agree that this sentence could be improved upon!  We then got to chop up this sentence and add/delete/rearrange words until we were satisifed that we had made an awesome descriptive sentence.  Here are some of the sentences we came up with.

We all really enjoyed this activity and then went back and worked on stretching some of the sentences in our individual writing.  Now we are going to look at starting sentences in a variety of ways to add interest.

What Am I?

Today Mrs P brought an object to school that she had found.  In groups we had to first predict what we thought it was. Then we as scientists were allowed to ask her yes or no questions and use our chromebooks to investigate.  
We all managed to determine what it was and found alot of interesting information along the way.  
What do you think it is?  
Ask us some questions to find out. Later in the week we will post on our individual blogs what we found out.  

What is this?

From the garden to the table.

In the next couple of weeks many of our school classes are going on school camp.  Our class is going on an alpine camp to Arthur's Pass where we are going to be tramping, river crossing, orienteering and search & rescuing. We can't wait!  
In preparation for school camps our Deputy Principal, Mr B, brought some ingredients from his garden at home into the classroom.  He was going to use these ingredients to make something with a group of senior students.  Then all classes will get to take some of the finished product to use on camp.  We had to identify the ingredients and then deduct what we thought he was going to make.  
Here are some photos of the ingredients.  Can you name them all?  What do you think he was going to make?

We are scientists!

Throughout this year we are going to be focusing our inquiry learning around our garden, our place.  To start off our unit we have been investigating the native trees that are apart of our school grounds. 
Last week we discovered a hidden "treasure" in our garden.  We used our scientist minds to draw and identify this tree.  Most of us knew the name of this tree however we knew very little information about it. This week in literacy time we are going to try and find some of the answers to our questions. 
Here are some photos.  Can you identify our hidden "treasure"?  What facts do you know about this tree?

Electronics workshop with Andrew

What a fantastic week we have had! Mamaku kids were lucky enough to be asked to participate in a robotics and electronic workshop this week. More info here!

We have learnt about LED, valve's, positive and negative and how electricity flows.

We learnt about safe electricity and unsafe electricity.

Watch this space to read our reflection this week on what we learnt and how we may use this new knowledge!

What could you create using this equipment?