Letter of the week - Rr

Here is the poem we are looking at this week..

We are going to see if we can listen to the poem, and copy the description to colour our rabbit in the same way

Class Maths on Fridays

Positions and Orientation

We have been learning about positions and orientation - in front of, behind, on top, below, left, right, around, over, and under. We have been looking at this since we came back to school after lockdown. 

This is our work from this week.  We had to listen to Mrs. Dellaway's instructions on where to draw certain images on our whiteboards. Mrs. D drew a picture on her board which she then gave instructions for us to listen to and attempt.

We had to listen for the terms left, right, top, middle, and bottom.

Here are some boards ...

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - an update

Brainstorming a shared story

Before we start writing we always spent time reviewing our learning and sharing ideas on how to write about this.

Here are our latest ideas after we examined the start of the story. We are learning how to think of and begin a story. 

We watched the video story again, focusing on what we saw at the very beginning. We had to think about 'what' happened, 'who' was introduced to us, and 'when' (what time of day) the story began. 

Later in the same week, we then talked about the end of the story using the same thinking. 

These are the parts we created together. 

Gracie said that the story started at "night time". Keilee shared that the "egg cracked open when the sun came up". We all agreed that the caterpillar was very hungry when it came out of the cocoon. 

At the end of the story, we all agreed that the caterpillar went into the cocoon. Serah shared that this was for "10 days or more". 

Mrs Dellaway suggested we use the word 'nibble' to describe the way the caterpillar took small bites of the cocoon to make a hole in it. Ollie then shared that the caterpillar "burst" out as a butterfly.  

Mrs Dellaway wondered what kind of butterfly it was, and we decided that it was a "rainbow one" because it was so colourful. 

Imaginative writing

Until the end of this term and the start of the next, we are looking at Narrative Writing. We are learning how to use our imagination to create a story with a beginning (Setting), middle (event and problem), and end (resolution and ending). 

Today we started by talking about what is fact and what is fiction. As we had just studied report writing we knew there were facts about caterpillars that we could share.  We brainstormed our ideas here before watching the video story - The Very Hungry Caterpillar. As we watched we had to think about how the author used his imagination to change the facts about caterpillars to make his story. 

Here we are watching the story. You can watch it too.

Click here... The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle  

After the video, we talked about what we noticed. We decided that the author imagined the caterpillar eating food that caterpillars would not usually eat. Caterpillars don't eat chocolate cake and lollipops.

Our task today for writing was to draw a picture of the Hungry Caterpillar eating our favourite food. Some of us wrote about cotton candy, some about cake and fruit, and others wrote about lollipops.


Here we are working hard at the tables.

Puddle Play 

Our letter of the week was P. Last week we looked at this poem about puddle play.

We like to jump in puddles. We like to see the water splashing high when we jump in.

We noticed all the words that had the letter p in them. There were many.

We listened to the poem and Mrs. Dellaway read the poem out to us. We repeated the sentences so we could read it aloud.

After we spent time colouring in our own poem for our books, we went outside to look at the puddle and take some photos to share with our families.

Here are some of our classmates looking into the puddle. 

Can you see our reflection? 

What else can you see?

Native Animals and their predators

Over the past few weeks, we have been looking at Report writing and learning how to write facts about the things that we know and research. 

We have been listening to videos about our Native animals in our forests here in our community. We have been talking about what we discover and learn about the animals in the bush around Greymouth and the West Coast. 

Go to our Class site here to view some of the videos we have watched on our Writing and Reading page...

We have been writing drafts to practice putting together simple sentences. After we had created drafts, we then focussed on two birds - The Morepork or also known as the Ruru, and The Kiwi.  

We have created posters that share some facts that we learned over this time, and have put them on display in our classroom. 

The Colour Monster

This week we watched the video - The Colour Monster - and talked about how the Monster in this story felt. We connected our feelings and talked about times that we felt 'yellow', 'pink' 'black' or 'green'. 

Check out the video here... The Colour Monster 

We also created our own artwork of The Colour Monster to display on our wall. 

Junior School Topic

Excellence in our Community

Yesterday we came together to start our topic focus - Excellence in our Community. We are looking at those ESSENTIAL WORKERS in our community who showed excellence in the face of difficulty during the COVID Lockdown.

We will be connecting to our creative skills in Visual Art, Music, Drama, and Dance as we create a performance that celebrates our Essential workers in our community to say thanks for their sacrifice for us all. 

Come back and check to see our updates over the coming weeks...