Massive prep

Catherine says Hello from across the Globe!!

Hello Room 10! I've been having a marvelous holiday for the past two weeks.

So far I have visited England where we went to my Auntie's wedding in Sedgewick Park  Manor House which seemed perfect for a murder mystery (and we are now going to write one!!) The house was enormous and the gardens were at least 10 football fields large.

 After the wedding we went to London for a day and we went on the London Eye which had breath-taking heights. We then traveled to Wales to stay with my grandma in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (which I can now say) in Anglesey.

Next we went back to England to stay with my Step-Grandma for a few days and our old friends who used to go to pre-school with me. While we stayed there we went to visit the Bovvington tank museum in which we had a look at heaps of tanks including the last working tiger tank in the world!!

We then left England and took a plane to Rome in Italy!

• In Rome we went to see the Roman Forums and the Colosseum which were enormously over-sized and there were millions of people there. Unfortunately since there was lots to see there was a lot of walking, and the temperature was 30 degrees... But, the cool thing about Rome is that all the Italians have Gelato (or ice-cream) late every night! Yummmm!!

Now we have retreated to the mountains which is alot colder and we are staying at a really nice place with a swimming pool. Next we will be going to Amalfi and Venice then we go to Salzburg in Austria and Heidleberg in Germany.

The Academic Quiz

On Wednesday, fifth of June, two teams from year seven and eight went to an Academic Quiz night at Broadgreen Intermediate. The year seven team were called the Puple People eaters, and the year eight team-Max, Jamie, Zane, Catherine, Rubin, and Benjamin- were the Nerds.

On the night there were eight categories in which there were ten questions on each. The categories were Science- insects, Maths- Geometry, NZ movies, NZ Children's books, the NZ Olympics team, Maori knowledge,  NZ songs, and NZ icons. There was also an extension on the maths, where we had 30 seconds to write down as many numbers of pi (π) as possible- unfortunately 30 seconds is a relatively short time and we didn't manage to write down all of the numbers we had learned. It took two hours to get through the whole thing, (but luckily we were supplied with water and lollies to keep us going!!)

You'd expect quizzes to be boring, but the whole thing was actually super fun - and in the end, The Purple People eaters came 11th out of 22 teams, and The Nerds came fifth tied!

Room 10's 'Flash' Assembly!!

Last Friday we hosted our second assembly for this year, and it went great!!

We originally had heaps of different ideas like a sign language assembly, but Zumba and flash mobbing  stood out the most- so we combined them.

Sharon then came up with the brilliant name for our assembly "Room 10's 'Flash' Assembly" to hint a tiny bit in the title. Our whole class spent loads of their time practicing the moves to 'Get on the Floor' and went up on stage and Flash Mobbed half way through the assembly- everyone certainly enjoyed it.

Not only all the people who were asked came up, but all of the Teachers and some children joined in aswell! Close to the end the whole school stood up and danced, but then we finished. We had the whole school laughing the whole time from start to finish.

We also decided a Flash Mob needs more than just our class, so we all asked our parents to join in, and some people even asked other teachers! (Sharon also told us if you convinced someone to join in, you get a $200 bonus!!!)

Of course, one Flash Mob is never enough, so we got the band to play Hall Of Fame while we all sang along as a flash mob too. We also sort of flash mobbed the maori & Sign Language introduction Max Jamie and Bethan did for us, and we all came up and said it along with them.

Overall, this was a great way to show the rest of the School what cool leaders we are! I'm sure everyone can't wait till next time.

Rabbit Island Cross Country

On Tuesday, the 28th of May, a huge amount of kids from Mapua school took part in the Rabbit Island Cross Country.

This event happens each year, and all of the year 5-8's from our school who won 1st, 2nd or 3rd place in the School Cross country, go to Rabbit Island to race against other schools as well as our own.

Almost everyone who went got into the top 10 runners in the race, and three of them came first in their races. From our class, of the boys Zak came first, Jake second, Cameron in Third, Mac came fourth, Max in sixth, and Ben in 10th. For the girls, Analese, Katja and Catherine were running, but Analese had a Netball tournament and Katja was sick so just Catherine ran, and she came 10th.

The day was great fun for everyone and we all lived up to the motto 'To Be All We Can.'

Sophisticated Picture Books

How might picture books be sophisticated?
Ask anyone in room 10 and they will give you the answer.

We recently started on reading picture books. You may think all picture books are aimed at young kids, but some are actually a lot more complicated then you think. In class we have worked out what aspects the book has to have to be sophisticated, and these are:

• The book must have a theme (eg. loss, remembrance, friends)
• It also must have a hidden message with layers to it
• The illustrations sometimes give more meaning than the words
• They use more complicated language in the book
• And the layout is sometimes different than a regular picture book.

We have been looking at a particular book at the moment called 'The Red Tree'. This book uses very minimal amount of words, but each sentence has a very deep meaning. As one of our activities for this, we have been doing some drama to act out each page- and then we got a bit carried away and made a cool video of it, but unfortunately the camera ran out of space in the process, so we didn't get it on here.

So now, go down to the school library for a while and look at some of the sophisticated picture books. It's just as good as a chapter book.

Lest We Forget

For the last week of term our inquiry focussed on the ANZAC's.

Sharon and Mrs Hosie had great acting skills and we all totally believed the scenario they set up for us!!!  Each group had an envelope with an artifact or two in it.  As a group, we had to decide how we could use that to educate younger members of the school about a particular aspect of our ANZAC history.

We only had a few days in which to research and develop our knowledge before setting up educational learning stations on Friday.

On Friday, we opened our museum to the rest of the school and were over whelmed with the response. Nearly every class in the school visited.  It was loud and a bit chaotic but we did a fantastic job of presenting the information in a fun and interactive way so that the younger students went away with a better understanding of history.