Budding Animators

Last week Room 15 of the Mighty Pouakai Syndicate were preparing for another TIS assembly.  Being the innovative and creative class that they are, they chose to celebrate Kotahitanga by asking each class in the school to recite a line in a Dr Seuss story "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" 

Room 13 was given the line "Waiting for the fish to bite."  It was decided that we do something different (because we like to stand out in a crowd).  Ruby, Renee, Arielle and Be took charge!  They decided to create an animation.  Once that was created we thought we'd sing our line instead of reciting it.  Thanks Lasi for providing us the background track, so here's the snippet of the animation.  The 'created by' bit was added on to acknowledge the girls hard and creative work.  Well done girls and Rm 13 choir :)  Hopefully I can share the link to the full school effort soon.

Rahul's wonderful writing progress!

This week I thought we'd celebrate students who are making superb progress in their writing.  Meet Rahul.  At the beginning of the year Rahul needed a lot of encouragement to write.  Our last writing sample was a couple of weeks ago and this is Rahul's sample.  I was filled with excitement as he handed this piece of writing in for me to read...

I went to Titahi Bay with my dad to the Field to get warmed up. I put my boots on and my gloves on and ready to play this match.

The whistle blew and the game starts now. I saw the players tackling and passing. My friend skilled the other player and tries to score a goal but he misses. The other player from that team tries to score but i caught the ball and kicked it to the other player. My team got the ball and Narlin passed it to Josh and scored a goal and we were cheering for Josh.

25 minutes to go and the other team tried to score. The player ran up ahead towards the goal and tries to score and I dived towards the ball and bounced off my head and its a miss. The player goes for a corner and he took a shot and they scored.

It came to half time and I had a drink of water and listened to the coach whats he saying. Its our turn to kick the ball and the player passes it to someone and ran up to the goal keeper and took a shot and it went into the goal.  The tacklers tackled the players and tries to score but it was a over.

We won and it was 3-2 and we ate chocolate and oranges. The player of the day was me at my first game of soccer. I really enjoyed my first game.

Konichi wa!

Term 3 has kicked off and we have so much to look forward to.  Our first celebration in Room 13 is the beginning of our Japanese lessons, led by our very own Shannon.  Shannon was one of the lucky students who took part in our Asian exchange last year traveling to Japan.  Over the next term we will be learning Japanese greetings and simple phrases, learning about Japanese culture and cuisine.  During our first lesson today, we learned how to count to 20 and beyond.

If you speak fluent Japanese, please let us know how we are doing.

Sheridan's Fun Run Post

On Wednesday the 13th of June 2012 at the top Field was the Tawa intermediate Fun run. We had to fund raise and I raised $182.  I got $182 because I told my Mum and Dad to take it to their work and ask their Friends if they could please sponsor me.  For the fun run my class had to come as a sport star but I just brang my shorts and my rugby socks.

After morning tea the whole school walked up to the top Field the teachers were telling us about what were not aloud to do then we were off.  Ms T was recording on the camera then she told Pouakai syndicate to yell out Pouakai on three then she went 1 2 3 and we all  yelled out Pouakai! as loud as we could. We all started running it was awesome I ran with Mason, Elias, Zac and Raumoa most of the way then we all split so I just ran with Sione all the way. I ran faster because I didn't want it to go into my lunch.

When it was over I was so glad because football and Dodge ball are the next interclass sports.

Celebrating Matariki

To celebrate Matariki - The Maori New Year, our class are creating 'Matariki Panels' that represent  whanau, new growth and their own understanding of Matariki.  I am looking forward to the finished art works and they will adorn our school hall during our 'Matariki Performances' evening next Tuesday night.  Some will then be  selected to be displayed down at the Tawa Library as part of the Mana Tiaki 'Matariki Celebrations'.  Here's a slideshow of the students in action.  Watch this space for their finished masterpieces.

Our Assembly Presentation

The week finally arrived when it was Pouakai's turn to run our School Assembly again. Room 15 did such a great job last term that we (Room 13) had to figure out how we wanted to run our assembly.

'Operation Assembly' emerged! We decided on a 'TIS News" theme and we wanted to try some green screening.  We were lucky that some of the content was already made throughout our term so it was just a matter of selecting what we wanted to celebrate and delegating jobs.

 An assembly committee came together and decided what needed to be done: Brittany (Be) and Jorge were in charge of writing their scripts for the introductions of each DLO (Digital Learning Object / Movie). Ruby and Anton were in charge of producing movies for the School Disco and Cross Country, Melissa and Reilly had to write and learn scripts for their Sports presentation, Shannon, Lily and Ryley interviewed students about citizenship during lunchtimes (with Ruby as Videographer), Ben was in charge of explaining our Whakatauki and the rest of the class were in charge of independent tasks while green screening was done.

Special thanks to Eden and McKenzie for sharing their musical talent, Las for fostering the musical talent in our room, The videographers for the cross country, Stephanie for her Camp Video, the students who recited our class Whakatauki, the Room 13 students who worked independently and of course... the assembly committee!

 Here's most of the presentation. I hope you've got a bit of time, it's actually 21 minutes long - but well worth the watch. Well done our 'Nga Hau Mahana!

Personification Post from Ruby

In room 13, we have been learning about personification so we can use it in our writing. Personification is when an object is doing something that a person can do. It is like "the trees danced in the wind" because a tree can't dance but a person can but you can imagine the trees dancing. Ms Tito gave us a piece of paper that had sentences on it that we had to turn into personification. Here are some of the sentences:

The door opened.
The arrow moved across the page.
The leaf fell from the tree.

Here is what I turned them into:

The door slid open.
The arrow jumped across the page.
The leaf dived from the tree.

Here's the rest of the class sharing their Personification Snippets.