Bye from Room 9!

Sadly it has come to the end of the school year and it is time for us all to move off to other classrooms.

THANK YOU for visiting our class blog and leaving so many useful comments throughout the year. We have learned a lot from your comments and been able to better reflect on our learning because of them.

BUT YOU CAN CONTINUE THE LEARNING JOURNEY WITH US!

Please visit Rachel's new 2009 Room 9 class blog here:
http://room9nelsoncentral2009.blogspot.com/

You can follow the rest of us at our other Nelson Central School Blogs here.
Thanks for sharing in our learning journey :)

From Rachel & Room 9 2008

We'll show you how to dance!

On the 4th of December Kowhai Syndicate held our end of year production called "Down Memory Lane".

Room 9 learned and performed an amazing dance called "The Evolution of Dance". It shows different styles of dance through the ages. We learnt most of the dance off Judson Laipply's video on You Tube and Rachel modified lots of the moves to make it easier and appropriate for 6 and 7 year olds.

Take a look at our amazing dance below, we hope you enjoy it!
We'd love your comments too!

Our Poetry Voicethread

We have been learning to write great poems. We have been using lots of adjectives in our poetry to describe and make our writing interesting.

Take a look at our Voicethread below where you can hear us reading our best poems (if you can't see it, make sure you press reload on your Internet Browser).

Adjectives 2

Can you think of some more great adjectives to descibe THIS new picture...

A special birthday

Yesterday was a special birthday for someone who is very important to Nelson Central School...

Our Principal Dr Potaka!

Click play on the video to listen to Room 9 wish him a very special "Happy Birthday" :)

Rich Adjectives

We have been learning to use adjectives to describe things. Soon we will use all our knowldge of adjectives to write some awesome poems.

We had to use 6 adjectives to describe an object or a thing. Here are some of our lines:

The toy monkey is green, purple, orange, happy, cheeky and cute.
By Siobhan

My classroom teddy is soft, cuddly, blue, useful, little and has black eyes.
By Grace

The dice is useful, rubbery, small, soft, yellowy and dangly.
By Holly

My learning journal is colourful, useful, small, hard, rustly and rough.
By Te Miri

My pencil is blue, wooden, sharp, smooth, hard, cold and little.
By Arjuna

The globe is round, blue, useful, colourful, big and hard.
By Melany

Can you think of at least 2 words to describe the object in this picture?
Post your answer as a comment below:

The Pumpkin Seed Project

Room 9 is taking part in the 2008 Pumpkin Seed Project with lots of other classes around the world.

We had to get a pumpkin that was a between certain weights. Luckily Sue M and Room 1 had one exactly the right weight. It was 2.2kgs.

Today we learnt about estimating. We had to make a smart guess at how many pumkin seeds would be inside our pumpkin.

We made a chart showing all our guesses. If you click on the photo you'll be able to see our guesses much larger. The average number of all of our guesses was 37.


Tomorrow we are going to open up the pumpkin and count all of the seeds to see if our estimations were correct!

If you want to read more about the pumpkin seed project, click here!

Diana Noonan Visits NCS

Today Nelson Central School went to assembly.
Diana Noonan told us a story.
It was called The Giant's Stew.
By Tony


Today Diana Noonan (an author) came to the Nelson Central School hall. Room 9 went there to meet her. Room 9 walked there. First Diana read the school stories that she wrote. My favourite book she wrote was called "Trees belong to everyone".
By Merlyn


On Friday Room 9 and the rest of Nelson Central went to the hall. Her name is Diana Noonan. She is an author. She wrote Best Loved Bear, Best Dressed Bear, Trees belong to everyone and The Giant's Stew. My favourite story was Trees belong to everyone. It was my favourite story because I like it how the children sang. Diana Noonan is a nice lady.
By Charlotte


Today Nelson Central School had a very special visitor. The visitor's name was Diana Noonan. Her job is to write books. She is called an author. Diana read us some books. When she read the books her tone of voice sounded cool. She wrote the books herself! They were good books.
By Siobhan

Messages for Melany

Melany is away from Room 9 and is visiting China for a few weeks. She will be back next term. Hopefully she will have learnt some Chinese language and can teach us!

Here are some messages for Melany from Room 9:

How are you doing in China Melany? From Oscar

I miss you Melany. From Holly

I hope you're having fun in China. From Ella

I hope you've learned a few words in Chinese. From Merlyn

I hope you're having a great time. From Amber

I hope you are keeping up with us on the blog. From Siobhan

We have been learning about writing more instructions. From Luke M

We have been doing more learning about exporting. From Te Miri

On Thursday we visited Room 14 and asked questions about what they learned about this Term. From Siggi

We have been doing some painting on Kidpix. From Arjuna

We have been learning how to make paper ships. We got your comment. From Tyler

Thanks for your comment Melany. We read it at email time today. Good to see you are reading our blog all the way from China. Hope you're having a great time visiting your Grandparents. We are on holiday after tomorrow for two weeks. See you when you get back! From Rachel

Loud Shirt Day

Last Friday it was Loud Shirt Day. It was to raise money to give children who can't hear very well a voice. It is to help them get cochlea implants so that children can hear.

Amber, Jack, Logan and Te Miri all got dressed up in their loud shirts and donated some money. Logan and Jack also won a prize for their great loud shirts!

Processing Fish

We have been learning how fish gets from the sea in New Zealand to a dinner plate in another country.

One of the processes of exporting fish overseas is processing it.

Take a look at some of our diagrams to see how Sealord process the fish on the factory freezer trawlers after it has been caught.

By Amber

By Beau

By Logan

By Te Miri

How to make Honey Toast

We are learning to write instructions for procedures in writing. A few weeks ago Room 9 made TOAST! We got to choose from white, multigrain or wholemeal bread and honey, jam or vegemite spread!

After we had made the toast (and eaten it!) we wrote our instructions. Two Room 9 students recorded our procedure with photographs. In the video below you can see "How to make Honey Toast". We hope you enjoy it.

Well done to our photographer Hayden, and our model, Luke M, for independently getting EVERY step of the process captured!

Making Paper Ships

We have been learning about the Factory Freezer Trawlers that are used to catch and process fish in New Zealand. This is part of the process of exporting fish to other countries.

Today we used the website "WikiHow" to learn how to make a paper ship. If you look at the actual article here you can even see the excellent drawings they have of each step of the process (these were very useful).

You can see the instructions we followed below:

How to Make a Paper Ship

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Steps

1. Take a piece of rectangular paper and place it in front of you so the paper is in portrait format - with the longer edges to the side. Fold it in half lengthwise so the top meets the bottom - with the fold at the "top" of the piece of paper.
   
2. Fold in to half width and unfold - this marks your center line.
   
3. Fold the top right corner down so the top edge lines up with the center line.
   
4. Flip over. Repeat. This should create a "house" like shape with a "big" roofline and about an inch of paper below the triangle of the roof
   
5. Fold bottom edge up. Flip over the paper.
   
6. Fold bottom edge up.
   
7. This makes a paper hat shape.
   
8. Grasp the hat shape in the center. Do this at the point where the diagonal creases meet.
   
9. Pull apart the paper and flatten. You should end up with a diamond-shaped piece of paper.
   
10. Fold the bottom edge up. Leave about a 1/4 of an inch (0.65 cm) border between the top edge and the edge of portion that has been folded-up. Once done, flip the paper over.
    
11. Fold the bottom edge to line up with the other side.
    
12. Hold the paper ship in the middle of the bottom edge. Pull it apart and flatten.
    
13. The paper should now be this strange shape.
    
14. Take the left and right triangular portions and pull apart. The bottom edge will flip up on its own.
    
15. Look at your creation: Your paper ship is now complete.
    

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Make a Paper Ship. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Cross Country Racing!

On Wednesday 27^th of August at 1 o’clock the whole of Nelson Central School did Cross Country. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon.

We had the cross country at Nelson Central School on the front field. Normally we have it at the Botanics but it would have been too wet on the grass there. We only had to walk down to the front field from our classroom.

We have been training for cross country for 4 or 5 weeks.

There were lots of parents that came to Nelson Central School to watch us do cross country. It started with the 5 year old girls and ended with the open race. The first 10 children in each race got a number written on their hand.

Lots of Room 9 got places in the cross country:

6 year old girls:

· Holly – 1^st

· Ella – 5^th

· Siobhan – 10^th

6 year old boys:

· Oscar – 2^nd

· Jack – 5th

· Tyler – 6^th

· Baxter – 7^th

7 year old boys:

· Luke M – 3^rd

· Logan – 5^th

· Dylan 8^th

All of Room 9 got a Cross Country Participation certificate the next day. We all tried our hardest.

Shared Writing by Room 9

Arum lillies

A few weeks ago Room 9 went to the Suter Art Gallery. There were 700 Arum lillies. Anne Rush made the 700 hundred lillies in 1 year. The whole room was white. It was a rememberance room. We made our own Arum lillies with a milk bottle, pipe cleaners and plastic bags. We walked to the Suter Art gallery and back again.

By Luke M & Logan

Body in Action

On the 6th of August Room 9 walked to the Nelson Musuem.We went to see the Body in Action exebition. There was a giant nose,the guts game,smelly toilets,the pulser,the grinder,the muscle mania and the sensational sences.On the "Test your strength" thing I got up to good.

By Hayden

We're going to be famous!

We have been singing for choir at the Nelson Cathedral. We are going to be famous and everyone can buy one of our CDs. Tania and Bob are conducting us. Bob is recording our singing using big microphones. We are doing our best efforts with our singing. We bet you will like our CD. We will let you know when you can buy it!

By Beau

NZ's Exports

We have been learning about trading and imports and exports.

New Zealand exports lots of things to other countries around the world. This means we sell other countries things that we have lots of.

Do you know some of the things New Zealand sells to other countries?

Take a look at some of our Inspiration diagrams to find out what!

By Grace & Melany

By Charlotte & Quanah


CLICK HERE TO VIEW ALL OF ROOM 9'S DIAGRAMS!

Trade-a-thing Day

On Thursday 21st of August Kowhai Syndicate held a "Trade-a-thing Day" in the hall to celebrate the learning we have been doing in our Inquiry topic of Trading - looking at imports and exports. We each brought 2-3 things we no longer wanted anymore to trade/swap with other children in our syndicate.

Here are what some of Room 9 thought of Trade-a-thing Day:

I thought Kowhai's trade-a-thing was great. I got a book, a rabbit and a toy Jasmin. Before that I had an Aladdin book, a bag with a pencil sharpener and a ball and a bag with some other stuff in it. I traded with Logan, Ella and a girl in Renwick 2.
By Charlotte

I thought trade-a-thing day was great! I liked it because there were lots of cool toys and you could trade. There were lots of other children to trade with. I traded a fire engine for a spider (with Toby) and a puzzle for an aeroplane (with Oscar).
By Merlyn

I thought trade-a-thing day was fun. I traded with Quanah, Grace and Holly. I treaded with Grace for her pony and she got my giraffe puzzle. I traded with Quanah my cheetah puzzle for her violet doll. I traded with Holly my elephant puzzle for her doll's mirror.
By Siggi

I thought Trade-a-thing day was excellent, fantastic and fun. Before I had a note book, a teenage mutant ninja turtles car and a spider. After I had a fire engine, pen and the teenage mutant ninja turtles car. It was on Thursday. I liked trade-a-thing day because I like trading things.
By Toby

I thought trade-a-thing day was fascinating. I traded with Tyler. I traded my bouncy ball for a bionicle. I did not trade my car. I wanted to trade my car but everyone else only had little stuff to trade.
By Dylan


Here is a video of Room 9 all lined up with their things ready to trade:




[Special thanks to Dylan and Jack for making the title credits for our movie]

Olympic Current Events

Thursday was Olympics Current Events Day again in Room 9.

For our homefun, we had to bring or prepare something to talk to the class about to do with The Olympics.

Some children were chosen as they were the best prepared out of those who hadn't already made an Olympic Current Events video appearance.

We hope you enjoy our Olympic Current Events!