Elliott's New Blog

Elliott has now made a blog as well. It is called Elliott's Space. It is very cool. He has a great photo of his guinea pigs.

Miss K

Binghamton School is to send us a travel toy- Midnight

We have begun linking with Grade Four and Five children from Binghamton, New York in USA. Fern, our little teddy, will be sent off soon to visit with them and join Tiny Ted in America. Mrs Sullivan's class have been off to a Science Fair and taken Midnight with them. These are our first photos of Midnight. They are going to send Midnight to us and we are going to send Fern to visit with them. They called him Midnight because the time zones are all different to ours.
Look at that snake! I am really pleased that we don't have snakes in New Zealand. Can you see that tiny snake that someone is holding as well! I hope they are not poisonoous! Does anyone know what kind they are? Dino- any answers?

Fern at Cubs

Last night Fern and I went to Cubs and had a great time. He even got to wear a scarf and woogle. He looked at all of my badges like the First Aid badge and the Entertainers badge. He was surprised how many badges he saw.
By Tyler

Our Waimea field trip gains NZ recognition

I got an email today from The Royal Society of NZ Environmental and Monitoring Action Project who said that they wanted to feature our field trip to the Waimea River on the case study section of their web site.

I have entered the report of our field trip in a nationwide comptetition to win waterways monitoring equipment for our school which will be judged over the school holidays.

Let us keep our fingers crossed.

Miss K

Fern among the grapes

Appleby School is in a grape growing area of New Zealand. This is Fern is the basket with the grapes. He is trying to eat them but he might get a little sick from them if he eats too much. Sorry Fern.Fern is hiding in the finest grapes of Nelson. He is trying to eat them but I do not think Dad will like that. Ha! Ha! Fern can not get out.

By Nicole

Fern among the ferns

Last night I went to the native bush near my house.Here is Fern sitting with me in the ferns that are in my native bush. My big brother took the photo!By Jack

Fern with Dino's eels

Last night I got to take the camera home and take photos of Fern with my eels in a pond up in Galeo Estate which is a subdivision down Maisey Road. Dad helped supervise me in case I fell in. In the bucket we put sheeps' kidneys to bring them in. Fern looked a bit scared of the big eel.
By Dino

Dylan's kitten

This is my kitten. It is a boy. It is 9 weeks old. Its name is Basil.

by Dylan

Shania's kitten

I got a kitten. His name is Fluffy. He eats kitten food and kitten milk. I have toys for him. He likes to play with his toy mouse. He sleeps on a sheep fur. He sleeps with teddys.

By shania

Tiny Ted makes it to America

Tiny Ted is now safely in Virginia, America. WOW. How cool is that! Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach helped him get there after her very successful series of keynote lectures around NZ for TUANZ. She has posted an entry about his journey on her blog. He is soon to meet a whole lot of beginning teachers in Williamsburg when she takes him to one of classes on Thursday.

ICT homework MMS

I have had some great text messages for homework from Georgie, Susa, Dylan, Amberley and Braden as part of their ICT homework this week. One of my favourites so far is a MMS from Amberley of Brittany's new puppy!

Aren't I clever being able to email my photos from my phone to my computer. I can't walk and text at the same time though- I have to give it all my attention!!!!!

Miss K and Amberley

Fern makes his appearance

This week some lucky children are going to get to bring Fern home to take photos of him doing Nelson things before we can post them on our blog so that Mrs S's class at Horace Mann Elementary School in Binghamton, New York, can see him in his Nelson home before he goes to stay with them. Here is Mrs S's class blog page. To see it just click on the link. This exchange of toys helps us to forge links between children and schools across the globe. We are soon to use our ICT skills to make a co-operative jig-saw puzzle showing our two classes together. It will look great on our classroom wall.

Waimea River Photos

Dean Schneider came with us on our Waimea River water testing field trip and took these photos while we were doing our testing. Dean is a relieving teacher who helps us in the classroom sometimes. You may remember him from our Dean Schneider podcast we did last year about the book Hoiho's Chicks (a hoiho is the Maori name for the yellow-eyed penguin). Dean took all the photos for that book.

To hear more about our trip click on the photo of us or the Waimea River link below.

The Waimea River

This photo was taken as we first arrived at the testing site and we are telling the children about all the wonderful creatures we will be able to find. Note the clump of tussock grass that we are sitting on!
We spent some time looking for eels and koura but found none! The water level had risen so high that they were all safely out in the now deeper water!
Oscar was fascinated by what he had found.
Brittany found out that the water was really clear to over one metre. That is pretty good!
If you look behind Elliott you will see the clump of grass that we were sitting on when we first arrived. It is nearly under the water completely!

Oscar has made a blog

Oscar and his Dad have been busy and made a blog for themselves. You will have to visit and leave him an encouraging comment. Well done, guys. To visit Oscar's Blog click here!

ICT Homework

Here is a template for this week's homework. The focus this week is on using ICT in lots of different ways. Don't be worried if you don't have a computer. There are lots of other forms of ICT that you can use. Again, please add any further ideas that we may have missed.

Miss K

Our Waterways wiki gets started

Today's field trip to test the health of the Waimea River did not go as planned. Your children will tell you what happened and we will blog more about it later.

We did have the chance to start work on our wiki which was great. Your children are encouraged to add to the Waterways wiki from home. Your children will show you how.

Remember to click on EDIT THIS PAGE and click on SAVE before you move on.

This photo of White group working on their wiki page could well become one of my favourites. All children are so totally engaged in the collaborative process of adding their learning to their wiki page that they don't notice that I am waving the camera about! Everyone working wirelessly together on the web to create on-line content about their learning. Just what 21st century learning is all about.
Here black group are doing the same. Great stuff!

Miss K

Tiny Ted leaves for another adventure

Today we also said our good-byes to Tiny Ted who is moving on to America to join another class of children who will hopefully enjoy his company as much as we do. Jessica took a couple of sad looking photos but I thought you would enjoy this one more as we tried to cheer ourselves up!
We are sending with him a CD ROM of photos and a little movie showing some of Tiny Ted's adventures while in New Zealand. Leaving home is always a bit of a risk and we hope to see and hear back from Tiny Ted and his adventures in America before too long. Good luck Tiny Ted.

Homework

We had another brainstorm today to think of the ways we might do our home work this week. I bet you can think of some more home work that children could help with around the home. When you do please add to the comments in the comment section.Remember homework is due back at school on a Thursday.

Weet-bix Try-athlon

Last Sunday we did the Weet-bix Try-athlon. In this photo we are getting ready to go. We had to swim out in the sea, then have a bike ride and a run. It was cool.The hardest part for me was to run. Everyone got a medal and here is me with mine. I was very proud of myself.
On Monday Miss K took a photo of us all with our medals. We are stars.


By Georgie

Portraits at the Suter Art Gallery

Today we also went to the Suter Art Gallery to learn more about portraits. We looked at some portraits of Amelia Suter and the Bishop Suter.

They didn't look very happy to have their photo taken! We talked about why people have a portrait made and what sorts of portraits you can have.

Then we looked more closely at some of the portraits in the exhibition.

We were told the story of Huria Matenga. Here is what we can remember of the story...

In the old days there was no big cars. So there was no transport trucks so they had to sail boats over to Wellington with their stuff on it. There was a big storm. They tried to go back to Nelson but they couldn't see the light house so they had to try to go to the beach but they hit rocks. People nearby heard the crash of the Delaware ship hitting the rocks and the people's names were Huria Matenga and her brother and husband. Huria Matenga swam out to the ship with a rope around her tummy. She climbed on the ship. Her brother tied the rope to a rock and the sail went around and hit one of the sailors in the head and he was knocked unconscious.

The whole crew managed to clicmb down the rope to shore apart for the man who was unconscious. They were all saved. They had to watch the ship fall to bits and Huria was given a watch to say thank you for saving all those lives.

By Susa and Zach

When we had had a good look at the portraits we had a go at sketching one. Jessica Ahlberg would have liked this but I bet she would have liked a lot more time to finish her work. Jenny will give us some more time.
Tiny Ted had one of his last trips out from Appleby School before he goes to America on Friday for the next part of his world tour!

Monarch Butterflies

Today we were lucky enough to be able to talk with Dr Barrie Frost from Ottawa, Canada who is a very clever scientist. He is visiting Nelson and staying with Amberley's grandparents. One of his research projects is to study the migratory paths of monarch butterflies. He showed us some incredible photographs that took our breath away. We learnt some really interesting facts about these incredible butterflies. Here are some of the things that we remembered....

• Butterflies travel a long way and the sun is their compass.
• 
  
• Some monarchs live for only a month but the ones that have to survive over winter might live for six months.
• 
  
• The monarchs lay their eggs on the bottom of swan plant leaf.
• 
  
• The monarch has a poison in its body that it gets from the milky stuff in the swan plant.
• 
  
• The monarchs can flock on the trees in Mexico where they winter over.
• 
  
• They migrate across America between Mexico and Canada and it can take over five generations for them to return to the same spot a year later. Isn't that incredible. How do they remember where to go to get back to the very same spot their great-great-grandparents came from?

Dr Frost was a great speaker and really brought the topic alive for us. Thank you, Dr Frost.

Waterways Wiki

I have made a Waterways wiki- a collaborative website for us to record our learning about Waterways.

A wiki is another way to join and be part of what is written on the internet. We made a wiki on Flight last year but this one is much easier and more child friendly to edit.

Feel free to add to the resources on line if you know of any.

4000 hits on our blog & a new podcast

I just noticed that we have 4050 hits on our blog. Now that is impressive isn't it, Jackson! We will have another party when it gets to 5000. How's that!

We have made a new podcast as well. It was recorded at the swimming sports when I interviewed anyone that came within arms reach!

Click on this link to hear our new podcast.

Monarch Man to visit

Dr Barrie Frost, Canada-based visual neuro-scientist is going to visit our classroom on Tuesday morning to help us find out more about the monarch butterfly and his work analysing data about them.

We will look at the New Zealand Monarch website before his visit and share some of their wonderful resources and videos.

Dr Frost spoke with us today and he was excellent. He told us about Monarch Watch- another great website for keeping an eye on Monarch butterflies.

Frances' Family Visit

Frances' grandma and aunty have spent a few weeks with her family while on holiday from the United Kingdom. They all went over to the Abel Tasman National Park last week and enjoyed our wonderful Kaiteriteri Beach, went out on a launch, saw some basking seals on the rocks and tasted real live kina fresh and squirming from the sea bed harvest. What a great taste of New Zealand. Frances will be sad to see them leave.

Get On Board Whiteboard Display

This photo is a taping together of five photos taken of our whiteboard. At the beginning of the year to kick off the Get On Board theme I made a train called the Moturoa Express with a view that each topic of learning would equal one more carriage on our learning train.

Every evening Trevor our caring caretaker would sneak into the classroom and add a little extra to the train. Each morning the children would arrive and look out for the new addition. It was lots of fun but eventually I ran out of whiteboard space.

A blog photo is a great way to not loose the images forever. To get a better look click on the photo and you will get an enlargement.

Thanks Trevor. It was great.

Our First Assembly for 2007

It was our first assembly of the year today and we did really well. Elliott was the person in charge and we had lots of parents turn up to listen and enjoy. We did a great dramatisation of the Super-supper March poem, followed by a listen to the podcast we did with Jessica Ahlberg. Then we acted out Jack Johnson's Sharing Song. The whole assembly was then capped off by our boat building display in the school pool. It was wonderful.


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After assembly Frances's grandmother and aunty said good-bye before they head off back to England and wanted a photo of Frances with her teacher. I prefer to be behind the camera as a rule but there you go!



Miss K

Look at our Clustermap now!

I was looking at our Clustermap today and noticed just how many more dots there are on our blog map now. I think through the mentoring project I am doing with teachers in Virginia and an on-line sharing session I had with teachers in Alabama we are getting a lot more readers from America. I have just begun a conversation with a teacher in New York and hope to extend our on-line communications with her class in the States. It is a small world.

I see Elliott's aunty in Europe commenting on our blog as well. It is great to have a world- wide audience for what we are doing. Keep up the great work people and keep those comments coming!

Reading Homework

We started our homework properly for the year this week. Last week we just had spelling homework but seven children forgot to bring it back! Hopefully this week we will do better. For homework this week as well as the spelling we are going to think of lots of different ways of reading and record them. We did a mind map of the ways we could think of using Kidspiration which a very cool way of quickly recording such things. You can download a free trial using the link above.

We talked some more about building on the learning of others and collaborating to make our learning even better. If you can think of any more ways we could read for homework you could add them to the comments section by clicking on the word comments below this post and we will add your ideas to the mind map.

Gliding

In Susa's holiday she went gliding. She is here to take to us through what she did.In my holidays I went gliding. It was so fun. I went up in a glider. A glider is a non- powered plane that glides around.

By Susa


Susa gave a wonderfully detailed oral explantion and description of her adventures up high. It was a pity that I wasn't recording her. It was so good. Well done, Susa.

Miss K

Tyler's new guitar

Today Tyler brought his new guitar and it was a lot of money to buy. It made a big sound when he played it because it has an amplifier. He is quite good.

by Tyler, Georgina and Braden

Water, water, everywhere

Our next chunk of learning is about Water- where it comes from, where it goes, what it can do and how to look after it and nurture this most valuable resource.

Our chocolate fish end up in Wales

You will probably remember a few weeks ago we had our promotion when we offered chocolate fish as a reward (bribe) for adding a comment to our blog. As well as individual chocolate fish we sent a class set of chocolate fish to Room 10 at Brightwater School and to Paul H's class in Wales. Here is a photo of where they ended up! The first of March is a national Welsh pride day (St David's Day) where children get all dressed up in national costume and celebrate being Welsh. Our chocolate fish were there too. How cool is that! I am not sure that they would have lasted long though!