St Brendan's Middle Syndicate: Welcome to Room 8’s Blog

Recount Writing

We wrote ‘Recounts’ about what we enjoyed learning over the year.

I enjoyed making butter during our Instructional Writing and Sustainability unit, Grass to Glass. I used the butter to make a slice by following the instructions of a recipe.

Zoe

I enjoyed learning to line dance during our Cultural Diversity of The Arts unit.

I used steps made a pattern and I liked standing behind my best friend who helped me.

Sophie

I enjoyed learning about the artist, Norval Morrisseau, and his X-ray Eastern Woodland painting style, during our Cultural Diversity of The Arts unit. I used pastels on paper bags and I drew a fish and a colourful life line that went around my artwork.

Grier

I enjoyed planting sunflower seeds in containers to grow in class. It was fun coming into school each day and watching the sunflowers growing. The sunflowers have now been transferred to the class garden plot.

Oliver H

Making Cornflake slice with jam and cream as part of our Instructional Writing unit was fun. I was put into a group and each of us had to bring an ingredient to use.

Rebecca

I enjoyed making butter as part of our Instructional Writing and Sustainability unit, Grass to Glass. It was quite hard shaking the cream in the jar at first, but then I got the hang of it.

Jacob

I enjoyed writing instructions and baking a Coconut and Lemon Slice as part of our Instructional Writing unit. I made the butter to use in our baking as part of our Sustainability unit, Grass to Glass. Parents came in to help.

Quinn

I enjoyed working with the Pasifika group and learning all about Samoan Language. It was fun having, Malo, teach us new songs, prayers, common phrases, numbers and the correct pronunciation.

Abbey

My favourite activity was gymnastics and jumping on the trampoline and doing tricks in the air before landing on the soft mat.

Nathan

I enjoyed planting herb seedlings in the school garden plot. The herbs smelt nice. I also planted Basil and Sunflower seeds in containers to grow inside the class.

Harrison

I enjoyed making Chocolate Fudge as part of our Instructional Writing unit. My group got to pick what slice we wanted to bake and we each brought in an ingredient to use.

Myra

I got to make butter during our Instructional Writing and Sustainability unit, Grass to Glass. I used the butter to make a Chocolate Cake. Linda, my stepmother, was my group parent helper.

Lynnsey

I enjoyed Graffiti Art as part of our Arts unit. I learnt to create my name in Bubble print and decorated it with spiders, dinosaurs’ parts, cobwebs and other pictures.

Mackie

I enjoyed learning place value, reading a compass, reading million numbers and creating shapes during Mathematics. I found it interesting and fascinating as it my favourite subject. Mathematics is one of the most important subjects in your life as it is good to know how to use Mathematics.

Jimmy

I enjoyed Graffiti Art and creating my name and illustrating it with pictures that show my identity.

Jordan

I enjoyed being a Milk Monitor with the Fonterra Milk in Schools programme. My job was to get the milk cartons from the milk fridge and hand them out to each student during lunch eating. My favourite part was getting the recycling bin out and making sure the students folded the cartons correctly to recycle them.

Oliver N

I enjoyed baking slices as part of our Instructional Writing unit. I got to try a piece of everyone’s baking and my favourite was Caramel and Chocolate slice. It was fun and cool!

James F

I enjoyed PE and learning Gymnastics. I had fun using all the equipment. I also liked working in the school garden plot and planting herbs.

James D

I enjoyed extension Art with Mrs McGuiness. My favourite artwork was the Paper City. I used coloured paper pieces and glued them to black paper to create a city scene.

Dylan

I enjoyed cooking Fudge with my Mum as part of making butter during our Instructional Writing and Sustainability unit, Grass to Glass. I wrote out my recipe and I got to eat some of the chocolate while I was baking.

I also liked being the class Computer Monitor as every day I switched on the computers ready for learning. Sometimes, I got to use Google Chrome and create images, it was fun!

Charlie

I enjoyed Athletics and relay running. I ran lots of races and it is good to keep fit.

Pat

I enjoyed choreographing line dance steps during our Cultural Diversity in The Arts unit. The steps were hard to do at first but then with practise they became easier.

I got to be in the front row of our Cultural Performance and show our dance to the community.

Lachlan

Drama class was what I enjoyed the most this year. I liked acting out the story of ‘How Maui Slowed the Sun’ to my audience. I also enjoyed extending myself during our Narrative Writing unit and writing creative stories. I got to write new stories each week using adjectives, nouns, verbs and similes.

Kobe

I enjoyed making butter during our Instructional Writing and Sustainability unit, Grass to Glass. All I needed was a jar and cream. I shook the cream in the jar to make butter. I got to bake a slice using the butter and taste the butter on a cracker, it was yum!

Rachel

I enjoyed icing biscuits during our Instructional Writing unit. I got to follow a recipe and mix my own delicious coloured icing. I put the icing on a plain biscuit and eat it. Making the icing was super fun and it was the best time of my life!

Abigail

I enjoyed being the Garden Guy and making sure the class garden plot was weed free and watered. I got to plant the Sunflower seedlings in the garden.

I also liked being the Food Bin monitor and recycling all the food scraps into the compost garden.

Huntar

During Week 3, our ‘Gardening Group’ will begin planting herbs in the school garden plot to make ‘Bouquet Garni’ bundles.

THURSDAY 6 NOVEMBER

ROOM 8 - Garden bed in the middle closest to the rail boundary fence.

We are planting herbs such as Thyme, Coriander and Parsley to make ‘Bouquet Garni’ bundles to add to stews while cooking to release their flavours.

First we decided where we were going to place our herbs in the garden bed.

Then we separated the seedlings and dug holes into the soil and bedded them by pressing down around them so they would sit tightly without falling over.

We had some Sunflower and Basil seeds, so we decided to plant them in containers to grow inside the warmth of the classroom.

First we placed some bark at the bottom of the containers to give the soil drainage when they are watered.

Then we added a layer of compost to the bark as the bed for the seeds to lay on.

We sprinkled the Basil seeds and poked the Sunflower seeds round side up onto the bed of soil and covered it with a thin layer of compost.

Once the seeds shoot and become healthy seedlings we will transplant them in the garden.

Huntar is the Room 8 ‘Garden Guy’ and he makes sure the containers are watered daily and tends to the garden plot making sure it is weed free and watered.

One Sunflower shoot has already appeared. We will measure the height as it grows tall.

Narrative Writing

When you write a narrative story, you are telling a story.

We are learning to write a narrative that has the correct story structure. During our differentiated writing lessons we used our learning styles to help us develop and write great descriptive stories.

A good beginning:

· Has an attention grabbing opening sentence

· Introduces the main character in an interesting way

· Describes where, when and who

· Identifies a problem the main character has

A good middle describes:

· How the main character tries to solve their problem

· Has some complications along the way

A good ending:

· Solves the problem in a believable way

· Is satisfying to the reader

· Tells what happens to all the characters