Descriptive Writing

Miss Bannan's writing group have been working on descriptive writing. This week we have been writing about lemons. We used wow words and our senses to describe what they were like to look at, touch, taste and smell. We also watched a buddy eat the lemon and watched their face to see their reaction. Taylor, Turanga, Ella-Pearl, Cole and Sophie wrote some amazing descriptions and got to read their stories out to Mr M, who was very impressed and gave them a gold sticker! 

Read some of our amazing descriptive writing below:

The room was filled with excitement and anticipation as the class stared at the object that looked like a yellow fruit and an L&P ice block. As I bit into the juicy, sour, stinging and a little bit transparent lemon my tastebuds were running away from the lemon because they didn't like it. My eyes crunched and scrunched up like a crunchy bar. It was extremely yellow and sour. When I looked at the skin, I saw some little gold freckles. It was really strong. - Ella-Pearl.

When Mrs Harris took the white bowl of who-knows-what out of the fridge I felt anxious. As I touched the lemon it froze my hand! My taste buds stung! It also tasted sour. Zara's eyes scrunched up and her hands flapped as she bit into the lemon. When I bit into the lemon I was disgusted. - Cole.

Have you ever eaten a whole lemon before? I have. It was yellow like the sun. It was squishy. It smelt amazing like lemon perfume. It was juicy. I loved the lemon. It was so loud when Mrs Harris brought the gleaming bowl out of the fridge. The room grew with anticipation. When we all bit into the lemon our faces crinkled with disgust. Our taste buds stung as we threw the lemon out. - Taylor.

The room buzzed with excitement. Everyone was so excited because Mrs Harris said we would have something to eat. Everyone was yelling. My ears blew up!! My ears didn't actually blow up. The inside of the lemon looked like mars. When Lucas bit into the lemon his eyes disappeared because the lemon was so sour. - Turanga.

As Mrs Harris pulled the shiny bowl out of the cold fridge I got excited! If I tell you it was sour, can you guess what it was? If you guessed a lemon you're right! There was a lemon in the bowl! WARNING! Never taste a thing that looks like a little yellow planet. The lemon gleamed in the shiny bowl. When Rylan ate the sour fruit his eyes scrunched up and his tongue poked out. - Sophie.

Birthday Party Games

Mrs Jones recently had a birthday and the children in Te Ope Ruaraki helped her celebrate with an afternoon of party games - pin the tail on the donkey, pass the parcel and musical chairs.
We wrote about it the next day.
Here are a few:

Tyler wrote:
On Mrs Jones' birthday we played musical chairs.  I was proud of Kataraina for winning.  I liked the day.

Phoenix wrote:
We played pass the parcel.  It was fantastic.

Kataraina wrote:
Yesteday it was Mrs Jones' birthday.  It was a school.  We played games.  It was good. She was 48.

Lucas M wrote:
We played pin the tail on the donkey.  Everyone won.  It was fantastic at school.

Aaleiyah wrote:
Yesterday we played musical chairs at Mrs Jones' party at school.

Drama

Te Ope Ruaraki have been having lots of fun doing Drama with Mrs Gatehouse.

Learning to Order Numbers

Some of the children in Te Ope Ruaraki are learning to order numbers from the smallest to the biggest. 
Kelicia, Tyson, Christine, Isabelle and Rylan are working so hard with their number knowledge.

Descriptive Sentence Writing

 Miss McLeod's writing group have been working on writing descriptive sentences. Last week we used a picture of a beach and thought about what we could see, hear, smell and feel at the beach. We made a plan using wow words to describe.

Today we used our plans to turn our ideas into sentences. We used whiteboards so we could practise editing them and making them better.

Here are two sets of work that Miss McLeod thought were amazing!

Kobe's Writing

I can see colourful shells and I can see sparkly waves and I can see the sun reflecting on the water. The sun is making the water shiny. I can hear squawking seagulls.

Lee-Chin's Writing 

I can see sparkly shells splashing in the sparkly waves.

I can hear rolling splashing waves on the muddy sand.

At the beach the crabs are crawling in the shimmering hot sand. 

The crabs are going to the shimmering waves.

Stay tuned to see what we do next!

Lennox's Fantastic Writing!

Wow! Lennox was showing truly his Learning Powers on Tuesday in his writing.  He worked hard to create a piece of writing about a picture of a giraffe stuck up a tree. Lennox came up with some incredible ideas about how the giraffe may have climbed up the tree because it was hiding from predators! 

Lennox was very proud of his work and the effort that he put in and so was Miss McLeod, so he got to show Mr M his work, who was also very impressed!

Well done Lennox, keep up the great work!

Read Lennox's writing below!

One day a cheetah was chasing a giraffe. The giraffe climbed a tree. Then the cheetah gave up eventually. The giraffe climbed down because the giraffe was safe.

Hero Awards

Congratulations to our first heroes who were awarded a Hero Certificate at our very first Celebration Assembly of the year. 
You are fabulous - great to see you all using your People Powers and Learning Powers.

BEING GUARDIANS

Yesterday when Mrs Signal was on lunch time duty she discovered this little group of "guardians" who were picking up rubbish (other peoples rubbish) around the school.  They are doing a fantastic job at looking after our brand new school!

Wonderful Watermelon

This week the children in Te Ope Ruaraki had watermelon. 
We used our senses to explore the watermelon.
First we looked at it, then we smelt it, then we touched it, and last of all we tasted it.
We wrote down all of our ideas - and WOW words.
Then the next day we wrote some amazing stories about watermelon.  Check out our great describing words!

Practising Our Learning

Today Rocky decided to practise writing the word of the week during his choosing time, what a champion! Great to see you trying hard in your learning. 

Talking about our learning.

Today we started looking at a new way to solve addition problems. We are learning to count on from the biggest number. Check out our video, we were able to talk about the way we solved the problem.

Ted and Olive

Meet Ted and Olive. They spend their days looking through our learning space, looking for children that are showing their People Powers and Learning Powers. Ted and Olive choose a child each day that they would like to go home with. We love hearing about the adventures of Ted and Olive at your house. 

Self Portraits

This term in Te Ope Ruaraki we are learning all about ourselves and what makes us special. We have been exploring with different materials while creating our self portraits. We've experimented with pencil, pastel and natural materials. Here's a sneak peek of our work, hopefully they will all be finished soon so there will be a lot more to show off!

Te Ope Ruaraki Authors.

Check out Brooklyn and Kataraina's weekend recounts. An amazing effort recording the sounds they could hear. Well done, keep up the great work!

Term 1 Newsletter

Our first newsletter for the year is available here.  Future newsletters will be emailed out like the school newsletter so please make sure we have your email address.
Thanks

Learning Through Play

In Te Ope Ruaraki we are loving being back at school.  We are enjoying getting to know one another.  We are learning how to work together and play together nicely.