Rest in Peace Michael Jackson

On Friday we paid tribute to Michael Jackson, shortly after the news broke that he had passed away. I asked the class who had heard of Michael and every hand went up.

We proceeded to fill a wet lunch hour with a range of video clips from Michael's career, including 'Blame it on the Boogie' from his Jackson Five days, 'Black or White' and even the full version of 'Thriller'. Our neighbouring class couldn't resist, and joined us for the final song we played, 'Heal the World'.

Today for news board we talked about this news, and any updates that had occurred since Friday (NZ Time). We discussed a range of topics and someone asked about Michael Jackson's dance moves, in particular the "Moon Walk". Shortly after I cued up a YouTube clip of the famous Motown performance of 'Billy Jean'

Here is that video:

Room 18 - if you have any ideas or thoughts post them in. Or just enjoy this classic Michael Jackson performance.

New Zealand Native Fauna and Flora

Kia Ora Room 18!

For this exciting task you are to get your research thinking caps on and find out about some of New Zealand's wild life. Be they small creepy crawlies, insects or birds; how will we attract them and support them in our adopted school area.

Firstly, come up with a chosen fauna species; then find out as much as you can about it. We need to know how it will be attracted to our area, and how we can keep them in their natural environment, this means finding out about what fauna we may need to plant.

This is going to be great.

Room 18 - you are excellent scientists, so lets start studying!

Carey Park Camp 2009

I hope everyone has recovered from our awesome week at Carey Park Camp in Henderson Valley. The weather was great, the activities amazing and the children 100 % top class.

This task is for you to reflect, discuss, share thoughts and feelings about your experiences. Be honest and let us know about challenges you faced and over come, highlights that will stand out in your memories for years to come, or just any random thoughts you have about Carey Park Camp 2009.

Looking forward to reading your responses Room 18!

What's happening in our world?

This new section is for you to post your ideas about any current events that are happening to you and around you, be they in our country or somewhere else in the world. You may post links to articles that you have found, video clips that may be of interest or anything related to your post. It is also important that you respond to the article clearly and justify your opinions. Post comments and questions related to your current event or to the posts of others. This topic will be ongoing and I hope to see you adding more into here as you find it out.

Some links you may wish to use are: The New Zealand Herald, theStuff news site, TV 3 news, CNN (U.S.A), BBC (U.K), Australian news, TVNZ, or Google news. Any other great sites you find, please include your link.

Rich Task - What is an ecosystem?

Welcome back to Term 2 Room 18!

As part of our new Rich Task, we will be looking at natural life in our school environment - specifically focussed around plant life.

To start our new term, we will be looking first of all at defining our new topic and creating new understandings about how the natutal world around us works. So, your task for this post is to find out - WHAT IS AN ECOSYSTEM?

You will need to do some research to find out. If you use books, or internet sites please include a reference for your information. 

For example: The picture I used for this post has come from http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2007/20070516_forestboreal.jpg You must post the links for where you have sourced your information from.

If you have used a book, please inlcude the book title, author, illustrator in your post.

Turangawaewae - Share your introductions.

Room 18 are currently preparing for their final speech for this term. 

They have all made amazing progress in their understandings of what makes a great speech. The concept for these speeches is Turangawaewae, in which children explore their own family history, culture, origin and what makes themselves so unique.

Tūrangawaewae is one of the most well-known and powerful Māori concepts. Literally tūranga (standing place), waewae (feet), it is often translated as ‘a place to stand’. Sourced from: http://www.teara.govt.nz 

In this post Room 18, please write the final version of your introduction to your Turangawaewae speech.

I know already they are fantastic, now share them with the world.

Note: Remember to not post your surnames into the blog for Internet safety.

Speech - Oral Language Examples

In Room 18 we are currently learning about speaking in the form of speeches. We have been looking at presenting through speech and sharing with an audience through a range of situations and topics so far this year.


As a class we came up with some criteria to guide ourselves while speaking:

• We will use good volume by being not too loud and not to soft.
• We will be confident in our delivery.
• We will be clearly spoken. This could be ensuring we are well practiced, use clearly formed words and try not to hesitate during our speech.
• We will face the audience.
• We will use eye contact with all of our audience.
• We will be enthusiastic.
• We will use both body and vocal expression in our speeches. By using things like gesture, movement and facial expression.
• We will try to make our speech interesting to our audience. It should be well written and may contain humour, questions, controversy, quoatations and facts or weird things to hook the audience.

We will be using video to analyse our work. Here are the first samples we will try posting:

It would be most helpful to these children if you could post constructive feedback in relation to our class criteria - Be sure to say which clip or person you are talking to.