Richard de Hamel Visits the Middles!

Who is Richard de Hamel?
Richard de Hamel is a person that tells people about birds. He works at the sub-antarctic islands in between New Zealand and Antarctica.

What did he tell us about?
He told us about albatrosses:
- Albatrosses can fly for six years in a row.
- They sit on the water at night for food. The reason they do this at night is because all the good food comes up to the surface of the water from down in the deep sea.
- Albatrosses have really long wings and they don't need to flap their wings much. They just glide. They have really light bones with air in them.

What did he show us? 
Richard showed us some parts of the albatross:
- The bones from the wings were very light and hollow and they looked transparent. I think they are hollow and light because they were only tiny. It's lucky that the bones were light to help it fly more, otherwise they wouldn't be able to fly for six years.
- We saw the wing of the albatross and Richard told us about the tracking device that they put on the bird's legs to track them.

What was your favourite part of the talk from Richard de Hamel?
My favourite part was Richard getting the big albatross wings and trying to get Jacob to fly. I think that the reason why it didn't work is because he was too heavy.

By Riria, Delta and Libby!

Room 6 Hosts Middle Syndicate Assembly

Yesterday our class hosted the Middle Syndicate assembly. I got the important job of being photographer. Now I'm going to tell you a bit about what we shared at assembly and show you the photos I took. Enjoy!

We always start our assemblies with our whakatauki. Our whakatauki says 'ahakoa he iti he pounamu' and this means even though we are small we are precious.

Analise and Connor shared there summaries about stories they had read. They summarised the beginning, middle and end.

Lorelai read her recount about the 70's day.

We made some plans to build a water tank to collect water to water the garden. Riria and Jayda told the middles about this.

The whole class was proud to show off our art work.

Bo and Anushka explained our pie graph. It shows how much water we used at home for different things.

Lots of children got to share to the middle syndicate. We love hosting assembly!

From Lily H

Art Attack Week

Last week at Nayland Primary was Art Attack Week. The Middle Syndicate focussed on the 70's and did lots of artwork around this topic. We learned about and drew some symbols of the 70's in PVA glue and chalk pastels, decorated some puppets in fashionable 70's style clothes, learned some 70's song and dance, and then on Friday we all dressed up in stylish costumes and had a groovy disco!

Right now we are writing some recounts about our wonderful 70's day, so you can look forward to reading those. But for now, check out some of these great photos!

Riley!

Jessica!

James!

Some groovy 70's stars ready to share at assembly.

Delta and Analise!

Room 6 looked stunning in their 70's garments!

Swimming Sports

Last Monday all the school went to Nayland Pool for swimming sports.

What different events were there?
Maddash, flutterboard, freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and relays.

What was the class relay like?
It would have been freezing for the swimmers and it was really really exciting to see which class was going to win and which classes were not. When Mr C. clapped the bricks together the first people from each class jumped in the pool. But on the first go they did a false start (except for Room 6). They all had to come back to the start. We redid the race and wanted Room 6 to win. Anushka was the last swimmer and she had to race as fast as she could to catch up. Luckily, she beat the other classes and Room 6 came in first.

Bo felt really nervous with everyone screaming for her team. Stephanie also felt really scared because of the freezing cold pool. She felt she might freeze to death!

What was the teacher's versus students versus parents race like?
It was a bit unfair because the kids got a head start. But in the end the teachers won and they were dressed like ninjas! How cool is that?

By Room 6.

Swimmers working hard in the pool!

The Room 6 winning relay team

Maths

At the moment in maths, we are learning about TIME.

What have you learnt about time so far?
We have learned about different ways to measure time, and in one minute there is 60 seconds.
In one hour there is 60 minutes.
There are 28 days in February and 29 days in February each leap year. That means in a leap year there are 366 days.

What are some things you think you could do in one minute?
Read a book, write, draw a picture of a puppy or a tree, gardening, run round your backyard, eat a spring roll, drink a glass of water.

In one hour?
Sleep, play monopoly, watch a movie, swim in a pool.

In one day?
Walk to Richmond and back three times, get firewood ready for the winter, fly to Auckland and go see Mary Poppins and the Zoo and then fly home, stay at home.

Our trip to the suter art gallery

Where did we go?
On Wednesday the 27th of February Room 6 went to the Suter art gallery. It was really fun.

Whose artwork did we look at and where was she from?
Room 6 looked at Jane Evans pantings. They were amazing. We love her pantings. Jane Evans was from Nelson.

What were the main things she liked to paint?
Jane Evans liked to paint flowers, animals, people and nature.

What did we learn to do when using watercolur paints?
We learned that watercolour pants are smudgey. We learned that the more times you stroke the brush on the paint pallet, the stronger your colour will be. And we learned to wet our whole piece of paper then use different brushes to paint with.

Here is a great video of our trip to the Suter. Thank you so much to Lily K-H's mum for making us this video :D
From Stephanie and Connor.

Reading and Writing

What have we been learning to do in Reading?
We have been learning about predicting before we read a story and while we are reading.

Why is this important?
This is important because it makes us think about what we are going to read and what we have read.


What have we been learning to do in writing?
We have been learning about writing more detail in our descriptions.
We have been learning to 'show' instead of 'telling' in our writing. Here is an example of a sentence that 'tells': I felt tired. Here is an example of how we can 'show' this sentence to the reader with more detail: 'I was yawning for ages, my mouth was wide open like a hippopotamus. My eyes were nearly shut, and I knew I was about to drop off to sleep'.
We are also learning to split our writing into paragraphs. Each paragraph is about a different main idea.

Why is it important to learn these things?
It is important to be able to add details to make our writing more interesting for whoever reads it. That could be parents, friends, or teachers.
It is important to put our writing into paragraphs so everything isn't all mixed up. It helps to have it broken into ideas to make it easier to read.

What have we been writing about?
We have been writing descriptions about a pet or a person who is special to us. We are doing this so that everybody in our class can learn about us and about the people or animals important to us.

When we have finished our writing, we will put some examples on the blog so that you can read them too!

By Anushka, Jayda and Ellie!