How Disappointing

We worked so hard in our elective group.  Every week we have spent some time gardening and some time designing and making our grassheads.  We finished making our grassheads last week and Mrs Nicholson placed them outside her classroom so they would get some sunshine and also a watering from the rain over the long weekend.  Unfortunately someone decided to wreck our project.  We came to school today to find the containers scattered around the back of the classroom and the grassheads thrown all over the place.  Some were high in the bank, some hidden behind the stage area, and most unable to be found.   We can't think who would do this.  And are so disappointed.

This is what we planned to make.  When the hair grew we were going to design our own haircuts.

But here's what we found:

Our containers scattered everywhere

Hidden behind the stage

Can you locate this grasshead hiding at the top?

Easter came early with a surprise visit

Holly bought her rabbits in to show the class.  We all got a cuddle and so enjoyed having a class pet for a few minutes:

Easter Baskets

On the Thursday before Easter we followed instructions to make ourselves an Easter basket.  The weaving was quite tricky but we all managed to make a small Easter basket to hold the eggs Mrs Nicholson gave us.  We also made Easter cards to give to our parents.  Look how delighted we are with our efforts:

Week 7 Cup winners.

Our winner were awarded their cups:
-  for taking the time to check and recheck before submitting their work to ensure it was of the highest quality they could produce.
-  for making such an effort with to change a deeply rooted habit to a better habit.

Star of the week for Week 7

Most Improved Week 7

Week 5 Star of the WeekM Cup Winners

Oops I think we forgot to post photographs of cup winners for week 5.  Sorry, you both deserved your cups for trying so hard and being so helpful.  Well done!

Star of the Week

Most Improved in Week 5

Writing Process

We have been working on defining the process we use in our class to write so that we can see how it it fits in with our Learning Capacities.  This process also allows us to help each other identify ways to improve our writing.  As a result we are finding we need much more time to conference with each other and bounce our ideas off each other in order to clearly write our ideas.  We now peer conference when we first get an idea, straight after planning and again after editing.  Some of us are choosing to go back to a forth person after crafting our writing to see if our buddies can help us re-craft our text and make it even better.  Here is what we have come up with:

As you will notice we are using all of our Learning Capacities in this process more that once and in conjunction with other Learning Capacities.  The process is cyclic and can continue going through the writing, editing, sharing, crafting and sharing again as many times as we like before we finally feel happy with our writing.

Cup Winners

Week 6 cups will be awarded this week as we didn't have the cups back in the classroom on Friday.  Below are the cup winners for week 5.  Congratulations.  

Star of Week 5

Most Improved for Week 5

Narrative Writing

This week we have been focusing on noticing details and including them in our writing to create descriptive pictures in the readers mind.  We looked at two pictures and then thought about what we might see, hear, smell, taste and feel then wrote a short story.  Here are a three wonderful examples:

The Big Dive In by Mischa
A boy climbed up a gigantic, steep, harsh rock.  When he was at the top he looked down at the glimmering water below.  He took a deep breath.  Nervous he jumped.

The Big Splash By Oscar M
I feel the gigantic sharp rock scrape at my feet as I do a high 360 bunny hop.  The wind feels like a huge fist punching against my face.  A huge wave of excitement rushes through me as I plummet towards the dark blue freezing salty water.  I hear the huge ocean waves crashing against the warm golden sand.  I see the people swimming around and around the ocean I am diving into.  SPLASH!  The cold water hits me as I smash into the icy water.

Rock Pools by Liana
One quiet day while searching for crabs I heard my hand swishing the water.   I felt the bumpy rocks hitting my shoes and heard the wind blowing in my ears.  We were in luck.  We found a crab swirling through the water and lifted the rocks in search of more crabs.  The water was cold and I was frightened of a crab pinching me.  We felt great.  We had found lots of crabs.  We found a baby fish splashing its tail and we could hear it.  It splashed in my face.  The water was salty.  And then suddenly, a crab pinched me!