Grandparents Reading to Us.

A special treat we had for Literacy Week was when some of our grandparents came to read to us. We listened very carefully and enjoyed listening to stories we hadn't heard before.

Book Character Parade

The highlight of Literacy Week was the Book Character Parade. Here we are in our fantastic costumes.

Literacy Week

What a wonderful week have had for Literacy Week. We did lots reading and responding to books and enjoyed some special events.
Here are some of our highlights.


Miss King read us the story about Rainbow Fish and then we wrote about it. We also drew these lovely pictures.

On Tuesday, Frida, Laith and Monique presented their poems at the Poetry Festival. They were amazing standing up in front of the whole Koru Whanau. 

Well done!

Granville Came to Visit

The big book we have been reading this week is called Davy D's Dog, written by Jill Eggleton. 

Davy D. has a big, big dog in a teeny, tiny house. 
When his tail goes flick, flick, flick, things start to crash and smash.




Mrs Waite has a big dog as well. His name is Granville and he came to visit us today. Granville's tail went flick, flick, flick too but he didn't crash or smash anything. We let him lick our hands. Then we fed him a treat and gave him a pat. He felt soft. Thanks for visiting us, Granville. 

Poetry

We love doing poetry in Room 10. 

We have a new poem to learn and enjoy every week. Reading poems helps us develop our oral language. We learn to read smoothly with rhythm and phrasing and this helps us when we read books. The more often we reread our poems the better we get at reading. 

Here we are reading poems we already know from the big class poem folder and our own poem folders.

Reading poems also helps us notice rhyming words and develops our phonics skills. This helps us when we are writing as well as reading. 

At the end of each week we create our own responses to our poems by illustrating them. 

Then we take our poem folders home to share with our families over the weekend. 

Anzac Day

This week we have been learning about how and why we commemorate Anzac Day.

First we looked at the crosses displayed on the school field. We noticed that the crosses have names on them of people who died in World War One. We also saw the silver fern and poppies on the crosses. We have seen people wearing poppies to remember people who have died in wars.

Mrs Waite's Uncle Ron was a soldier in World War One and she brought some of her Uncle Ron's things to show us. It was so interesting to see his photo, his shaving kit and the special tankard he was given made from brass left over from the ammunition shells. 

We listened to a story about a boy and his father going to a Dawn Parade. We learned that people wear poppies on Anzac Day because in World War One poppies grew in the fields where people died. Wearing a poppy helps us to remember that lots of people have died in wars.

We also learned the meanings of some new words:

dawn - means early in the morning when the sun is just beginning to come up

gazed - means to look carefully and thoughtfully at something

So then we worked hard painting pictures of poppies growing in a field. We began by using crayon to draw grass. Then we dyed the paper green. After that had dried we used our fingers to paint the red poppies. It was fun dipping our fingers into the gooey paint. Finally we added the black flower centre and stem by painting with a brush.

We added some writing about what we now know about Anzac Day and they are now displayed on the wall. 
It has been a great week of learning and we are happy that we are living in peace.

                                 

Visiting the Library

We had our first visit to the school library yesterday. There were so many great books to look at and we all chose a book to take home.

We love books and we enjoyed looking at the books we were interested in. We can keep the books for a week, so there is plenty of time to share them with our family and listen to someone read them to us.