ANZAC

I'm sure you all know the story of ANZAC but each year even though we think we know all about it, we manage to learn something new. It's always emotional as we think about what people did, put up with, experienced and lost.  We did some art to about ANZAC.

We were going to go to Shantytown and do an in-depth study about how New Zealand was badly affected by the 1918 influenza epidemic where 2500 men got ill and over 160 died  (in NZ) there were lots more around the world as soldiers bought it home. Maybe we will look at it more closely next year (we ran out of time)

POETRY

This term we have learnt heaps about writing poetry. We have also researched types of poetry and tried writing different styles and types. We then made a poster on the lucid press of all our poems. We look at Katie Perry's 'Firework' song and realised it was a poem so spent time dissecting it with some of the tools we had learnt. We also looked closely at a Robert Frost poem - 'The Road Not Taken.' Click on to our individual blogs on the side and see some of our work.

GIRL TIME

In our class, we have been having a few emotional times between girls so we had a discussion (the boys had free time while we tried to sort it out.

Miss Smith thought we needed to mend some fences, talk to each other and have some fun. So she found lots of hair, nail and beauty products and let us loose with chocolate to make each other look beautiful. (we used the school library and teachers and adults left us alone to manage and sort things out ourselves). We had lots of fun talking trying out hairstyles painting our nails and playing with makeup. All the time we chatted, laughed and built lots of bridges so that we let the catty nastiness go and finished up as friends accepting each others differences.   

We learnt a lot about how our words can hurt others and that we have to not just talk about accepting that we are all different but actually show that we accept each other and each other's ideas, thoughts and feelings. We also learnt quite a bit more about responsibility or our actions and being resilient when things don't go our way. 

Reading

With the novels we read this term we had to do something called matchbox presentation

This meant that we had a folder which we decorated with a picture of our favourite scene from the story.

Then we had to measure and cut small pieces of paper and fold them into 3 in a certain way. We then had to do a label for each chapter, a picture for each chapter and when you lift the picture there had to be a well-written summary of the chapter. Not everyone has finished theirs so they have to work on it at home.

Duffy Role Model

Judi Billciff

We were so lucky to have a visit from Judi. She was amazing and had us all rolling around with laughter it would have been so great if she was here all day.
Check out Rainbow Poetry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   Rainbow Poetry NZ She has lots of Youtube presentations with hints about poetry as well as her reading poems.
She is amazing at writing and presenting poems and we can't wait to work with some of them to present at an assembly. (she's a drama teacher to)

We dramatised (with her help) her poem about learning to drive it was hilarious. She is a really cool lady and so her husband was great too (he has the most expressive face). We loved having them in our school and wish they lived close by so that we could do a workshop with her. They also present our Duffy Books.                                                                         

Get NZ Writing 2

There was a class who weren't going to be able to get a parcel due to an unforeseen circumstance so we volunteered to help out. We had heaps of fun making our poems even better (we thought we better do this as they are year 9 and we are only years 6, 7 and 8). we also went out and got some greenstone, lollies, pamphlets, maps and a little gift for the teacher to cheer them all up.
The colouring was done by year 6 as the rest of us went to high school for technology. We are hopeful they enjoy it.
We thought if we could get it sent this week they would have it before the holidays so we worked really hard on it.

Paper Flowers

Our teacher aide got sick and had to go to Christchurch Hospital so we decided to make her a bunch of flowers. We googled and then cut and glued them together, searched for buttons and wrapped them up nicely. We are thinking these might be a great thing to do for Mothers Day.