A winters Poem

Mr Spice is hard at work marking some of the writing we did in the final week of the term.  He came across a little gem of a poem that Finn wrote on the last day. Marking books makes Mr Spice very tired but when he reads writing, that builds such a fantastic image in his head, he finds it very inspiring.

                                                               Winter Poem

The grey clouds hang in the sky like many balloons.

The cool wind races across my face.

My feet drag across the soggy, brown hills.

The brown leaves blaze across the wet fields.

As tears of rain drop onto my face.

by Finn

Post spotlight

This weeks post spotlight goes to Madaline for her poem she wrote during the holidays about raindrops. Well done and keep up the holiday posting guys.

More Spiral facts

Fibonacci Sequence

The Fibonacci Sequence is the series of numbers:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ...

The next number is found by adding up the two numbers before it.

The 2 is found by adding the two numbers before it (1+1),
The 3 is found by adding the two numbers before it (1+2),
The 5 is (2+3), and so on.

If we made squares using those widths, you get a nice spiral:

Fibonacci Spiral

Do you see how the squares fit neatly together?
For example 5 and 8 make 13, 8 and 13 make 21, and so on.

Spiral Art

Continuing with our spiral theme Room 3 completed some more art using crayon and dye. We made spirals with pencil and then drew over the lines with black and white crayon and painted inside each spiral with a different coloured dye. The result looked really cool and we put it up on the wall outside our classroom.

Mr Smiggles drops by

During the last week of term Natalie's Guinea Pig dropped by to visit. Room 3 got to say hello and Natalie and her mother explained some interesting facts and stories about having Mr Smiggles as a pet.

Winter poems

Winter is well on its way this week judging by the weather so Room 3 decided to write a poem about what best reminds us of winter. We brainstormed about our language features, especially similes and personification and learned to use them to create an image in the readers mind. Here are a couple of great poems.

Blog Spotlight

Here is an article by Natalie on the Asian paper wasp. She found a nest and did some research, then posted it on her blog well done Natalie!

Check it out at:
http://natalieauroa.blogspot.co.nz/2014/04/the-asian-paper-wasp.html

Art finished and up

Our Koru trees are finally done after a couple of weeks of hard work. We spent a lot of time concentrating on blending, dabbing and mixing compatible colours. It was worth the effort and the finished pictures look spectacular. Take a look for yourself.

Weekend Word Problem

Easy

Rico is trying to work out the average scores in a game of scrabble. Can you help him out by showing him a quick way to add these sets of numbers?

• 8 + 6 + 4 + 7 + 2 =
• 7 + 8 + 4 + 3 + 2 =
• 5 + 2 + 3 + 7 + 8 + 5 =
• 1 + 2 + 5 + 7 + 9 + 5 + 3 =

Medium

Madaline was given these number sentences in class – she wants to know if they are true or false – can you help her out using working to show each answer?

36 – 27 = 38 – 25                  28 + 44 = 30 + 42        

39 + 47 = 29 + 57                  82 – 45 = 92 – 35

Hard

Harry knows in the average super-size bag of marshmallows there are 98 white ones. If there are 312 marshmallows altogether and he takes the white ones out – how many are left?

- Georgia knows there are 94 cans of dog food in two trolleys. How many cans of dog food would she have if she brought two trolleys but already had 188 cans at home?

Writing of the week

Here is a great descriptive piece by Madaline, that concentrates of character creation. Her aim was to create believable characters through description, dialogue and her reaction to them. I think she did a superb job.

Find the story here:

http://madalineauroa.blogspot.co.nz/2014/04/the-queue.html

Explain everything for Maths

Room 3 have been looking at using technology to help the move from modelling to imaging for some of our Mathematicians. We have been using explain everything to help organise our materials that we are using into number sentences. Here is an example from Kobyin and Baily.

Weekend Word Problem

Easy
Renee is playing monopoly. She has $89 and collects $9 rent from Harry. How much money does she have now?

Charlotte is picking numbers. She chose number 66, the next was number 75.  How many numbers are in between?

Medium
Mr Chittenden wants to pay for his and Mr Webs hotel room in Singapore. It will cost them $800, he only has $136 in cash. How much more money does he need to put on the credit card?

Madaline wants a new iPod touch – she has $510 and has to pay $350.  How much money does she have left?

Hard
Tom is playing the Game of Life. He wins the golden lottery, he had $1950 to begin with but now he has $9000 – how much money did he win?

 Emily is playing monopoly with Kyah. She has $4510 but then she lands on Mafair and has to pay Kyah rent, which cost $2997. How much money does she have left?

The Koru

Recently room 3 have been doing art based on the Maori symbol of the Koru. Here is a bit of information that helps explain the concepts behind it.

The Koru is a Maori symbol that represents moving back to the beginning. It refers to the circular flow towards an inner coil and unfolding of a silver fern. It is thought that the unfolding of a fern is symbolic of new life, rebirth, hope, personal growth, purity and perfection. We found that this symbolism compliments our Art work themes of the tree of life and our colour schemes 'sunset and sunrise'.

Post spotlight

This weeks spotlight goes on Finn and his great blog post about his favourite muffin recipe. Well done Finn and keep up the superb posting. Check it out n Finn's Farm at
http://fvanendhovenauroa.blogspot.co.nz/

Weetbix-Tri

This week over half of room 3 took part in the weetbix tri in New Plymouth. It sounds like it was a great day with lots of fun, sun, exercise and carbo-loading! Well done to all of those students who gave it a go and took part.