Textured Landscapes: Waterfalls

During Term 2 the children worked on textured landscapes 

in Art with Mrs Wistrand.

The textures were made with twisted paper, wood shavings, egg cartons, hose pipe and shredded plastic bags.

Do you have any waterfalls in your area?

Have you ever played under a waterfall?

Eating Our Way Through the Term

We've had a great time cooking and eating rice, pasta and noodle based recipes
during our Science and Technology topics.

During our Science topic we looked at the physical changes in rice, pasta and noodles when they are heated/cooked.

To start our technology unit we tried out a few more recipes using rice, pasta or noodles.
Mrs W's mother came and made pasta and sauce with us:

We tried out some more pasta recipes:

and a noodle and vegetable stir-fry.

Finally we began to think about how we might improve or adapt our recipes.

We made SCAMPER charts to sort our ideas.

Parents came in to help each group cook their planned recipe.
Pea and Corn noodles:

Bacon and onion macaroni cheese:

 an Indian rice dessert called 'Kheer':
(This delicious recipe is a rice-based and includes nuts.) 

Broccoli, carrot and sun-dried tomato sushi:

and ham, corn and carrot fried rice:

Have you ever had such a delicious time at school?

How could you adapt or change your favourite dish?

Repertory for Kids 2012

One of our annual school events is 
'Repertory for Kids'. 

The idea is that students adapt a school journal play, use a minimum of props and present their play on stage to family and friends.
Sit back and enjoy

 as Year 3 present 'The King's Parade'.

The King's Parade from Judy McKenzie on Vimeo.

and Year 2 present 'The Ant and the Grasshoppers'.

The Ant and the Grasshoppers from Judy McKenzie on Vimeo.

During the term we looked at the features of a playscript compared to a fiction narrative.

Here is the Venn model we made with the ideas 

we came up with:

Have you ever acted or performed on stage? 

Do you get nervous or excited?

The Tale Trail (The Complete Audio Book).

 Our recent collaborative writing project with five other classes from around the world, The Tale Trail, is now an audio book!


The classes -  B4; Mr Salsich's Grade 3s, USA; 
Mrs Yollis' Grade 3s, USA; Mrs Watson's Grade 2/3s, Canada; Mr Avery's Grade 6s, USA; 
and 4KM and 4KJ, Australia; were  all responsible for writing one installment each, publishing it on their blog and adding links to each part of the story.


In the last few weeks students from each class have recorded
their part of the story, using SlideRocket, giving us all the parts of the tale in one place!

We hope you will enjoy listening to the story.
(Press the play button on the slideshow below, and use the arrows to view each slide.)

Thank you to Mr Avery for the wonderful idea.


We look forward to joining our buddies for projects later in the year.


What suggestions do you have for future projects?

The Oldest Person I Know

We read the story 'Night Noises' written by Mem Fox. 

In the story the main character, an old lady, is asleep in her chair, dreaming about her youth. 

She wakes when visitors arrive to give her a 

surprise 90th birthday.

We loved the words Mem Fox used when describing the main character:

'Her hair was as wispy as cobwebs in ceilings.'

'Her bones were as creaky as floorboards at midnight.'

We think those are sentences that add impact 

to the writing.

Here are our descriptions of the oldest people WE know!

Have we added impact to our writing?

Tell us about the oldest person YOU know!

Snowflakes Fall, Flutter, Flutter.

Just as we were about to begin writing on Wednesday 

it started to snow!

That immediately gave us some inspiration.

We went outside to watch and listen. 

Next we brainstormed the sounds we'd heard and made a list of onomatopoeia.

Some of us tried out a pattern: naming word (noun), action word (verb), and some onomatopoeia.

Here are our snowy weather poems, plus some others written as a Daily 5 choice in reading time.

Can you make a poem that includes some onomatopoeia?

Using Onomatopoeia

In writing we are exploring language resources used by writers to engage the reader.

One of them is onomatopoeia.

Onomatopoeia 

is the name we use to describe 

words that sound like the object or action they name.

We read some books, identified examples of onomatopoeia, and made pictures to illustrate the words.
We will be practicing using onomatopoeia to liven up our writing.

Can you add some more examples of onomatopoeia?