Saturday, May 30, 2009

Hundertwasser Art

Here is some more of our wonderful Hundertwasser art.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

School Motocross Champs


School Motocross Champs

Finally after two cancellations the rain managed to hold off on Sunday 24th May. Micah and I went to a Motocross track near Auckland to compete with a variety of other schools for the Ardmore Secondary School Champs title.
There were a range of classes from inexperienced riders in Motocross to riders who are more experienced. Altogether there were about 200 riders which had to be separated into classes with the same sized bikes and similar age groups.
The track was in mint condition and the sunshine lasted for most of the day. I managed to get from 3 races a 13th, 8th and a 10th placing, while Micah got 15th, 11th and 14th. We both enjoyed it so we hope next year some more students from MIS will be keen to compete at the School Champs.

Reported by Callum

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

And ... ACTION!

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Here is more of our T.G.F.U (teaching games for understanding) in action. Each group (5 groups) have an area under the dome (covered outdoor area), they then do their warm up followed by a new skill being taught, then a game to reinforce that new skill learnt etc.

Basketball Stars

Room Ten has been learning new skills and drills to help with their ball handling and dribbling technique. They have been working together and learning together which is a wonderful combination. Here are some photos of their practice today.

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Monday, May 25, 2009

Ribbon Day

Ribbon Day Recount

On Sunday the 3rd of May, I went to my pony clubs ribbon day (if you do well in events you can win ribbons). I had been excited about it since the day I found out about it.

We had 10 events. They were turn out (which is presentation and how clean your gear and pony is), rider on the flat (the riders position and aids), best mannered and behaved horse/pony (the pony that listens to the aids and behaves best), tip ‘n’ out (a jump starts off at a certain height and each person jumps the jump but if they tip the jump, your out and each round the jump gets higher. The person still jumping is the winner), walk, trot, canter, jump, halt (walk then trot then canter over the jump and stop a few strides after the jump), rider over jumps ( the riders position over the set jumps), a trotting race (the horses race only at a trot, if they canter you have to go back to the start), best match (the horse and the rider who work together the best) and one where you had to jump a tarpaulin that was lying on top of barrels. In that one my pony took off for it, jumped it and nearly sent me on the ground!

My favourite one would have had to be the one where you race up to a drum and eat the chocolate fish and drink the lemonade that's on the drum and then say RUMPELSTILTSKIN, mount and race back over the finish line! Everyone had a sore stomach after that.

The judges then announced the champion and reserve champion for overall points. We won champion!!! After that we had a dress up and I dressed up as a jockey and Cheeky as a galloper! We ended up getting 3rd. At the end of the day I was so proud of myself and Cheeky.

We went home with one 4th, four 3rds, one 2nd and five 1st place, and A BIG CHAMPION RIBBON! We both had a great day together and had lots of fun.


Sunday, May 24, 2009

Hundertwasser Art

Room ten is beginning their new art task. We are looking at Friedensreich Hundertwasser the artist, sculpture, and architect. His art rejects atraight lines and focusses on bright colours and organic forms. Hundertwasser is also famous in New Zealand for his design of the public toilets in Kawakawa (Bay of Islands). Here is a sample of his work and also a slideshow of room tens exploration of hundertwasser inspired houses.

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What Room 10 thought of the Acrobatic Troupe.

"I liked the part when he climbed the chairs" Thomas
"The acrobats were really cool, I was blown away by the back flips and the catapult" Geordie
"Simply great, tricks, magic and more ... amazing" Josh
"I really enjoyed the performance. The best part was when they were jumping off the board and making the people fly into the air" Leo
"Wow, that show was amazing. I would recommend it - it is both entertaing and you get to ask questions at the end so you can even learn a little bit about them" Nicole
"Amazing, I was on my toes in anticipation! a great theme, extremely breathtaking" Jessica
"I don't think it was worth $5, it was worth $50, it was crazy, the best thing i have experienced in my life!" James

Amazing Acrobatic Troupe



Performance by: Flaming Phoenix Entertainment (Hebei Acrobatic Troupe and Magic Group)
This was a wonderful performance. The whole performance followed the story of a young boy who was looking to find his strength or talent in life. He had to use his knowledge, be positive and trust in himself.

Kapahaka fundraiser

On Friday the 22nd of May our school held a mufi day with a twist. You were to come to school in your rugby colours as there were 2 very improtant games in the weekend (chiefs Vs Hurricanes and Crusaders Vs Bulls). The proceeds from the nufti day went towards our school Kapahaka as they need new uniforms for performing.
The photo is of students in their rugby colours looking cool, calm and collected.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Planning our meeting and greeting French Video.

The other day we filmed a video about meeting and greeting. We had pieces of paper with the French words written on them but you could not read the words so we put our thinking hats on ..... Bingo, the interactive whiteboard! Here is us planning for filming.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

G. Brassi - what inspired me

Please excuse the background noise as it it lunch time so alot of the students are playing outside.

G. Brassi - NZ writer comes to visit

Today Morrinsville Intermediate was lucky enough to meet Gretchen Brassi, a wonderful children’s author (she has written books like Mayday, Attacked and Skull Island). She came in and spoke to students who were interested in writing and her books. She sat in our school library for half an hour at lunchtime and enthralled the students with her wonderful stories about her childhood and how she got into writing. Fleur Beale is her cousin and she has been quoted in an interview with Christchurch city libraries that “I owe her a lot as she encouraged me to try writing myself”. Gretchen lives in Hamilton and is a member of “writers in schools”. Gretchen read us some of the book "Mayday" and told us how the story came bout. The video is coming soon for you to find out more. We felt very privileged to have such a wonderful author visit our school.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Flour Babies by Anne Fine

This is our new shared book by Anne Fine. We have just finished reading TumbleTurn by Doug MacLeod which was in no other words .... fantastic! we were all pleased when we found out Dominic really was NORMAL or whatever that means. Back to our new book ... Flour Babies, read the glossary from the first 3 chapters and see if you can predict what may be happening in the story:

Chapters 1-3
explosion (n) this is when something breaks up; it goes everywhere
and there is a loud noise
football (n) a game with two ‘teams’ of people and a ball
huge (adj) very big
look after (v) to watch somebody or something, and see that they are
away from danger
normal (adj) usual
rule (n) this tells you what you have to do or can’t do
science (n) the study of the world and how it is
teacher (n) this person teaches children at school
weigh (v) to see how heavy something is
What do the letters in the brackets mean? e.g (n), (adj), (v)

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Something to think about


As a teacher I think it is very important to keep up with the growing technology and incorperate this as much as possible into planning, teaching and learning. This video is where room ten is aiming for.
Your thoughts?

The French Alphabet with Rm 10

The Year 7 students have a French lesson for 45 minutes once a week while at the same time the Year 8 students go to Te Reo (Maori) language class. We are still getting there with our pronunciation but it is already helping us with our French words and recognising the different sounds.


Friday, May 15, 2009

What makes Room 10 Special



In class we are allowed to eat fruit and vegetables. We are also allowed to go for runs around the field when we need to just let off some energy. When you eat fruit it fills you up so you can think better. It is a really good idea because it refreshes you. It can also wake you up if you are a little tired. We can play with the glitter ball, Koosh ball and the centepede. The reason we play with these toys is that some kids like to fiddle with things while they work and it makes school life more fun. Written by a Room Ten Student. Can you guess what I am eating?

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

TGFU - Back again

This term for TGFU (teaching games for understanding) we are running it similarly to our Touch Rugby last term except our sport is Basketball.
The class is split into 5 teams and each team has a coach, captain, and a manager. The coach plans their sessions and liases with the manager about the skills and drills (to begin with - ball handling). The manager is responsible for the organising and setting up of equipment while the captain is primarily in charge of team relationships and behavior.The coaches use the above books to plan their sessions and the first session was modelled by Miss F who showed the breakdown of activities and time management eg:
10 mins - warm up
5 mins - stretching
10 mins - skill focus
10 mins - skill reinforcement game
10 mins - warm down activity
The students are all working well together and cooperating as a team, it is great to watch and be a part of.
Stay tuned for more!!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Try this






On Friday we explored a new application on the computers at school called "Tux Paint". It has a similar philosophy to "paint" but has more additions and tools for enhancing either drawn designs or pre made pictures. Here are some of our pictures from our "Tux Paint" exploration. Thanks to Regan, Nicole and Shenae for sharing their art.

Careers - dreams and skills

Looking at careers Room ten has been analysing their skills and what careers they would be interested in. We have focussed on dream areas of work, skills we have and special talents. Here are some of our skills and dreams coat hangers (hang onto your dreams). Our class looks fantastic will all our dreams and skills on show. We are now getting a clearer picture of the types of jobs we are interested in and how to best use our skills and talents.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Geometry Inquiry - setting the scene and having some fun

Room Ten has just begun looking at Geometry and Nets in particular. As a motivator for the beginning of the unit I bought in about 34 boxes of many differenet types. The students had to choose a box and draw it (3D) into their books and then carefully open up the box keeping all the glued tags in tact as much as possible. From there we sketched the shape of the open box (Net) into our books. This took a while as we had to make sure we got all the angles and tags included in our sketch. We then measured all the parts of the net which was quite difficult as we had to make sure we did not miss any area. Finally today was the exciting time as we all got out our plans and without using our origional box only our plans we had to measure up and make our own from the information we had. Click on the hyperlinks to get more information (the 3D site is very helpful). Here is our progress so far.....

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30 Second Speeches ... take #2

Here are a couple more of our wonderful 30 second speeches. It is really making us think and we realise it is hard to think up information on the spot but the more we practice the more ideas we are getting. Having sound oral skills is very important!.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Our BLOG board


We have a great blog board in our cloak bay at school. We have a student who puts up a "Post of the week" each week along with the comment of the week ( the comment is just one we want to celebrate but may not be from that particular week) from either a student or another blog from here in New Zealand or one of our overseas friends.
Here are a couple of the comments we are celebrating this week:

jkmcclung said...
What a great study, and it is great that the students were able to match visual images with the articles. Great stuff as always, keep it up.Mr. McClungNoel, Missouri US

This was for our human rights task matching the picture to the human rights violation. Another comment from that same post we liked was the following from Room 8 at Melville Int in Hamilton because we can now say we have had 1000 visitors to our site.

NZWaikato said...
Room 10 and Miss F.What a wonderful post made all the more powerful by your mixture of text and pictures. I know my students like to view this blog and it is coming along very nicely. Soon you will have 1,000 visitors and you can be very proud of that. Thank you to the students from your class that have been leaving nice comments on our blog we really do appreciate it.Room 8, Melville Intermediate, Hamilton.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Fantastic 10 Reading group

clich here for todays reading activity ... good luck. Answer all comprehension questions into your books.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

30 Second Speeches - excellent!









Room 10 has begun researching their speech topics. While we are writing and researching our speeches we use our 30 second speech cards to gain confidence and have some fun. I have a box of speech topics and the students buddy up and choose a card each. They then spend a minute thinking about what they want to say and then give a brief speech on that topic. We do this about 3 times a week in the mornings before maths. This has really given a lot of the students more confidence and they are really having fun and being creative with their topics. If you can come up with some more 30 second speech card ideas it would be great if you could write a comment and let us know.


Friday, May 1, 2009

TGFU - Final Match

During Term One we Studied Touch Rugby for Teaching Games For Understanding (TGFU). We had many great training and skill sessions. We focussed on Passing, Catching, Rules of the game and stepping. We then moved on to a class competition. Our 5 teams names were, Crusaders, Chiefs, Warriors, Speedos and The Cool People. The 2 top teams in the competition were the Crusaders who won 3/4 games and The Cool People who managed to win all of their 4 games. Here is a video of the final game between the Crusaders and The Cool People - Won 7-6 to The Cool People. The other teams cheered on from the sideline and called out encouragement to both teams. Also, 2 students from the other teams refereed the game.