Assessment week is over!

Hooray! Assessment week is over and we can get back into routine again! We started this morning with reading groups. There were a few changes in reading groups and we had to change some of our books into our new boxes. Then we got going on some reading tasks or reading to Mrs Taylor. We are all doing such a great job and have all been trying really hard, making great gains in our reading. Way to go 1T!

We also learnt about the long 'i' sound today. We worked out that ie, y, i, and i_e all say the long 'i' sound. Look how many words we knew that said 'i'!

 

We listened to a little bit of the book, 'You're a Bad Man, Mr Gum!' By Andy Stanton. Mr Gum is a man that doesn't like children, animals, fun and corn on the cob. He has an angry fairy who lives in his bathtub and makes Mr Gum keep the garden tidy or hits him with a frying pan. It gave us lots of ideas for our own stories! We had a great writing session and got to listen to some stories read to us by our peers. You can see by the smiles that these stories were very funny!

 

 

We did some graphing and position in the afternoon. We had to draw pictures on the left or right of a tree. This was a little tricky for some of us!

 

 

The day included some stamina reading. It's wonderful to see the excitement 1T had at reading their own chapter books! We made it to nearly ten minutes which isn't too bad on a Monday.

 

Catch-up

Over the last week we have been busy investigating what heat does to food. We got to chat to our buddy class about what we think happens to different foods when they're heated. We then discussed this as a whole group. We found out the some foods melt, like cheese or ice-cream, some foods get soft, like spaghetti and some foods change colour like egg. We got to put out scientist hats on and look at what happens to popcorn kernels when heat is applied. We looked at a video of popcorn kernels popping in slow motion. The heat made the kernel expand and then it looked like it grew all puffy. The best part was that we all got to eat popcorn and our room smelt like a movie theatre for the rest of the day!

 

We had a visit from Constable Crystal, a police woman. She came and talked to all of year one and year two about being safe online. We learnt that when we go online we need to make sure that mum and dad know. We also have to make sure that if we see anything that makes us feel uncomfortable we go and tell mum and dad. We learnt what 'personal information' is and that we shouldn't share our name or address with people we don't know. Constable Crystal said we had to promise to keep our computers out of our bedrooms and make sure we only use them in safe places like the lounge or dining room where mum or dad can see what we're doing. 

Constable Crystal showed us all the stuff that she has on her police belt. She told us that police have guns to help keep us safe but she wasn't allowed to take it out and show us. We got to see where she keeps her walkie-talkie and that she uses it to call other police for help. We got to see how her baton becomes really long when she flicks it. Some of us thought it looked like a lightsaber! The best part of her equipment was the hand-cuffs. She let some of us try them and nearly everyone put up their hand to have a go! We got a 'keeping safe' sticker to take home too!

 

News this term has been very interesting! We're learning to be active listeners and how to listen with our whole bodies. That means we need still bodies, watching eyes and listening ears. We then have to think about what the person said before we ask questions. Our questions are becoming much more relevant as we learn how to ask good questions. We've been finding out about everyone's favourite pasta meal and also how to play some simple games. We recently heard about the Chinese game of Mah Jong! 

 

Chef Liam

Today we had a chef visit our classroom. 

 

His name was Liam Crawly and he explained how heat changes food and how it changes the sugars in fruit. It makes fruit taste sweeter. We then got to taste fresh blueberries and then cooked blueberries. Some of us thought the fresh blueberries tasted a little sour. Everyone agreed that the cooked blueberries tasted very sweet! Yum! There were a few of us that didn't try the blueberries because they though they were, 'Yuck!'. But most of us tried the cooked blueberry jam.

 

We then got to smell cinnamon bark. Some of us thought it tasted like porridge! Liam then explained how spices change when they're heated. He heated the cinnamon up and we could smell that. He then cooked up some apple with a little bit of cinnamon. When it was finished cooking he puréed it with an electric blender which was a little bit noisy. We tried some cut up apple and then tried the apple purée. It was warm and delicious!

 

We also got to talk about how pikelets are made and even got to eat a pikelet as well. Some of us put the apple purée on top of the pikelet and some of us went back for seconds! The apple purée was the favourite of the day!

 

During the cooking session we heard about how food changes when heat is applied. We talked about how the texture of food changes, going from hard to soft, that the sugar in food becomes sweeter and spices become tastier when heated. Just like curry! There were lots of hands that went up when Liam asked if they liked curry! I was very suprised!

At the end of the session we asked some great questions about food and heat and then thanked Liam for coming. We can't wait to do some more experiments with food and heat over the term!

PIE and NEWS

What is PIE and why are we learning about it? We are learning about the author's purpose! Why did the author write the book, or the article, or the poster? That's where PIE comes in! The author writes to persuade, inform or entertain. Today we learnt about the different sorts of reasons authors write. PIE is a great way to remember the author's purpose!

 

We continue to enjoy listening to each other give our news about our favourite pasta meal. Here are some of our lovely presenters! Don't they look confident!

 

Cross Country 2017

You could feel the excitement in the air as we all lined up this morning. Enormous smiles from some and nervous giggles from others. We had a long walk down to the park which was quite an adventure and tired some of us out. Luckily there was a cake stall or recess to energise us before our race. We all tried so hard as you can see from the photos below.