At long last Room 12 has 12 chicken eggs. They are now keeping warm in our incubator in class. In 21 days time we will hopefully have some chicks hatching out of their shells.

The breed are Chinese Silkies. Silkies are a very unusual bred of chicken that have feathers that resemble fur. They almost look like they are some sort of rabbit or other animal. This is one chicken you wouldn’t mind cuddling, and luckily for us, most Silkies have such complacent personalities that they wouldn’t mind at all. Silkies are sweet, friendly chickens, that make a wonderful pet for just about everyone.

Feel free to come in and see them, and wish us luck!

Her are some pictures of adult Silkies.

Here is some writing that we did back in Easter. If you click on the image you will be able to read it easier.

Build your own comic using this cool lego site.

Today we talked about germination, how an incubator works and the parts of an egg.

Can you name them?

Here are some pictures of us balancing on the court. We had to balance while our partner drew around our shadow, then our partner had to try and fill the chalk line with their shadow. After that we tried to make the shape of other groups shadows.

This is a quick and easy activity which lets you create your own flowers.

I hope that your holidays were enjoyable and that both you and your child are ready for another exciting term in Room 12.

The following provides some helpful information about the upcoming learning in Room 12 and other general information that may be of use to you.

General Information:

We are lucky to have Carea Philpott, a 3^rd year student from Waikato University, joining us in week 3 of this term. Carea will be in Room 12 for 8 weeks.

Literacy:

Writing will focus on 3 main text types that relates to our topic study. These are Explanations, Procedures, and Information Reports. We will also continue with writing about our personal experiences. Relevant grammar activities will support this written language learning.

Reading this term will move to fiction texts and will involve the exploration of their features.

A reminder that individual spelling lists will be sent home each week and will contain words that have been identified, by either myself or the children, as being challenging. The students will be tested on these lists on Friday of each week. Please continue to help your child learn these words each week.

Maths:

Numeracy learning during this term will focus largely on multiplication and division, with basic facts being reinforced weekly. The strand of statistics will be covered towards the later part of this term.

Topic:

Science and Technology

First we will be looking at how chicks hatch and as part of this we will try hatching live chicks from germinated eggs. Hopefully we are successful with some of these eggs hatching! Through this experience we will explore what’s inside an egg, what they need to hatch, how they hatch and once a chick is born, what kinds of things chicks need to grow up healthy.

P.E.:

This term in Every Body Counts (EBC) we will continue with the exploration of Balance and what it means to be healthy or unhealthy.

Parent/Teacher Discussions:

Parent/Teacher Discussion evenings will be held during week 10 of this term. We will discuss, among other aspects, your child’s progress towards the National Standards. Further information will be sent home closer to this date.

Once again, I am looking forward to working with you to help your child with their learning.  If you have any questions or concerns then please feel free to stop by and see me (afternoons are best).

Today was an exciting and busy day back for term 2. We had reading, a whole school assembly, maths, EBC, sharing, and spelling. Plus we had our 4 university teachers in helping us.

Here are some pictures of us balancing and falling on the field during EBC.

In this website you can learn about the challenges facing Polar Bears through a range of games. Some of them are quite hard so leave a comment about the game you played and what score you achieved.

The African Drummers were in at school today and everyone got their own drum. Here are some pics.