Waimaths

WaiMaths PPP

Congratulations to our two teams that competed in the Waimaths competition tonight. I was so excited to hear that our Year 7 team placed third and our Year 8 team also did really well - I knew you guys could do it! I am so proud!!! Congrats must also go out to HC for coming first in the poster competition. SAMS placed 1st, 3rd, and 4th in the poster competition - keeping up the tradition of excellence in the visual arts! I would love to see the posters if you are able to post to your blogs...

Post-Assessment for Report Writing

As a class, we are going to view this video twice. First time through, watch and learn! Second time through, take notes as you watch it. These notes, along with the written notes provided with the task description, will help you write a detailed report on the Red Kangaroo.

Learning Te Reo

This week, with our student teacher Ms. Foy, we have been learning some basic greetings and counting up to 100 in Te Reo Maori. For some of us, these lessons were really just a review, while for others it was the first time to ever be exposed to these language structures. On each of our posts we are going to be evaluating how well we feel we used the language, what we feel we need to work on, and how we would rate our effort. Feel free to look at everyone's videos - they can be found on our blog list.

6x8=48

Today in Math for a warm-up, we looked at the equation 4x6=48. From this equation, we brainstormed everything else that we knew - which turned out to be quite a lot! By the way, there is a mistake on the bubbl.us - can you spot it?

How to Write a Book Report

Book reports are a way to show how well you understood a book and to tell what you think about it.

Introduction
Things to include in the introduction:
· The title (underlined) and author of the book.
· Why you chose the book.
· What kind of story is it? (adventure? family? fantasy/make believe? animal? true life? scary?)

Body
In this section you want to describe the main parts of a story: theme, plot, setting, and characters. Then you can give your opinions about the book.
The Theme is the main idea of the story. Some examples might be the importance of friendship or how to be courageous in a difficult situation. Tell what you think the theme is and how you know.
The Setting is the time and place of the story. Is it set a long time ago or now. Does it take place in another country or in an imaginary place? How much time passes in the story—a day? a year? a lifetime?
The Plot is what happens. You want to tell what the story is mostly about. What is the main event or conflict? What things lead up to it? What happens as a result? How does the story end? (Sometimes you want to avoid telling the ending, or giving away the secrets of the story.) Be careful not to re-tell the whole story in detail—you want room in your report to write about other things; instead, just say enough about it so the rest of your report will make sense.
The Characters are who the story is about. The main character is called the protagonist. Who are the other important characters? Do they help or hinder the protagonist?

Once you have summarized the book, you can tell what you think about it. You can write about whatever opinions you have. Some questions you might want to answer are:
- Did you like the story? Why or why not?
- What was the best part of the book? Why?
- How did the story make you feel? Did you feel different things at different points in the story?
- Would you recommend it to friends?
- Would you read other books by this author?
- What new things did you learn from this book?

Conclusion
This is just a sentence or two to sum up your report. Give your overall opinion of the book and the most important thing you want other people to know about it.

Adapted from: http://www.infoplease.com/homework/wsbookreportelem.html

My pencil case

Today in Chinese we are learning about items that we need for school - those things that we are likely to find in our desk or schoolbag (no, I am not talking about crumpled notices from last month or mouldy sandwiches!). Below is a link that will take you to a site to practice some of the new vocabulary. If you have a moment, play around with this site:)

http://quizlet.com/360997/chinese-flash-cards/

Chinese Dialogue

Recently in Chinese, we have been learning how to say what food and drinks we like or dislike. Working with a partner, we created a dialogue in which we would greet each other, say what our phone number is (a fake one), and then talk about food and/or drink. If you have time, please check out our progress from the last video posted. Hopefully by the end of the year we will be speaking more fluently, with correct tones, and without having to write a script beforehand:)