New Blog

Hello everybody.
Due to the renumbering of the school classrooms, ours is no longer Pod 9, but has become Pod 11. For this year's blog (2010) follow this link to Pod 11's blog
Thanks to everybody for reading and commenting.

Pod 9 is Everybody

Last week we watched a tv commercial made by cellphone company orange in the UK. We related the theme to our current learning about the school's new set of values, and thought about the people who have cared for us and how they have helped to make us the people we are today. We used Keynote and QuicktimePro to make this presentation. Each of us made out own presentation, but for the purpose of the school's relaunching, we made one class presentation with one slide from each of us. Thank you for watching our movie.

Clubs: A Lolly Leopold Story

On the last Thursday of term, we read the book called Clubs written by Kate De Goldi. You can see more information about this book in our book shelf further down the page. It tells of the spreading craze at Lolly's school of creating and joining clubs. Lolly, however, does not approve and refuses to join any of them.

Pod 9 used this opportunity to develop their skills in using Kidspiration. They did not have much time to create a mind map the clubs that were mentioned in the book.

Click on the pictures to get a better look at them. The picture with the yellow background is not quite finished, but was made by Tia and Paige. Katie and Mary-Rose made the picture on the left, while Tayla made the green picture on her own.

I hope that you are all having a good holiday.

More Sneetches Story Boards

Here are some more of the Story Boards that the class made in response to The Sneetches written by Dr Suess. We created these to help us in making summaries of stories that we read. Clicking on the pictures will make them larger so that they are easier to read.

Liam C. and Callum


Adam and Josh


Jayden and Jessica


John


James

The Jousting Competition

Here is another story that appealed to the kids in Pod 9. This one was written by John. We hope you enjoy it.

The Jousting Competition

It was the day before the big jousting competition and Julia’s dad Lord Robert had gone to a battle. Julia really wanted to go to the jousting competition but she couldn’t because she was a girl, so she had to stay with Aunt Odellia for the day. But she and her friend Timothy had secretly made a plan which was to change places just before the competition started, so Julia would pretend to be Timothy and go to the jousting competition while Timothy would pretend to be Julia and stay with Aunt Odellia.

That night, there was a raging storm outside . No-one got a wink of sleep so on the next day, everyone was extremely tired. The jousting competition wasn’t called off so the knights were all very excited. Before the competition started, Julia and Timothy carefully swapped places so the judge wouldn’t take any notice.

Timothy sneaked off back to the castle but unfortunately, Aunt Odellia had noticed Julia’s suspicious absence so she shouted at Timothy, “Where is Julia?” "I ... Er don’t know" lied Timothy. "She should be back in a few minutes" he added hastily. Aunt Odellia gave her a are-you-sure look so Timothy crept to Julia’s room.

Meanwhile Julia was facing a young unexperienced knight that was quite clumsy. He knocked himself out when he accidentally threw a large rock at his face. Julia had easily made it into the final but her last opponent was the former champion. The jousting went on for ages and her strong opponent took many powerful swings but lost his balance on his last swing and fell onto the floor with a clunk and got squashed like a tomato by his tough horse when it landed on him. The crowd cheered as Timothy - well Julia pretending to be Timothy was crowned the champion.

The End

The Sneetches by Dr Seuss

Today we read a story about the Sneetches by Dr Seuss. We did a story board on kidspiration, we could make it all different colours. This one was made by Laura.


Click on the image to make it bigger.

Joust About That

For their Assessment Folders, the students were asked to write a story with a medieval theme. All children in the syndicate were given the same set of characters, setting and problem. It was up to them to decide how they were going to 'solve' this problem and how the story would play out.

I usually do not enjoy marking the English assessments much (I like maths), but this task was different. I found all the stories interesting, and I was really impressed with the level of creativity and imagination that was used.

The class selected some stories that they thought were particularly well done. We were looking for stories that had descriptive language, and had original solutions to Julia's problem.

This first story was written by Callum, and was a hit with many in the class. There will be more stories published on this blog in the coming days.


Joust About That

It was the day before the jousting tournament when with a pang of sadness and jealousy, Julia remembered that her father (Lord Robert) and his knights had gone to battle the Normans. She had asked if she could go but her father had said that she was too young and she was a girl.

So now she was stuck in the castle with her crazy Aunt Odelia. She wanted to play with her friend Timothy. Julia decided to go check what Aunt Odelia was doing, so she crept down the hallway to her aunt’s chamber. She heard Aunt Odelia fussing about what to do with her.

Julia had a plan; she was going to wait outside Aunt Odelia’s chamber with a pot and then, BAM!!!

Aunt Odelia won’t know what hit her. Julia got ready quickly, then she got into position. Within a minute the door creaked open on its rusted hinges and before she knew it, Aunt Odelia lay unconscious in front of her.

Julia then walked to her father’s chamber and thought “a bit of gold won’t matter” so she walked up and grabbed a handful of shiny gold coins. Then Julia snuck off to find the Master of Ceremonies.

She crept along the well-worn path towards the arena. Suddenly she heard hooves pounding along the well-worn gravel path. Julia dove into the undergrowth and spun around to see a horse galloping speedily by with the Master of Ceremonies on its back. ”Stop” Julia yelled at the top of her voice. The Master of Ceremonies was obviously surprised and fell off his horse.

“What do you want” he shouted angrily. “I want to enter the tournament as Billy” she exclaimed. ”But you’re a girl” he replied. She showed him the coins and he accepted instantly.

That day she trained hard with Timothy and cut her hair. She was extremely tired by night time and fell into a deep sleep.

In the morning, she woke, hastily put on her armour, stole a horse and hurried off to the arena. ”Oh no!” she said, the tournament had already started.

Timothy was battling fiercely with another knight. The enemy fell painfully off his horse. Timothy had won. Now it was her turn. She struggled in her heavy armour and hefted a lance (that was two times her size) and charged at the enemy knight. She felt a sharp pain in her side and all went black.


The End

M Homework

This week's homework topic was a career starting with M. Here is the learning that some of the students did. These were chosen by the class. Hopefully you will be able to read them properly. Click on the photos to see them (much) larger.




Jessica's topic was Marine Biologist. As always, her presentation and design was neat and attractive. She even included a Wordle of key phrases relating to her topic.


Laura has been looking forward to this week for a while now. She is a big fan of monkeys.


Adam's learning on Magicians was awesome. In the hat is a removable rabbit (so you are pulling a rabbit out of the hat) which includes more information.


My favourite topic this week was Devan's Muppeteer. This really took me back to my childhood. Good times...


Rio found a lot of information about Matadors. From what he's found out, it sounds like a pretty dangerous job.



Once again, Shenae produced some fantastic learning, using some really creative ideas for presenting her information. She has now achieved two 10s, the only person to do so this year.

I'm looking forward to next week's homework - Pod 9 always come up with some really interesting topic when they have a free choice.

THE JEALOUS GIRL

      A JEALOUS GIRL

Once upon a medieval time in a village called Astley, 

 Lord Robert’s daughter Julia clever,brave but stubborn was in her chamber muttering to herself ‘I want to complete in the royal jousting competition but dad or if you prefer Lord Robert won’t let me

he shouted only strong and brave boy’s only or some-thing like that.

He shouted ‘lady like girls aren’t strong enough’ Not totally true.

Meanwhile confident Timothy,brave Julia’s best friend arrived and

Of course brave Julia shared her problem and asked for confident 

Timothy’s thought and he agreed with brave Julia, s they both were scheming a plan.

So it was the day of the of the jousting competition 

confident Timothy entered and was putting his shiny armour on when brave Julia came in and whispered ‘are ready I brought the girly make-up’ So with a puff of powder there and some lipstick there confident Timothy really looked sick.

Confident Timothy had no intention of competing, hoped into bed and acted sick,Brave Julia got on confident Timothy’s shiny armour and when his mum came in and saw how he looked sick, She said ‘you are forbidden to compete in the jousting competition you are to sick’

Confident Timothy said ‘who will take my place’ then brave Julia came in and yelled ‘I will’ but confident Timothy’s mum was didn’t know it was her because brave Julia wearing a wig. 

Confident Timothy’s mum agreed and left the room. ‘So Julia’ said Timothy ‘good luck and how are you getting away from your crazy aunt Odellia and your father’ said confident Timothy?‘Crazy aunt Odellia is sleeping and dad is out hunting’ replied brave Julia ‘O.k well bye’ said Timothy!

Brave Julia arrived at the arena and noticed her opponent was LORD ROBERT HER OWN FATHER! ‘I thought...oh my...’ Then the speaker sounded 10 minutes left till round . Meanwhile back at the chamber confident Timothy sneaked out to watch  brave Julia was upon her royal steed and then the sign went to joust brave Julia was as fat as a rocket but her dad was faster all of a sudden CRASH!!!  Julia was knocked off her royal steed her shining armour for her head fell off and so did herichy wig her special father saw and rushed to her side and so did warm hearted Timothy. Brave Julia looked up and spoke the gentle words I’m sorry dad.

The next thing is so sad so I’m not gonna give it a dramatic effect, all I’m gonna say is she died.

               THE END

by the marvelous Jayden Ham

its been along time since i went on this blog i kinda miss the 2008 class but my class now rox out loud but theres been a couple problems but there all gone=)



miss you guys lots



x_miss_chatter_box_

New Gear, Old Problems

Hello everybody.
The new school year started this week on Wednesday. The senior school has relatively big classes this year, with 30 students in Pod 9.
While I would love to have the class put their first posts up on a blog, this is currently impossible due to a new computer system being installed at Hurupaki School. However, our new Airports are yet to arrive in New Zealand, and so we don't have any internet access in classes.
As you can imagine, this has been rather frustrating for the students and teachers alike. Hopefully we will be back online asap.
By the way, I have set up a wiki for Pod 9 this year with individual students having their own pages. I'm hoping that they will take ownership of their sites, posting their work here in the future. Watch this space. Just click on the wikispaces icon below for find it, even though there's nothing really there yet....
Hope to hear from you all soon.

The Summer Break

Hello to everybody out there. I hope that you're having a great break from school, and that Santa was good to you this year.
Just to let you know that this blog will be going off line sometime near the end of the holidays, perhaps the 28th or 29th of January. Until then you are of course welcome to use it as you have in the past.
If you have any comments or opinions about the blog and how we have used it, please leave a comment. I would really like to know how it could be improved on for the future.
Enjoy the rest of your holidays - they will be over before you know it!
Mr B.

Merry Christmas

Hello pod 9,
Just wanted to say I wish all of you a very merry Christmas and I hope you all will have a safe Christmas too. I going to tell you what Im doing for Christmas because Im really excited and I really have to tell some one so what Im doing is going to the beach with my family and we are going to have a christmas lunch there and my poppy is going to bring his boat and we are going to buy a hotdog or a buscuit (not the foodthe sea toys) and weare going to have so much fun.Well Merry Christmas and have a happy 2009 oh wait I almost forgot good luck for the year 6's that are going to intermedit (however you spell it) have fun and tell me year 5 and6's what class you are going in. Bye

Street Art

During this final term of 2008, our topic for art has been street art. The key concepts that we have been exploring have been:

1. The use of modern fonts over traditional fonts,
2. The contrast of using cold colours and hot coulurs, and
3. The use of space, and in particular the layering, or overlapping of letters in words.

Every student in Pod 9 made their work based around a fruit. Their work has been compiled into this slideshow. They worked really hard to achieve these results, and I feel these photos do not provide the same effect as seeing the works in real life, so to speak.

I think you'll see the quality that everybody strived for during this learning.
Enjoy.




Mr B.

Theme

This is our theme work about falling and sinking

Falling and sinking are the same because....

-both involve objects being pulled by gravity.

-both can be reduced by making things wider and flatter in shape.

Falling and sinking are different because....

-objects fall through air and sink through liquid.

-falling is faster than sinking because liquid is thicker than air.

-some objects that fall, don't sink.

We made tin foil boats to make rocks float.

The best designs that held the most weight were the ones that had the largest areas and had high sides. The high sides stopped the water getting in and the large areas stopped the shapes falling through the water.