Recreating the Americ'S CUP

 We have been exploring the tools from the America's Cup DLO.

Thomas created this on Co-Space:

Violet created this on Chrome Music Lab

Coming up with creative sharing

In my literacy class, we've been learning about Mammals of North America. Basty has created a quiz to share the facts that he pulled out of the text. 

I can't wait for some of our other learners to pick up this idea to share their learning!

Reading is our superpower

Constable Brad shared why reading has been so important to him as a police officer. To read the laws and keep up with them online. People write to the police, with statements needing help. He needs to be able to read them to see how he could help them. When Brad was at school, his mum bought him a subscription to National Geographic magazine because he was really into finding out about the outdoors. Now his kids read them. His favourite book is The Places You'll Go by Dr Seuss. 

Brodie Kane, from the hits radio, She went to Waikiki Primary School then Rangiora High School.  She went to university to learn to be a journalist. One of the reasons she liked reading when she was little was that her mum or dad would read her a story before she went to bed. She wanted to be good at writing, so she read to improve her writing. Her favourite book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar & Where the Wild Things Are.

Stella from What Now remembers Duffy books from when she was at school. (She even knew all the words to the song!) 

Stella from What Now

Stella liked books about mermaids. As she got older, she looked for books about Maoritanga. (How Maori view the world) Her message was to read a book about something you like. She talked about how she copes with doing things for the very first time. If she got to gunge anyone, who would she want to gunge? Mr Wilkinson!

Mr VanOpzeeland from Opzeeland Transport spoke about how you need to read to get you truck and car licences. He spoke about why reading is important in running a transport business.  

Our theme is superheroes. Our superpower is reading! We are going to have loads of fun with reading this year... dress-up days, pyjama reading days... Chris from Scholastic gave us a pack of books per class!  

Stuck in a game

We were lucky enough to have our Duffy Theatre show come to visit today.

The show was called "Stuck In A Game". 

A lot of our alongside could relate to Sam's intense tantrum when the game went wrong. 

Duffy got stuck in the magic brick game. His cousin Sam didn't like books, but had to read Duffy's book to save him.

Summer Learning Journey

Emma had a captive audience

Emma came in from the Summer Learning Journey, to visit with a prize pack for one of our yr 6's from last year.

Check out these goodies!

Dawn McMillan comes to Gilberthorpe

We were lucky enough to have author, Dawn McMillan visit today for our Duffy Assembly.

She read 'Mister Spears and his Hairy Ears' to us. The idea came from Derek having really hairy ears!

Dawn McMillan

She used to be a teacher, but now she's an author. Best job in the world because she can do it in her pyjamas.

She lives in the Coromandel. 

She lives with her husband Derek and Lola her cat. Occasionally Lola walks across the keyboard. Derek brings morning tea and cups of coffee out to her studio, sits on the couch and checks what she has written. Sometimes Derek makes snoring noises when the story is boring.

When you're writing , you need to listen to the voices is your head. 

She has written 220 books for schools and about 30 for shops. She always liked the idea of writing stories. 

You can find out more about her on her site

Author James Russell visits

James Russell came in to visit us to talk about his books. 

His main characters are Flynn & Paddy, which happen to be the names of his sons. 

He told us a great story involving frozen crumpets and a hunting knife 🙄. Followed by a story of him putting his leg through a deck.

When he writes a novel, his brain works really fast, but with his hand bandaged up... his one hand typing couldn't keep up with his brain. 

He explained what derrière meant by waving it about. 

He doesn't have a dog named Coco... or a dragon!

He has lots of really good ideas in the shower! 

The Dragon Defenders Series is set 3 years after the picture books.

He shoes us how you can use an app with the books, to show augmented reality.

He introduced us to the Pit Bull, the bad guy in the book... through the augmented reality app. The bone he crushed was a leg of lamb, which didn't make much noise... so he had to get the real Flynn to snap a stalk of celery next to the camera! 

Nz sign language

Last week was New Zealand Sign Language week. Rory has been learning to sign his name.

Olympics

We have been doing loads of learning around the Olympics. 

We watched this video, made for the last Olympic Games, which were in Rio 2016.

We were looking at how we need to look for messages in videos, even when there are no words. We need to pull information out of the text (video).

In this video, we are introduced to a range of sports which are in the Olympics. We see the mascots travelling trough the rainforest...

There are musicians playing traditional South American music too.

We decided that the video is giving us a sneak peak or glimpse into Brazilian culture and what we could expect to see at the Olympics. It might be designed to hook us in to wanting to watch it.

We are looking for the Winter Games episodes...