Thursday, September 16, 2010

Cityscape Art

Here is another post about our learning in Art this term.

Our focus has been learning how to use paints effectively. We have learned about the primary and secondary colours, and made some colour wheels by blending paints. We have also learned about using tints ans shades. A tint is a lighter colour made by adding white, whereas a shade is a darker colour made by adding black.

All the knowledge and skills that we picked up over the term have helped us in making our City Scape art. Everybody worked hard to make these works, and everybody can be proud of what they have accomplished.

The key points were learned were:
1 - In cityscapes, the colours used are lighter, and there is little detail. In the foreground, colurs are darker and there is greater detail.
2 - When blending paints to create new colours, always use small amounts at first. Even a small amount of a dark colour can make a huge difference to a lighter colour.
3 - Layout, colouring and brush strokes (texturing) can give the illusion of height and depth.

We hope that you enjoy our work.


Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Kandinsky Art

A couple of weeks ago, we finally finished our calendar art, which was based around Wassily Kandinsky's work. He created a lot of art that contained various geometric shapes, including squares, triangles, circles, and many forms of lines.

We tried to emulate his work using pastels. Most students produced two of three works, while some made many more. Everybody chose the one they liked most, and submitted it for calendar art.

This movie is a compilation of the hard work everyone put into this unit. Well done guys!!

Friday, June 25, 2010

Our Book Reviews, Our Book Shelf

Parent Interviews have finished for this term, and it has been great to hear all the positive feedback from pod 11's parents.

We have been preparing for our book talks this week by writing some book reports on a novel of our choice. I have written a report about a book I have read called Beyond the Darkwoods by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. It is the first in a series of books about "The Edge".

If you scroll down the page, you will see our Shelfari book shelf. Here we will put the books that we have read, and if you move your pointer over the books, the review that each child has written will appear.

As of today, only my review has been uploaded, but there will be many more to come - 26 in all by the end of the week. By clicking on the book, you will be taken to the books "site" at shelfari.com, where you can find out more about the book.
Enjoy.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Camp Reflections #4

Many people have asked me to post more of our Camp Reflections on our Writers Blog, so here are four more to read. This time we have writing from Devan, Emma, Keeli, and Phoebe. Please don't forget to leave comments. Enjoy.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

My Greatest Feat

As you probably know, the Soccer World Cup is beginning this week in South Africa. A programme called My Greatest Feat is being run which encourages kids to get active. All of us in Pod 11 have been issued with pedometers, and each day, we record the number of steps we have taken, and record them on the My Greatest Feat website, which you can find here.

Everybody in Pod 11 knows the username and password for our class's account, it would be great if you could let your child show you how much work we have done to reach our goal of walking the All Whites to their first game in South Africa. There's lots of information for you to read, and interesting facts to help you learn about the country.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Another Set of Camp Reflections

As promised, there are more Camp Reflections on the writers blog. The fantastic writing this time around has been done by Jevon, Ben T., Jessica, and Ruby. It has been really great to see all the positive comments from parents, teachers and children about the previous writing. The kids have really enjoyed reading them with real tinkles in their eyes.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

More Camp Reflections

We have posted some more camp reflections on our writing blog. The new posts are written by Lydia, Maggie, Eva, and Kahlee. There will be more later on in the week, so watch this space! Please remember to comment on the writing that you read - it makes a big difference to the students, and it does not need to be long or detailed at all.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Camp Reflections

As part of our assessment portfolios going home in a couple of weeks, Pod 11 wrote reflections about their experiences on camp in Mangawhai. Here are a few from the boys. You can read the writing from Connor, Lewis, Chaice, and Tony. We were trying to make sure that we used "thinking words" so that the reader would understand what we were thinking and feeling.
We will have more posts soon with more reflections.

Monday, May 17, 2010

A Slow Week

This past week has not been particularly exciting, as we all have been trying to complete our assessments for the portfolios that will be going home later in the term. I must admit that I have been impressed with both the attitude that most students have shown, and the quality of work that they have produced.

Today has seen most students complete their final assessment - a written reflection based on their experiences while on camp back in late April. We tried very hard to include "thinking words" so that readers can know our feelings and opinions about our experiences in Mangawhai. We will soon have some of the great writing up on our writer's blog here.

We look forward to seeing you back here again soon. Please don't forget to comment on our blog, on any post - we love to hear from our audience!

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Camp Leters

During the week we have been writing letters to the parents that came on camp with us. We are very lucky that we get so much support from our parents, so Pod 11 have been writing letters to show their appreciation.

Go to our Writer's Blog to see some of them. You can also see Meg's report about Sea Squirts from last term. Kahlee's letter to Ra is here, Sarah's letter to Adele is here, and Julius' letter to Jason is here.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Camp Photos

Here is a short and quick selection of photos from our Mangawhai camp. The movie was made at animoto.com website, and uploaded to YouTube. Hopefully we'll have some more to come soon.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Another Octopus Attack

After reading about the Octopus attack from 1982, we found an article in the NZ Herald about a recent attack. It turns out that a Wellington diver had his camera 'stolen' by an octopus while it was still filming. The footage that was recorded is very interesting.

You can read the NZ Hereld article here
You can see the footage from the camera on YouTube here
You can also see an interview with the diver on American TV, also on YouTube, here

Attacked by an Octopus

During the first week of term, Pod 11 read about a diver that was attacked by an Octopus just off the Wellington coast. Here is some of the information that Eva and Maggie learnt from the story.

"Attacked by an Octopus"

The divers were diving off the coast of Wellington. They were taking pictures of sea life for a book. They broke "the golden rule" of staying together. Dave was attacked by an octopus.

Dave had to let his camera go because the octopus was attacking it. The octopus “Enveloped the camera” which means it surrounding the camera. He dropped heavy rocks to distract it, but that didn’t work because the pressure of the water made them sink down gently. Dave tried to free himself by punching the octopus between the eyes.

Octopus are good mothers because they will do anything to protect their eggs/babies. The Octopus probably acted this way because it was trying to protect it’s eggs.
Four ways an Octopus can get away from danger are:
1.squeezing through tiny cracks
2.swimming away very fast
3.spraying ink
4. changing colour to match it’s surroundings

The story that we read is called "Attacked by an Octopus" From School Journal 1982, Part 4, Number 3, Pages 44-47.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Pod 11's Blog for 2010.

During the year we will share our experiences and learning with you. Hopefully we will make regular posts to keep you up-to-date, and look forward to hearing any comments or questions that you may have.

We look forward to seeing you back here soon!

Pod 11