Week 9: Hour of Code

O'Neill class agreed to challenge themselves and join in with the 'Hour of Code'.  The first thing we learned was, that coding is easier than we thought.  We also learned that coding can be achieved faster when you have other people to collaborate with.

Today we wrote codes for Minecraft.  Make sure you visit our individual blogs later this afternoon to read about our coding experience.

O'Neill Class Coding Hub

Taylor and Genete - Coding experts!

Week 8: Last swimming lesson

Today was our last swimming lesson att Cameron Pools.  We would like to extend a huge 'thank you' to all of the staff at Cameron Pools for helping us.

Please visit our individual blogs to read our exciting posts about our final swimming lesson.

Week 7: Assessments

This week Miss Fortes has been doing some assessments with us.  We talked about what an assessment is, how it helps us with our learning and what each one is used for.  We wrote explanations about assessments. Here is an example of one:

Assessments by Gargee

An assessment is important because you can improve the things that you are below in and get at or above.

What is an assessment
An assessment is something that tells you if you are at the national standard or not. National standards means what you are at, but not only in you school or class. It is all over New Zealand!!!

Different types of assessments
There are at least 5 or 6 types of assessments. There are reading, writing, and maths. In reading you can be tested on your fluency and you comprehension. Fluency means how you read, if you read like a robot you are reading wrong. If you are reading in your normal voice you are doing a quarter right. You have to read with expression and in the character's voice. Comprehension means what you know and what you know that is in the question. If you just do random answers you might get the questions all wrong!!

Why do we use assessments?
We use assessments for what we know that you are going to go to the next step or work on a step that you were on before. We also use assessments to see what we can do and see what we can do next.

That is a lot of thinking to do if you are below the national standards. Make sure you always work hard and you try your best not to go from 3A to 1B!.

Week 6: Athletics Day

Unfortunately our Athletics day was cancelled due to wet weather.  Prepared in our team colours, some of us were still keen to compete in the rain!  But we understood that it was a safety issue, especially for high jump.

Watch this space!  Hopefully we can find another date for this day.

Week 5: Student-led Toolkits

A spectacular day!

New Windsor school joined us today for our student-led toolkits.  Joseph C, Gargee and Raymond presented their own toolkit on Google sites (we had a sneak preview yesterday and it is an awesome toolkit).

There were a wide range of toolkits available from Booktrack, iMovie, Screencastify, Coding through Scratch and many more.

To top of the action-packed day of learning, there were loads of prizes! A brand new Chromebook from PB Tech, two amazing hampers from New World Mt Roskill, fun movies from Universal, and Techie goodies from Acer and Cyclone Computers.

Thank you to our sponsors, teachers, parent helpers and student committee for making this day happen!

Please check out our blogs for pictures and posts about this exhilarating day!

                                  

Week 4: Cameron Pools

Our swimming lessons were phenomenal today!  Some of use learned how to float on our backs, use the correct breathing technique during freestyle and kicking to propel ourselves forward.

Check out our individual blogs for photos and swimming updates!

Week 3: Check out our learning

O'Neill class have been learning to record their reflective thinking ont heir blogs. They have reflected about what made their learnign tricky today.

It would be great if you could visit one of their blogs and provide them with some feedback on their post.

Week 2: Individual Blogs

Just a quick announcement to say that we are ALL up and running with our own individual blogs.  Miss Fortes has added links to our blogs on the right-hand side of this page. We are so excited about sharing our learning on our very own blogs, so feel free to visit them.

We love receiving feedback about our posts and how we can improve or change them, and now we are only 'one-click' away.

Week 2: Ozone Warriors

Today we were lucky enough to participate in the 'Have a Go' sports day at Keith Hay Park.  This event is for Year 3/4 classes and is all about having a go, and trying our best at different sports.  We played softball, cricket, practiced our hockey skills, played Get Set Go games and had a go at gymnastics!

It was an action packed day.  Thank you to Sport Auckland for setting up an amazing day for us!  Make sure you check out our individual blogs for some detailed posts about our sports day.

One more thing... we also came THIRD!!  Wohooooo!   Ozone Warriors Rock!

Week 1: Google Sites

Wow, it's term 4 already!  This week we learned how to create our own Google Site based on this terms topic: Renewable Energy.  A massive thank you to Mr Hopkins for creating the site template and getting us started.

We learned so many skills, how to create a site, rename it, edit a page, insert an image URL, and  embed a youtube video!  You will be able to see these sites in progress when we blog about them in Week 3.

Here is a sneek peek of our site template...

Describing a moment in time

Please listen to these pheneomenal descriptions by Kanishka and Clarice.

We would appreciate it if you could leave a comment to tell us how we could improve our descriptions.

Click on the Movenote symbol to hear our movenotes.

Te reo Maori - Conversation

We are learning to introduce ourselves and hold a brief conversation in Maori.  This is a recording made by Joseph and Janine.  If you have any tips for them, please leave a comment telling them your tips.

Can you guess how they are feeling?

Joseph and Janine's Movenote

Fakakaloa Aotearoa 'aki 'a e faiva 'a e Tonga – Enriching Aotearoa with Tongan arts.

Last week we celebrated Tongan Language week.  We made our own Tapa cloth. 

1. We scrunched up plain A4 paper until it was soft.  
2. Then we used a sketching pencil to draw on our patterns (we only chose 2 patterns).  
3. When we were ready, we used a cotton bud to trace over our patterns with brown Indian ink.
4. To finish our Tapa, we used a cloth to wipe brown dye across them.  

Touch Rugby

This week we learned how to pass the ball backwards and catch the touch rugby ball without dropping it.

Here is a short video of our touch rugby drills.

O'Neill Class Touch Rugby

PB4L Assembly

Congratulations to all of our phenomenal PB4L prize winners!

Dragonflies

We have been reading a book called 'The Pebble in my pocket'.  We took a page about dragonflies and sketched our own.  Then Miss Fortes put our dragonflies together and we had to write a sentence to describe what we see.

Next we got into groups of four and moved around our sentences until we had made a poem.  

Maths Week in O'Neill Class by Moe

In O'Neill class our reading groups are all named after famous Mathematicians who are also Scientists.  Each of us made a DLO about our mathemetician as part of Maths Week.

Have you done any fun activities to celebrate maths week?

This is a copy of Moe's DLO about Galileo.  It isn't finished yet, but it would be great to get some feedback about it, so she can make her DLO better.

Moe's DLO

Spelling by Daniel

I was practicing my spelling words.  My goal was to learn all of my List 6 spelling words.  This is a photo of my spelling test and I got all of them right.  Thank you Mrs Falefa for helping me learn all of my words.  Now I am going to start learning my List 7 words.

Maths Week - e-Ako by Joseph J and Lorenzo

We have been doing some learning on e-Ako. E-ako is fun but sometimes hard because we get divided bys and take-aways and timestables.  It helps my learning because it makes me think about how to work out the answer, like partitioning a number.  Partitioning means you break up a number to make a tidy number. By Joseph J

E-ako is good for my learnning because sometimes it is easy, but when it is the next day it's hard because of the divided bys and sometimes I get questions about my timestables.  It can help anyone with their learning because it helps you practice your divided bys, timetables, take aways and addition.  Also it is good because it teaches you how to partition and find the answer and learn more information about maths. By Lorenzo

Maths Week - Frog and Toad Jumps by Genete and Talal

As a class we did an activity called Frog jumps.

The frog jump was hard because you had to defend the other frog.  You could only jump over a frog or jump to the spot in front of you if it was empty.  It was good for your maths because it was like 2+1.  You had to add up the spaces so you could jump.  By Genete

Toads and Frog jumps are really hard. When there are 3 toads you can't jump over them because you can only jump over a Frog or Toad if there is a free spot after it.  It is good for your maths because it makes you use problem solving. By Talal

Maths Week - Tangrams by Bob and Sami

Did you know that Tangrams are made up of 7 pieces?

I learned about different shapes and there are triangles, squares, and a shape called a parralellogram.  It is tricky to put the shapes in the right place and sometimes I get them mixed up. By Sami

I learned about putting shapes in order so they fit together.  Also there are 5 triangles, 1 square and 1 parrallegram.  It is fun but it is really hard sometimes because you don't know which order to put the shapes in. By Bob

Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori

Kia ora. Today we made a Google slide presentation with some useful phrases in Te reo Maori. We wrote our phrases in Maori and English. Then we used movenote to record ourselves pronouncing the phrases. We would enjoy hearing any feedback that you could give us. Thank you. From O'Neill Class Useful phrases - O'Neill Class Presentation

Creative Writing using Storybird by Joseph Chavez

Picturesque Pluto!

In the holidays astronomers found out that they had the most incredible thing in their hands. It could gather different facts about Pluto. Also it was the size of a piano! It was like a small satellite. The small thing that is the size of a piano that looked like a satellite had taken very good photos of Pluto. It can send the photos from far,far,far,far,far,far away. Did you know that Pluto isn't blue or grey, it is brown and reddish.

By Malachy

Stardome Trip

Hockey with Mr Bryan

This is a quick slideshow with some photo's of our class doing hockey with Mr Bryan

O'Neill Class Learning Hub - Samoan Dance Group

Hello Samoan dance group.

This is a link to our learning hub, where you will find your dance video.   Our next practice will be on Thursday in O'Neill Class.

Our practice days are Monday and Tuesday at lunch.   (If you are part of our Netball team, you need to attend Netball practice before coming to Samoan dance group)

Link to our Learning Hub  ------->  O'Neill Learning Hub 

Measurement Game

We have been learning about measurement in class.  Here is a game we created that measures time and length.

You should try this at home

By Faisal and Dorina

Movenote

Miss Fortes and O'Neill class have been thinking of ways to share their learning,

Today some of us learned how to use Movenote.   Joseph Chavez is a Movenote ninja and he taught us how to get Movenote working on our Chromebooks.  He worked with Miss Fortes to teach us how to use movenote too.  

Some of us felt annoyed because we couldn't use movenote.  Genete said that "it was a bit tricky because the internet was slow."  

However, Gargee managed to successfully make a movenote video.  Here is a link to the video that Gargee made.

ANZAC Biscuits

Did you know that ANZAC biscuits were made by wives and mothers and sent to the soldiers at war. These biscuits were really good because the ingredients didn't 'go off' quickly and the biscuits could still be eaten after a long trip to the soldiers.

These are the ingredients we used to make our ANZAC Biscuits.

 

 

Miss Fortes baked them during lunch break and this is what our biscuits looked like!  Delicious!

 

We went back to class and pretended that we were soldiers eating their biscuits in the safety of their trenches.

If you want to make some of these biscuits at home, you can find the recipe here 

Learn, Create, Share - Explain Everything

Today some of us have been learning how to CREATE videos on our iPads and SHARE them with other people.

We used an app called Explain Everything.

Here is a video that Janine and Breanna made today.

ANZAC Poppies

This week we have been learning about why ANZAC day is so special.

We have been learning the 'Ode of Remembrance' so we can say it together at our school ANZAC ceremony and we also learned about the soldiers who lost their lives during the war.

We decided to make four huge poppies together.  We did this by tracing around our hands on red paper, then writing a message of thanks to the soldiers.  Miss Fortes stuck them together so they looked like poppies.  Here are some pictures.

Shared writing!

Check out these awesome recounts from Tyrone and Joseph.  

Feed the Kids Too

A massive thank you to Bernie and Donna for coming along to our school and giving each of us our very own lunchbox.  Some of us already have a lunchbox, so we are going to use our new ones as storage containers at home.

We would also like to extend a BIG thank you to Tasti bars for our free muesli bars and a HUGE thank you to Sistema for giving us our colourful lunchboxes.

Aroha nui ki a koutou.

Community Fun Day

We had a great day today with our Community Fun Day.  There was a bouncy castle, face painting, food.. even ice-cream!

There were lots of competitions and some of us won prizes!  Our families could walk around and visit all of the people at the stalls and buy food that our classes made.  All of the money raised from the food stalls is going towards our Year 5/6 camp this year.

Joseph Chavez named our food stall as 'Pizza Shack'.  We sold two delicious flavours and yes, we SOLD OUT! Wohoooo!

Here are some pictures of us preparing the pizza's.

Chromebooks!

Yay our Chromebooks have arrived!

Some of us were very lucky today because we got our new Chromebooks.  Miss Fortes gave us a box and we had to carefully open it and get out our Chromebooks.  It was phenomenal!

They smelt fresh and brand new.  Miss Fortes told us that we have to give our Chromebooks a hug and that we can say 'I love you Chromebook'. We are all very excited about using our Chromebooks for learning.

Thank you to all of our families for making this possible.

Hanan super excited about her Chromebook starting up in 7 seconds.

Daniel feeling proud about his new learning device.

Janine giving her Chromebook a little cuddle before putting it away.

Malachy about to pen his Chromebook for the first time.

Dorina setting up her new Chromebook.

2015

Kia orana and a warm welcome to O'Neill class's very own blog!

On our blog, you will see photo's and stories of our awesome learning at school.  Miss Fortes will also post links to interesting sites that can help us with learning at home.

This term O'Neill class welcomes Mrs Leckey.  She is a student teacher who will be with us for the first 2 weeks of the term and then returning in March for 2 days a week.  We look forward to learning with Mrs Leckey.