Pohutukawa @ Waitara Central School

This week we read the Battle of the Mountains Legend, retold by Annie Rae Te Ake Ake. This story tells about how our maunga, Mt Taranaki, came to be situated here on the west coast of the North Island. We were learning about summarising. As we read the story, we thought about the most important parts. After we finished reading, we tried to retell the story in 5 main points. Each of us got to create a visual summary of our favourite part of the story.  We created our illustrations by Pōhutukawa. The best classroom :). We are proud of our illustrations because, We put alot of time and effort in designing and creating our illustrations. We hope you like them!  What is your favourite legend? - Tongariro

Cybersmart- Nanny Mihi and the Rianbow This week in Pohutukawa we read Nanny Mihi and the Rainbow, by Melanie Drewery. We were learning about making connections. We thought about times when we had walked along the beach collecting things, like the tamariki in the story. We also shared about when we had heard some of the te reo kupu from the story, and used our connections to understand the meaning of these words. We learnt a bit about the M ā ori Atua (gods) in this story, and we made a connection with the way the gods hung the rainbow in the sky to share the tamariki’s mahi. This is just like when we share our mahi on a blog post, because then everyone can see and enjoy our great work. After we finished the story, we made our own rainbow collage, using explore, search for different textures and crop tool. The best bit about making our rainbows was using different textures, colours and shapes. We hope you like them!

Welcome back to school. Term 4 is going to be a busy and fun Term. We already start the Term by learning how to create a rainbow collage on Google draw. In Maths we are learning about direction and location. Students wrote they're goals for the term and we shared what we did in the holidays. The students of Pohutukawa are very excited to be back at school. 

The Best Part OF Me.

 Describe it.  Pohutukawa is learning how to add detail in their writing.  - Why do we need details in our writing?  - What is an adjective/WOW words/ Describing word?  - SMASH our writing.  What an awesome writing session, we learnt about adding detail to our writing to make it interesting for the reader and to create a mental image while reading. We started by discussion what is an adjective, and it can make our writing more intersting. Students tworked in small group coming up with as many adjectives as they could describing some animal photos. We then used the adjectives to write some sentences.  The students enjoyed this very much. (Photos of the students writing to come.) 

 Is it a sentence?  T his week we've been learning about sentences. - What is a sentence? - What makes a perfect sentences?  - SMASHing our sentences.  After, discussion and learning about sentences, students practiced writing simple sentences and SMASHing their writing. The students enjoyed learning in a variety of differeint ways, writing in on the whiteboards, working with a buddy and their favourite, SMASHing Whaea Marizaan's sentence.