Thepipbuzz

Our Level 3 writers were inspired by James K Baxter's poem 'This Town' recently.   We learnt about James K Baxter and how he was inspired by his surroundings and people around him. We were looking at writing recounts in a different kind of way.  For this exercise, we borrowed the structure of the poem to create our own memory poem of somewhere that is extra special to us.    It was fun trying to create a memory of our special place without saying exactly where it was.  We enjoying sharing our poems with the rest of our group.  Have a read here yourself.

Congratulations to our Nui speech finalists!   The finals were held this morning and they were all to a very high standard.  Koka Claire (who is a trained Speech and Drama teacher) was the judge and commented on the content and delivery of each speech. The winners were Isabel (Year 5) and Chloe (Year 6).  A big shout out to all of our Moana Learning Hub students who participated!

We have just had our class speech competition to see who would make it through to the Nui semi-finals and then the finals next week. The topic for this year's speeches was 'Actions Speak Louder than Words' to go alongside our actions and learning from across this term.  It was a great speech topic and we had a variety of speeches given - from saving the bees, to flagging the bag, to Te Reo Maori, to generally putting our actions first. The standard of speeches was really high and everyone single Moana student should be really proud of getting quality speeches written in the timeframe, practising and then presenting to a big audience with confidence, clarity and humour. We congratulate these learners who are through to the semi-finals: Year 5s: Kya, Henry, Nellie, Izzy and Sophie  Year 6s: Obe, Kaya, Chloe, Daniel P and Charlie K Getting ready for semi-finals!

In Moana 3, we created some marvellous metaphor writing about our Dad's for Father's Day.  We had learnt about metaphor's previously so we knew the difference between a metaphor and a simile: a metaphor tells it like it is and a simile uses 'like' or 'as'. When we had completed our writing, we then designed wonderful portrait's of our Dad's... the effect was truly stunning and there were some very happy dad's out there on Father's Day! Just some of the wonderful portraits Here are our metaphor's about our Dad's - using Sheena Cameron's lesson ideas.  They brought a warm fuzzy feeling to Koka Ngaire as she was reading them!!

Koka Jodie with our book Sophie sharing how it was created. Last term, Koka Ngaire's Level 3 writers learnt about alliteration.  We decided to show off our learning by creating a book for the New Entrant class at school. We had to take a letter of the alphabet out of a hat, think of an animal that started with that letter and a name, then create alliteration to go towards our 'ABC Animal Alliteration Book". Reading through our book on the big screen Today, the hard work of constructing was all done and we went to gift our book to Room 9.  Sophie shared with the little kids what we had to do and then we read through it together. Room 9 giving us the thumbs up! Koka Janna and Koka Jodie said that our book will help the little kids with their sound and letter work.  Room 9 LOVED the book and were very pleased to receive it.... we now have a lot of other junior classes who want a copy!   Koka Ngaire might be a bit busy getting that done!!!

The Huia reading group were tasked with retelling the Story of Matariki.  After reading information, they viewed a few video clips and got some ideas... then they chose how they presented their retell.   We shared as a group and we were all impressed with the quality!

By Edith  Today we learnt about a great website called 'Storybird.com'. We are going to use this once a week for digital quickwrites, as not everyone in our class has success with writing with a pencil or pen... we find it easier on a device. By Stevii The topic for this week was: "There's a monster in my...".  Everyone in class had the same 100 words to use.  Some of us struggle to find the words to use when we have to write - this was great because the words were already there for us... we just had to create our own response. By Lani Those of us who love to write found it exciting and a challenge - because some words that we wanted to use weren't there.  We had to think really hard about how we put the words together. A tip we learnt was that each line should make sense on it's own. We found out that reading our work out aloud to ourselves helped us hear when we should use a new line. We also realised that we can create impact by having short lines and l...

Just before Mother's Day, those of us in Moana3 created some wonderful Mother's Day cards for all of our wonderful mums! We wrote a poem for our mums using the following guidelines: Line 1: Alliteration Line 2: 3 adjectives to describe our mums Line 3: a nickname Line 4: a simile or metaphor about our mum Line 5: a 3 word statement about our mum We chose whether we wanted to create the inside digitally or by hand. For the outside of the card, we used tissue and dye to create a blended pattern.  Koka Ngaire took our photo and we cut out fabulous hearts from a big pad of patterned paper. We were all really proud of our efforts and our mum's appreciated and loved our efforts too!