Athletic description.

Purpose: To entertain my audience.

WALT: show rather than tell in our writing in order to make it effective.

SC

1. Choose the main idea of your descriptive writing. Grab the action!
2. Does your writing start in the middle of the scene?
3. Do we know what you are thinking and feeling?
4. Choose at least 3 senses in your writing.
5. Plan your paragraphs.

The mad dash to the end.

Bang! The thunder of feet came charging down the sprint line, like a tornado demolishing everything in its path. The crowd was screaming at me as I ran past. My competitors and I reached the halfway mark, I was feeling tired and could see people catching up behind me. I could still feel the wind rushing past my face. I could feel myself becoming slower and slower as I got closer and closer to the finishing line.   

Thunder of feet pounded the ground. The blur of faces flashed in the eyes as I sped past them. They looked like darts rushing into the background, like they were trying to kill me. I started speeding up with the fear of losing, I was running for my life like I was being chased by pack dogs. I started gunning it to the finish line. Finally I passed the finish line. I felt like fainting after the race as my legs were aching and didn’t have the strength to keep me up.

Chromebooks Are Great.

Five nations Mounted Games.

Bridge to Terabithia.

This is my first attempt on sumo paint app. It's a picture from the movie/ book Bridge to Terabithia.

What helps me to improve in my writing?

Future Focused Learning

Purpose: To inform our Ministry of Education, that future focused learning has made a big difference to how we learn which has helped us to achieve in our learning.

WALT: write an annotated report about the learning that took place in my classroom and how the learning helped me to become a successful student.

Annotated reflection

The last term was amazing. It was The last term was so much better than having to dig out text books. With the chromebooks we can access the class site and find our tasks that the teacher has given us as well as her extra support resources we may need when we are working on our tasks.

We have a blog where we post our work that we have finished. We also have programs like Sumdog and Mangahigh. We have made videos and movies using youtube editor and posted them on youtube.

It is easier working on a document because we can just copy and paste it onto our blog. We can work before school, after school and during school which is good because we can finish our tasks at home.

The chromebook has helped me with writing because I can see my mistakes because it underlines them. The Read&Write App also helps because it highlights my mistakes, plus I can hear my work especially when I forget to punctuate my work.

The teacher can share work and resources with us, like presentations and documents. Our teacher can also check our work from her computer with the Hapara Teacher Dashboard. Plus she can also see what we are doing on our chromebook.                                                                                                                            

I think its good that we have chromebooks at Tautoro School because it is a useful tool in the class room.

A Brief Analysis of my Reading.

Reading Analysis

WALT: make a snap shot of my reading ability using the National Standards learning progressions.

This week we videoed ourselves reading an extract from Bridge to Terabithia. We had to watch ourselves and notice what challenges we faced when reading at 13-14 years.  We had to choose 4 challenges that stood out the most. Then we had to think how we were going to make changes to our reading, by setting goals.

The Challenges I Face In Reading Are:

• I have a challenge with not having any intonation. (expression)

• I read how I talk
• I read over some punctuation
• I bore people

The Goals That I Will Focus On To help Me Become A Better Reader Are.

• read with expression.  
• Stop at all the full stops and pause when I come to a comma.
• Not to bore people when I read and try and look at the audience

Tautoro School - Tuakana Group 2014

ERO report

WALT: persuade an audience using emotive words.

SC

1. Use words form ‘Emotive language list’ to help you to positive describe Tautoro School.

2. Use a plan to help you to structure your ideas.

3. Try not to repeat your ideas throughout your writing.

Tautoro School has once again passed the review from ERO. Tautoro School is the jewel in the crown of Northland schools. All of their students are achieving with high standards in an incredible learning environment based around blended e-learning.

Firstly, all of their year 4 to 8 students are working on chromebooks which has change the face of education as we know it. Gone are the tatty exercise books and boring text books. The chromebooks are helping Tautoro students’ to achieve in literacy and numeracy because they are given lots of learning opportunities with the internet being so good. The children are getting incredible filming opportunities to film each other and post it on youtube.

Secondly, the students are engaged in their learning and are listening to the teacher and are on task all the time. The children come to school with a smile and are happy throughout the day. The students are managing themselves and their work output and because of this the teachers don’t have to manage severe classroom behaviour. They are all achieving well at everything they do.     

Thirdly, the teachers are finding the best sites for their children and this is making the lessons fun for all students. Boredom is definitely not a classroom issue, with students are learning.

Tautoro School is the best school to send your children to. Your child will be looked after by all of the students and teachers.

Tautoro School has once again passed with flying colors because its the jewel in crown of Northland.

Where is Glasgow?

Thanks

Dear Kids Can,

Thank you for sending the jackets, track pants, hand sanitiser, tissues, museli bars, weet bix and fruit salad. It is great that you keep sending us this stuff, so keep up the good work.

Every morning the kids come off the school bus, put their bags away and then have breakfast. The jackets and track pants have been keeping us warm all winter. Hand sanitisers have been put up around the school to keep the bugs away. All the teachers and children appreciate what you do for not only us, but the rest of New Zealand. So it’s a huge thank you from me.

Dear Hellers NZ butcher,

Recently Tautoro School received 500 precooked sausages, which we appreciate and we would like to send a big thank you for sending us all these sausages.

We had our school cross country and after we all ran, to celebrate we had a free sausage sizzle for everyone. So thank you as it was an awsome day and you made it better with the sausage sizzle.

Thank you for thinking about us.

Dear Mid-North budgeting services,

Thank you for the loaves of bread, Tautoro School really appreciates your kind thought.

We used some of the loaves at one of our whanau days. The rest of the loaves were used at breakfast time for all of our students. So thank you again for what you’ve done for us.  

                                        

GAFE

Annotated Reflection - How good of a writer am I?

WALT: write an annotated reflection showing judgement, opinion and analysis.

SC

1. Use past verbs that show mental processes i.e. think, wondered, guessed…

2. Use the Helped/Hindered box to structure my writing.

3. Must inform the audience how you improved or did not improve.

4. Must provide examples and explanation on why you became a better writer or not.

My Writing Progress Made in Term 2.

In term 2, we focused on descriptive writing which was challenging because I wanted to write how the person acted, rather than describe what the person looked like. I found this type of writing difficult because I felt like my writing never looked finished, where as a recount started from beginning to end.

I did have big problems with my book work as it was not set out tidily, so I found it hard to proof-read. I was slow at writing and proof-reading, I had a lot of unfinished pieces of writing in my exercise book and I did not want to show anyone my work

However I felt that my writing had improved because the teacher was always pulling me up for mistakes, I made in my writing and she was pushing me to write more than what I would normally write.

What hindered me was the fact I didn’t like writing and that I was slow at writing. I had a lot of punctuation mistakes which stopped me from moving towards national standard, level 4 beginning.

This term my family have moved to Northland and I am enrolled at Tautoro. I am in a class that uses chromebooks instead of exercise books. The chromebook will help me because my work will be set out tidily and I won’t get frustrated with having to start my writing again.

The Read & Write app will also help me by putting my punctuation in the right place, making me hear if my story makes sense and it will also say words incorrectly if I misspell them. However my typing skills will hinder me because I only type with one finger, at this point in time.

Now that I am in this class I have high hopes for my writing on the chromebook because I don’t have to worry about my presentation. It will also make it easier to proof-read so I know I will improve in my writing.