What is it worth?

If you look at this photo before, you can see that it says sunglasses 24euros, access to water 8 euros.

What do you think might be the 'hidden message' in this photo?

How does the picture make you feel?

Think about your life. What are your wants? What are your needs? What is this picture trying to say about people's lives?

A day at a conference.

Conferences follow a similar format all over the world. During the day I spend a lot of time in meeting rooms learning more about apple products. Today I learned more about iBooks author, Keynote and App Development.

Sometimes the conference gets together as a big group to listen to speeches.

And sometimes we play games. I got up on stage in front of a couple of hundred people to do an improv game And then... with a lovely American woman called Rebecca. We will have a go at playing it when I get back.

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The hotel I am staying at has four different swimming pools. The best bit is that there is a water slide from one pool to another. I took this video with my waterproof camera.

After spending time in the pool we got to eat dinner right by the pool which was pretty neat.

I hope you enjoy Fun Run. Who had the best costume? Until tomorrow,

Stephaie

More fun from Bali

One of my favourite things about going to different countries is trying different types of food. Here is some of my breakfast from today. At the front is snake fruit which is named because the skin of the fruit feels like snake skin. The inside is really yummy too. The fruit behind is called rambutan and tastes like a cross between a plum and a peach.

This man was nice enough to let me have a go on his musical instrument during the break. It's like xylophone made out of bamboo branches.

 
Right by the hotel is a temple. My Dad went to the same temple back in 1972! There are a lot poisonous sea snakes in the area which are said to guard the temple from intruders.

The weather is so hot but I'm lucky enough to be staying at a place with a pool. There's also a very awesome waterslide.  Do you think I should take a video going down the slide using my waterproof camera?

Until tomorrow. Good luck with raising money for Fun Run!

Selamat Siang from Bali

Hi Room 15
I hope you raised a lot of money for Fun Run over the weekend.

Last week I left New Zealand to attend the Apple Educator Institute in Indonesia. There are teachers from all over Asia as well as Australia and New Zealand. The place that I am staying is very beautiful, right by the ocean. There are lots of palm trees and coconut trees.




This week I'll be learning a lot about how to use different Apple products in class but also telling teachers about what we do in Room 15.

What do you think I should share with the other teachers to show off our class? Do you have a favourite movie I could share?

Enjoy your week.

Stephanie

Showing tenacity

Yesterday we thought more about what we needed to do develop our passions into talents. We watched the trailer for a documentary that follows a group of students hoping to have a career  in dance. Tenacity, not giving up when something is difficult, is talked about in the clip as being the most important quality in a dancer.

How have you shown tenacity in your learning this week? Give an example.

One of the students in our class said you needed to practice a skill three times before you can learn it. Do you agree? Why?

What do you think drives the dancers to practice for hours and hours a day?

This Week's Work on Writing - Poetry

For the last few weeks, we've been studying poetry in class. So it's about time we had a go at writing poetry. Your poetry needs to use at least two language features in it. If you are stuck on what to write, try and think of time when you felt really happy, angry or excited and develop those feelings into a poem.

Rhyme - words that have the same sounds at the end e.g .
I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them Sam I am.

Not all poetry needs to rhyme though.

Alliteration -a group words that have the same letters or sounds at the start. e.g Work on Writing

Hyperbole - an exaggeration so dramatic nobody could believe e.g I'm as hungry as a horse.

Simile - this is where you compare something to something else. Similes work best when you are describing something. Instead of saying 'I walked slowly to school' you could say my journey to school was slower than a turtle. You need to use words like than, as, like etc. to make a comparison.

Metaphor - suggesting something is something else. e.g you're a dictionary (a good speller) or 'all the worlds a stage.'

Onomatopoeia - words that describe or sound like a real sound. e.g buzz, thunk, bounce and my personal  favourite, squelch.

Personification - when you give human qualities to something isn't human. e.g the years ran by in a blur, the engines roared.

Where is all the rain?

 The early part of Autumn has been very dry in New Zealand.

Here in Wellington we've had our first rain in weeks. Our field is looking a bit dusty and Colonial Knob is now a drab brown.

Wellington has water restrictions in place.

What are you doing to save water?

What do you think you should you do when you see someone wasting water?

Learning from Nathan Sawaya

This week you watched a video about lego artist Nathan Sawaya. His story is quite extraordinary as he first started working as a laywer. He was making a lot of money as a lawyer but was then offered $13 an hour to work as an artist for lego. Now he earns lots of money building fantastic sculptures out of lego.

How do you think Nathan became so talented at making lego sculptures?

Do you agree that making things out of lego is art? How so? 

What do you think Nathan's story can teach you about making big changes in your life?

What do you think Nathan's passion is? How has it made him successful?

Work on writing - similies

Image used under creative commons licence

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?
 Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin
Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?
 Do you ever feel already buried deep six feet under?
Scream but no one seems to hear a thing
Do you know that there's still a chance for you
'Cause there's a spark in you?
 You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine
 Just own the night like the 4th of July

This week your work on writing is use similes effectively in your writing.

Similes are a good way to describe thoughts or feelings by comparing something to something else. In the Katy Perry song Firework she compares feeling lonely to feeling like a plastic bag drifting through the wind or like a house cards that could cave in from one small action.

You have a choice about what you want to describe and if you wish to use poetry or prose (a regular story). but the work needs to be of a high quality and finished within the session.

Purple Cake Day

Room 15 joined up with Room 16 to organize a purple cake day at TIS. Purple cake day is a day for kids around New Zealand to fund raise for kids' education in developing countries. Our event raised over $160 for kids in developing countries.

 How did you enjoy purple cake day? 

 What should we do differently next time?

What learning areas do you think our fundraiser was?

You can view our purple cake day, set on Flickr.

The fun theory

I love this video. It shows how with a bit of creative thinking you take an every day activity and make it awesome.

How do you think that the fun theory could apply to your learning?

How could you change something you find boring into something interesting?

World Read Aloud Day

Wednesday March 6 is World Read Aloud day. It's a day to celebrate the importance of reading and sharing stories.

Room 15 decided to make a movie of a children's book for children in junior classes to enjoy.

The book is called the Big Block of Chocolate which is a book that our teacher remembers reading to her little brother when they were children.

First the class broke into pairs. Each pair had to create a scene for each page of the book and here is our final product.

What was your favourite scene?

What could we do to make our video better next time?

Do you think the class should eat the big block of chocolate?

The Great Room 15 Paper dart challenge

Monday afternoons in Huia often involve some sort of challenge. Room 13 and 14 challenged our class to a paper dart flying competition which we gladly accepted.

It was lots of fun to see swishing paper planes in our crowded classroom.

What did you enjoy about the challenge?

How did your plane fly?

What would you do differently next time?

Persistence - not giving up

 Sometimes life doesn't seem very fair. You might do badly on test or not get chosen for a team.

You might feel badly and want to give up.

If you talk to famous successful people you might find that they have suffered many setbacks in the lives.

In fact one of the world's most famous basketballers,  Michael Jordan, was not picked for his high school team.  Instead of giving up he decided to practice every day and became one of the world's most famous basketballers.

Have you ever suffered a setback in your life?

What did you do to overcome it?