Storytime!!!

Mrs Hosie reading Underground
to Canada at story time

Despite the fact that we're nearly 12, we still love to "chillax" and listen to a story with the class. Even better - you can choose from two stories to go listen to (in Room 12 it's Harry Potter, and in Room 13 it's Underground to Canada). If you don't feel like a story, you can go into the breakout space and read another book or draw. What could be a better way to spend twenty minutes after lunch?

While the stories are being read, the teachers ask questions for the students to answer about the story to get the students involved. Sometimes students have questions about the story which the teachers are happy to answer. There's always a competition to see who gets the beanbag, but sometimes the winners share with their friends. It's a great opportunity to share a story with your best buddies, regardless of which Year 7 classroom they come from.

I spoke to Room 13 student Shaelyn about story time:

"I don't really know which part I like best; I like everything about it." 

Wouldn't it be great if anyone could come in and listen to such cool stories?

By Georgie

Preparing for the Global Cardboard Challenge in October

 While most of the Senior and Intermediate students were up at Rainbow skiing, the rest joined with Mrs Ryder's class to help them build some great arcade games. Check out the movie to see what they got up to.


 

Did you know...

Spelling rules and patterns for the "OW" sound in words.

Sumdog

Here is a computer screen shot of the
most popular game amongst Room 13 - Dress Down

Room 13 have started using an interactive internet site called Sumdog.  Sumdog has lots of different maths games and problem solving tasks on it. You can also create an avatar and make virtual friends with people in your class or school. You have a home page that changes depending on the games you play. You can play games with your virtual friends as well as people from around the world who are online. There are different stages (which are named after animals) depending on how many games you have played. I asked some Room 13 students about their Sumdog experience:

"It's really cool and really fun. I have lots of virtual friends" - Zak

"It's a really fun game. I like it a lot" - Brydie

When the teacher signed Room 13 up for Sumdog there was a NZ competition running for all NZ Sumdog users. Sadly Room 13 didn't have enough people going onto Sumdog on a regular basis, so we weren't shown on the scoreboard. However, Room 13's Sumdog accounts still exist, so you're likely to find a few of the class laptops in use!!! Good luck with the next competition (if there are enough players to enter)!!!

By Georgie

A maths game we tried

Rhea from Room 12 in action

On Tuesday the Room 13 maths class (which combines some of the students from Room 12) played a game on the Interactive Whiteboard to help the students with their subtracting. The problems were written on the board and the students had to "fill in the blanks" on the board using the Interactive Whiteboard marker. Most of the students hadn't used the whiteboard before so it was quite an exciting experience. I spoke to Olivia (one of the Room 12 students who comes through to Room 13 for maths) about the game:

"The game was fun but it was quite a challenge" she told us. "I didn't get to use the Interactive Whiteboard but it was fun seeing my friend Lucy have a go with it."

I also spoke to Room 13 student Zak:

"The game was quite fun - and I got to use the Interactive Whiteboard pen which was fun too."

Connor of Room 13 tries out the
Interactive Whiteboard

The game not only helped the students with their subtracting; it helped them with their "tidy number"
knowledge too. The game sounds pretty fun, yet at the same time you're learning about subtracting tidy numbers! Sounds like this game was a success!!!

By Georgie

Senior Sport

Every Wednesday we have a sports afternoon which includes the Year 5 and 6 students. We play a variety of sports either on the field or the courts.  The sports we play depends on the season.  At present our sports rotations include mini ball, volley ball, softball, cricket, a game called Bombardment and tennis. My favourite one would probably be Bombardment because it's like all the sports in one. 
  We usually go through two rotations every Wednesday. My worst fear about playing after lunch time is that I will be exhausted after playing all my energetic games with my friends and being too tired and grumpy to be positive to play the sport games.


The best part about sports is you get a break and get to relax your mind about all the worries at school. It helps us get fit as well. As a matter of fact I think this is very extravagant and is fun to do straight after lunch. The teachers get a break from school work too - well it's not really school work.

written by yours truly Jed

Food at MOTEC

      

Since week 1 of Motec we have been learning how to cook delicious food such as  sushi, pizza, wedges, corn fritters, muffins, kebabs. We also made up our own recipes and then made them the following week.

The hard part of food technology is the clean up at the end and the best part is to scoff down your food once you get back to school.

Once we get to our cooking station we have to check that we have all our items. If we don't, the others get to start and we have to go and find the ingredients or we have to borrow some from the teacher.  Next we start getting our ingredients for our type of food, in this case its sushi. We had to get sushi rice and mix it up with sushi rice vinegar and sugar and table salt. After that we start making our divine meal.  Sadly we can't eat it on the bus and have to wait until we get back to school.

Our teacher also teaches us about hygiene, nutrition and how important it is to eat healthily, not just your McDonald's,which is very helpful to some people who need a wake up call from over eating that type of food.

 Personally I think there are no bad stations at Motec but this is the most fun and the yummiest. 

written by Jed