Koru 2 Bromley

This term we are learning the story of Apollo 13. Last week we listened to the story and talked about the parts that we liked or any questions that we had.  There was lots of conversations happening around space and astronauts...we have many wonderings about astronauts in particular. We made a super quick story map showing the main parts of the story and then used this to help us step the story.  This is the part of the storytelling process where we say a word and show an action that represents each image on our story map.  It helps us to recall the events of the story quickly, easily and in the right order. Myrah discovered a comic version of the story is available on our reading app Epic! This is the longest story we have learnt through the storytelling approach, so it might take us a while to really remember lots of the details!  We are hoping to take a copy of our story maps home so that we can practise retelling the story ...

It has been so nice to see our Koru 2 tamariki back for term 4.  Our first week has been filled with discussion around the important topic of friendship, Kiwisport athletics practice, Maths with a focus on multiplication and division, sunshine and rainy days. Our 6 tamariki have begun an Interest Project all about their time at Bromley School looking back to look forward.  They have been enjoying reminiscing with each other and sharing stories of some of their most memorable highlights, challenges and main events. Shania's Wednesday Art club went with a Halloween theme this week making hand traced ghost chains.  Senior and Junior students worked energetically alongside each other and had a great time. 

Each Friday afternoon we do Art with Mr Yuki.  Since this term our theme is Wondrous Water, we used water, soap and paint to create fascinating bubble art outside in the sun.  Tamariki enjoyed exercising their creative muscles and produced some very beautiful watery art.

In Koru 2 we have done a big change around who is on which class job.  We have been learning how to write convincing texts used to persuade people into believing what we have to say.  From this task tamariki produced clever presentations made using either imovie or keynote.  These were then shared in front of our classmates and teachers to earn support through votes.  Students enjoyed sharing their skills and using confident language to get the class job of their dreams. All jobs have been reassigned and even some new jobs were imagined like class DJ!

We have kicked off Term 3 with a non-fiction text for our Storytelling...about Water. Although the elements of how we learn the a non-fiction text are the same as how we would learn a fiction story, the way in which we do it is quite different. Last week we had a lot of fun as we started to learn the words and gestures of our new text.  Some of the gestures we are using are taken from New Zealand sign language. First, we listened to the story and noticed that there were actions that were repeated when the same word was repeated. Mr Yuki then helped us to recreate the text into a map which incorporated both words and pictures to represent the words. We spent some time recording ourselves talking the map... Next we watched how to step the map and then went away to practise in groups... Where will our learning take us to next? - We will continue to practise speaking the text and incorporating gestures. - We will continue to...

As part of our Matariki celebrations in Week 9, we spent the morning creating our own star biscuits! The ingredients, equipment and recipes were set out at 4 work stations and we worked in small groups.   One person at each area was chief photographer and we also had a team leader who was responsible for organising team members to ensure that everyone was involved. This activity required us to: - listen to one another - participate and help out - suggest ideas - read the recipe - measure ingredients - follow the instructions - work as a team We had a fantastic morning baking and creating and even learnt some new baking terms like 'knead the dough'. The biscuits tasted delicious!!! Where to next... - create instructions for others to make their own biscuits. - how can we use the skills we have learned and transfer these into other activities?