What is the Author's Purpose?

Lately for reading we have been learning to analyse the author's purpose. This means deciding why the author wrote what they wrote. Was it to inform (give us information)? Was it to entertain us, something we would read for fun? Or was it to persuade us of their opinion? Here is some of our work on this for texts we have been reading about Te Tiriti o Waitangi. 

If you had to choose between a story, a poem or a news article, which would you prefer to read? Let us know in the comments!

Our 2021 Goals

 

Happy New Year! When we came back to school this week, we started thinking about what we would like to accomplish in 2021. Here are some of our goals:

What's your biggest goal for 2021? How will you work towards achieving it? Let us know in the comments!

Moody Poems

 This term a big focus for us is creating mood and atmosphere in our writing. One way we can do this is through the words that we choose, so we have been learning about the connotations of words (how different words make us feel or what they make us think of). 

We have been calling these purr words (words that have a positive connotation) and snarl words (words that have a negative connotation). Today we also learned about euphony (soft, pleasant sounds) and cacophony (harsh, unpleasant sounds). Our task was to write a 5 line poem using words that would create a strong mood or atmosphere. 

Here are some of our poems so far! You can scroll through the Slides to read them.

Which poem is your favourite, and why? Let us know in the comments.

Awesome Algebra

On top of their other maths work this week, a group of students in Room 11 decided to explore what they thought was going to be a very tricky mathematical concept - algebra!! At first the combinations of letters and numbers looked like a confusing code, and it seemed bamboozling to work out what the letters represented. 

After starting to think about the equals (=) sign as "the same as" it became clear that all they had to do was work out the answer to problem on the left and then balance it out to have the same answer on the right. 

What is your favourite type of maths to do? Is it algebra? Statistics? Measurement? Let us know in the comments!

A Day of Celebrations!

 The last day of Term 3 was a day of celebrations for Room 11. First of all, we won the Kiwican trophy for this term. Woohoo! 

After that we had our awards for the senior school speech finals. Ruqayat came in 1st Equal, and Joshua and Ema got a certificate acknowledging their participation in the competition. Congratulations to all three, and the participants from Rooms 9 and 10 as well. 

To end the day, Room 11 found out their Top 10 and Champions of our Term 3 Learning Leaderboard. 

- 1st Place Shriya

- 2nd Place Ruqayat

- 3rd Place Joshua

In the top 10: Ema, Nese, Mahara, Jackwalin, Nathaniel, Toa and Faavae. 

Well done to all! I hope you have a relaxing holiday.

Tongan Language Week

 

Malo e lelei! This week was Tongan Language Week. To celebrate, Jackwalin and Ilaisaane organised a fun day for us which included a shared lunch, an afternoon of sports and a speech about Tonga. Here is a photo that we took. 

Do you speak Tongan or any other languages? Let us know in the comments!

Lockdown Learning Champions

 

During Auckland's lockdown Room 11 had a leaderboard where they could earn points for doing their learning tasks and attending our class Google Meets. When we came back to school the points were totaled and the champions were announced! 

First Place: Ema

Second Place: Shriya

Third Place: Ruqayat

In the Top 10: Nese, Nathaniel, Joshua, Faavae, Gunveen, Margaret and EJ.

Congratulations to the winners and all those who participated. We have restarted the leaderboard for the rest of term 3. Who do you think our next champion will be? Let us know in the comments!