OUR FLAG COLLECTION

Mrs Mills recently told us that she uses our blog when she is out and about teaching blogging to other classes at TIS, Greenpark and Tauranga Primary.

The weekly bloggers have been doing a great job posting interesting posts. The interviews have been a popular way of getting the voice of our class members.

Well, if you close-up on the revolving globe, you will see lots of green dots from lots of different countries around the world - meaning that we now have an international audience!

I have now installed the flags widget so that we can start our own flag collection. Whenever someone in another country visits our blog, we get their flag in our collection.

So far we have flags from NZ, England and another country?? with a red flag and a blue and white section at the top left (200 points for whoever is first to come tell me what country's flag this is - with proof)

I sent an email to a friend in China with our blog link so that we might be able to get the flag of China. Do you know people in other countries you could email too?

Our goal is to get flags from 20 countries.

YUMMY & COLGATE

Go hard out collecting those Yummy stickers (located on certain apples) and Colgate boxes (any flavour). Not only will we benefit via mountains of sports gear for the sports shed in Room 1, there is a weekly competition  between Kahikatea House classes and there are Spirit points for the House with the most. Also, there are 50 group points per Yummy and 100 group points per Colgate in Room 4.

Remind family and friends to look out for these brands if possible (sometimes though they are not on special so when they fit within the budget) and keep the stickers/boxes aside for us.

Want to see Saturn?

Astronomy

Who? Tauranga Astronomical Society Inc
Where? Ferguson Park Observatory, Matua. Located in the Otumoetai Sports & Recreation Club, turn right at the end Tilby Drive.
When? 7:30pm on Tuesday 10th May

As part of the National Primary Science week the Astronomical Society has invited students to come and visit the observatory at night.
If you are interested in Astronomy and you would like to look through a telescope at the night sky, you are welcome to visit the Ferguson Park Observatory in Matua on Tuesday the 10th of May at 7.30pm with Miss C. You will need to arrange your own transport there and home and parents are encouraged to stay as this is not an official school trip.

There will be a 30 minute presentation and opportunity to look through telescopes. Saturn will be prominent at this time. Students will need to bring warm clothing.

Gold coin donation please as each evening is expensive to run and this is a voluntary organisation.

Please note this activity is WEATHER DEPENDENT and requires a clear night sky before the telescopes can be used.

Hope you can come!

Science Fair - Holidays

Over the holidays, you are required to prepare for Science Fair by reading through the instruction booklet and deciding on a topic.

You need to have your topic ready to tell me on the first day of Term 2.

Click the hyperlinks to see the Science Fair instruction booklet and a very comprehensive list of Science Fair ideas. (You need a gmail account to access these Google Docs files).

You are welcome to print out the instruction booklet and list of ideas at home if you wish.

Click these hyperlinks to see the powerpoint of the Science Fair process and the Technology Science Fair process that we looked at in class. (You need a gmail account to access these Google Docs files).

You can also get these files by going to Mr Marsh's LMS page. To access this, sign into Ourspace, then scroll to the bottom of the screen where it says 'Search Courses'. Enter the word 'science' and click 'go'. Then click on the word 'Science' at the top left.

Original topics are best - avoid cliched topics like 'which bread grows the most mould?', 'which bubble gum grows the biggest bubbles?', 'which baked beans produce the most gas?'.  Remember experiments which involve moulds or bacteria or those which would hurt animals or people in any way are not allowed.

Also, the Regional Science Fair has awards and $$$ prizes associated with; engineering, conservation (a number), things Maori, radio, mineral/mining, statistics, flour/baking industry, forestry, horticulture, agriculture, sports, and technology science investigations so you may want to follow one of these lines.

Finally, you will need to buy a 1B5 exercise book which will be your log book for Science Fair. 

Ideas for our class blog

The purpose of our blog is to be a cool tool that we can all use to share our class news. 


A great way to build an awesome blog is to go and look at other people's blogs and borrow their ideas. 
So, it's time for us to look around to get some ideas of what would make a great class blog.


Here are some blog weblinks to start off looking at...


Classroom blogs
http://super7scoopers.edublogs.org/
http://openthedoortob4.blogspot.com/
http://yollisclassblog.blogspot.com/
http://yollis365project.blogspot.com/
A class blog run by the students
A NZ Year 4 class blog 


And of course you can check out any of the TIS class blogs on ourspace.


Personal blogs
A kids art skills blog
A 17 year old girl's personal blog about baking
A children's book reviewer blog
Miss C's friend's blog


Also, Google has a special search tool to only search for blogs which is handy if you wish to go looking http://blogsearch.google.com/

You are looking for features you like and think would work on our class blog.
It might be a particular widget or gadget, a layout you like, a heading, a font, an idea for a great blog post, a link, a web 2.0 software tool.


Collect your ideas up as a mind-map on 1 Keynote slide. You should have a screenshot and brief text to explain what it is you like about the feature you have found. Please include a web address. For example:

Success Criteria:
- name on your keynote page
- screenshot of each feature you are including
- introduce us to at least 3 features you'd like to see on our class blog
- your spelling, punctuation and grammar are accurate in your keynote
- exported to the Room 4 server

Share a blog?

Do you follow a particular blog already or know of a blog you think people in Room 4 would enjoy? If so, share it with us... (appropriate ones thanks)

Blog Ideas?

What ideas do you have for you/us to use the blog? 

Post your ideas on the Wallwisher we have set up - remember to put your name.

House Swimming Sports

Matua Saltmarsh & Estuary Visit