Looking ahead to 2015

We can’t believe that there are only a few more weeks left of the school year. While we are preparing for our end of year celebrations like our Family Picnic Day and Year 6 Graduation we are also looking forward to 2015. We are hoping that all children will return to Yendarra School for another year of learning, friendship building and more. 

Transience means children regularly changing schools and Yendarra, along with many other schools regularly faces the challenge of some students being at our school for a very short period.

A change in school does affect children’s learning and their ability to form good relationships with other children. As we did this year, all children who return or enrol at Yendarra during week 1 of the new term will receive their stationery for the year (books, pencils etc.) for free as well as going in the draw to win a free school uniform.

 

You have shown all of New Zealand how committed you are in providing healthy food for our children so let’s see if together we can create another ‘Headline’ about Yendarra parents reversing the trend of children changing schools. We would be delighted if every child we currently have returns to us in the New Year as we know that this will benefit their learning success.

 

Animal Experts in Room 13

In Room 13 we have been learning how to write a factual report. Firstly, Mrs Childs showed us some examples and we read them. From this, we created our success criteria.

• Separate our main ideas into paragraphs

• Use subheadings

• Check that the information that we write is fact, not fiction!

• Edit our own work

Then we gave it a go!

We decided to focus our factual reports on animals because we like to learn about different animals. We had to take notes on the information that we learnt. We know it is important to put the notes into our own words, so that it is our story and we are not copying someone else’s. We also focused on sharing the most important and interesting information about the animal.

Here is an example of one of the factual reports.

                  Red-Bellied Piranha

Introduction:

Piranhas are a type of fish that are very furious and live in South America. They are very fierce and are a dark colour. They are called red-bellied piranhas because they have a red belly. I hope you will enjoy learning more facts about this amazing creature.

Appearance

Red-bellied piranhas have black and dark colours on their body. They have 2 eyes just like normal fish and they don’t have lights coming out from their heads. Their teeth are very huge and sharp. The red-bellied piranhas have fins and a flappy tail. They have heaps of scales and a round body.

Habitat

Red-bellied piranhas live in South America. They live in rivers in the Amazon Rainforest. They hide in the weed and zig-zag around plants in the river. Red-bellied piranhas travel in shoals, which is a group of fish. 

Fun Facts

Piranhas can eat humans! If a human goes in the river and has a cut, the shoal of piranhas will smell the blood and start biting the human. Red-bellied piranhas work together to eat their prey. They can communicate with each other and tell each other where the good food is. They use their great sense of smell to find fresh meat to eat. They love to eat other animals and this makes them a pretty scary fish!

Conclusion

I hope you have learnt some facts about red-bellied piranhas. Be careful if you go to South America to the rivers in the Amazon because you might get bitten!

By Olive Tukutau Year 5

 

 

We are really enjoying reading each other’s factual reports. We are working on giving each other feedback to make our reports even better.

Jenn is sharing her factual report about tigers with Jean-Marie. 

We hope you will visit us in Room 13 so you can read our factual reports so that you can become an animal expert!