Room 13's Tiki Tour of New Zealand

Every Tuesday in Room 13 we take a special Tiki Tour around our beautiful country, Aotearoa New Zealand. In Term 3 we made it to all the major towns and cities in the North Island - Te Ika-a-Maui. Well this week we jumped on the Interislander ferry and crossed the Cook Strait to the South Island - Te Waipounamu. We docked the boat in Picton and…. Wow! What a beautiful place!

Here is some examples of our writing about our journey.

If you are looking for a quiet peaceful place, then Picton is the place for you! In Picton there are white boats and green hills where you can view all of the area. You can head out to the bay. Picton might be a fine place for you! You can go hiking in Picton and then go camping with a lantern. Picton is near water named the Cook Strait and Picton is at the top of the South Island. There is lots of boats there and they’re all white. The sun shines on the boats and the boats shine back to the sun. When the moon comes up you can go for a drive in the car and that would be a nice big treat. Then you can have a rest and go to sleep.

By Zayden, Year 3

If you are looking for an amazing place to go, then Picton is the place for you. Picton is at the top of the South Island. I took a boat to Picton. If you want to get there then you will have to go over the Cook Strait and the boat that you will go on is a ferry, this is called the Interislander ferry. You can park your car under the boat and they will put chains on the wheels so the car can’t move. The boat ride will take you about 2 and a half hours from Wellington. You can go fishing, bushwalking and mountain biking there. You will have the best adventure holiday! There might be dolphins, sea lions and seals. There is a fish farm in Picton. You will find a cafe there for when you feel hungry and thirsty. When I went fishing there I caught a snapper and a mullet.

By Amaziah, Year 4

Dear Zayden and Amaziah

I have really enjoyed my trip to Picton and would love to go to see the sites that you have mentioned.

I would like to fly down and I am wondering whether you could perhaps find out where I would fly to and how much it would cost me to go. I would like to go the day after school ends and stay there for three nights. I do hope you can help me as I am too busy to research this myself.

Eagerly awaiting your response.

Love Mrs Dunlop

Aotearoa New Zealand has so many amazing things to do and sights to see, I wonder where Room 13 will go next?

Visual Art in Room 13

We have been learning about the famous New Zealand artist, Robyn Kahukiwa. We looked at lots of her artwork and we chose one piece to inspire our art.

We practiced drawing faces like this. Then we stopped and talked about the features and proportions of a face. It is important to get things the right size and in the right place! We used brown dye and black crayon. Then we created Maori inspired borders for our pieces of artwork, we learnt about koru’s and what they mean.

Our artwork is displayed in our classroom.

Here are four examples of our finished work.

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!