Term 3 Week 7 in Huia 1

We have been learning about Los Desaparacidos and the Mothers of the Disappeared. Sunday 30th August was the International Day of the Disappeared to remember people from all over the world who were were kidnapped and killed because they disagreed with their government.

We studied the lyrics of the song by U2 and looked at You Tube clips to get more information and ideas so we could illustrate the song when we wrote it in our Anthology books. Our Anthology books are where we write and illustrate poems and other literature. They look fantastic . We got lots of information out of this video on You Tube. It had some pictures we used for inspiration.

Some students researched some really sad things like daughters taken away from their mothers which made us feel really sympathetic. We could understand some of the Spanish in the video when the mothers were saying the names and ages of their children. We also understood “¿Dondé Estan?” written on some of the banners and signs means, "Where are they?" We know that "Los Desaparecidos" means the disappeared people. We also noticed a spelling error on the video - they spelled "disappeared" with 'ss' and only one 'p'.

We have found a new spelling site called SpellingCity.com. It has amazing games to help us learn our words. There are about ten different games such as crosswords, wordfinds, find the missing word, and match the word to the meaning. The words come from our spelling lists for the week. We have ten words to learn a week. There are also lists of other words we have learned. We also have a cool maths site. It's a fun activity to learn counting and place value with decimal numbers. We also use TutPup and Mathletics sites to help us improve in our maths and spelling. Mikayla is currently our class's highest achiever in Mathletics with 100% at each activity up to Level 4. Theo has the most correct answers at Level 3, followed by Gulnoza and Elliott.

Last Monday, Connor Newall, a student from our school, organised a fund-raising cupcake sale for the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Mrs Irwin's class also brought along cupcakes to help out. They sold delicious cupcakes for $1.00 each. Kenneth has the record of eating 4 cupcakes. He could have eaten five but he gave one to William.

Last Thursday we had Wheels Day where we could bring our bikes, skateboards, roller skates and scooters to school to use at interval and lunchtime. We had to pay a gold coin donation to participate ($1 or $2). This was organised by our student council who raised $243.50 for school projects.

Last Friday was Daffodil Day in New Zealand to fund-raise for the Cancer Society. We could buy a daffodil to wear or some bracelets or stick-on tattoos. Our school raised $111.30 for the Cancer Society.

Daffodil the lamb is growing day by day and Mrs Irwin now leaves her at home because she is getting too big for the classroom. Mrs Irwin brought her for a farewell visit on Friday and now Daffodil will spend her days in Mrs Irwin's paddock with other sheep. She has grown since the first day she came to our school and her wool is cleaner and creamier-coloured.

Daffodil is getting bigger. She also likes the taste of Mrs Irwin's best book. Look carefully to find the nibbled edge of the light blue book cover in the bottom right-hand corner of the photo.

In Huia 1, we are also learning about zero waste which means minimising waste to be incinerated or which goes to landfill. It is better to recycle, reuse or reduce waste to keep the environment from pollution and green house gases in the atmosphere.

Here are some of the websites we used to get information:
http://www.zerowaste.co.nz/default,72.sm
http://www.plastics.org.nz/page.asp?section=recycling