August 16

On Monday we looked at the cactus and talked about how it had changed. Unfortunately, for one of our friends who is fasting for Ramadam, the flowers reminded us of food. In the end we started talking about the little bit of snow that fell over night.

On Monday night there was a lot of snow. For many of us, teachers included, it was the first time we had seen snow fall and it was very exciting. When we woke up today everything was white and crunchy. The quad at school was very slippery and we had to be very careful not to fall. The whole school did work on snow. It was a beautiful day and, by the time we got to ESOL in the afternoon, the grass was green again and it was safe to walk on the concrete. We talked about the snow and ice and thought about why it went away. Then we got distracted by a stick.

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August 13

On Friday Ms Finikin remembered a toy her mother had bought for us ages ago. We investigated it and thought about it and set it up. We wonder what it will look like on Monday.

On Thursday Tui Team had a man visit with his big kites. We went out to look. Here are our stories about them.

Today is a cold winter day and this is a happy day too. Do you know what happened? It’s kite day today! Everybody ran to see!!! We ran to where the kites were. And we saw the old man standing there. First we saw a parachute in the sky. Then the red monkey went up to the sky. And we saw the yellow duckling. Then my friend Anis said, “Let’s go. It’s very cold” and hid at the back of my teacher. I think it is so fun.
And I saw a brown monkey and a banana!!
Then everyone said to the old man, “Can you put the sea anemone up?” The old man said yes! The old man put this up and we saw the clown fish in it!
And Anis said again, “Can I go back inside?” I laughed.
And a stingray came. It was so big.
Today it was a happy day. It was so much fun. And I listened to Anis say, “Yes!” and we took lots of photos of this happy time!!!!
The End
By Wency

Today is a cold and windy day and we saw a man flying a kite. He got different types of kites and they are a parachute that carries all of the kites, and a red monkey flying in the sky, and a duckling, and a brown monkey eating a banana and a sea anemone with a clown fish but I thought it was an octopus. And I saw an angel fish and it looked cool. The stingray is wool, too.
By Omsin

Yesterday was a cold and windy day.
We saw lots of animal kites. There was a parachute, a red monkey, a duckling, a brown monkey and a banana and the brown monkey was a slow eater. We saw lots of them. I hid behind Ms Finikin because it was cold. My favourite kite was the sea anemone with the clown fish.
By Anis
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August 1

Welcome to Term 3. Here we are talking about what we did in the holidays.

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July 10

The younger ESOL children had fun playing in the sandpit together. They were working on cooperation, inclusion and using English freely and naturally.

Anis wants everyone to know about this website http://www.tutor.com.my/. She uses it to practice English at home.
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June 12

Over the last couple of weeks the older ESOL group has been studying mammals.

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May 27

One of the group wrote a story inspired by Where the Wild Things Are.

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May 26

Last week our friend left us to go back to Thailand. He had come here to study English during his school holidays. He found the way we teach English in New Zealand very different to how it is done in Thailand. In Thailand it is a more serious affair and the students are taught in a structured and set way. In New Zealand we have the advantage of the children being surrounded by English so we teach by immersing the students in language and giving them plenty of opportunities to use it. We pick up language points as they arise and as the children seem ready to learn them rather than follow a schedule of teaching.
The group mates all gave their friend presents and we had a party for him. We recorded messages to him.

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May 8

We made cards for our mums. It took us quite a few days to do and we had to research the type of card we wanted to make and work out what equipment and resources we would need to make them. Some of the skills we used were new to some of us but other buddies were able to explain what to do.

We hadn’t topped up the little PVA bottle for a while. When we took the top off the big bottle it had a film over it. It was fun to play with the plastic bubble.

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May 3

Over the holidays we had to keep a diary of what we did. Here are a few of our entries.

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April 12

We have continued to investigate kites and also looked at parachutes. It gave us plenty of opportunities to use English as the medium for thinking and explaining and asking questions. We had fun testing our ideas.

April 1

We had a pocket kite. It was a sled kite. It had a place for sticks and we wondered about whether we needed sticks and what sort we should use. We explained our ideas and tried them out.

We learnt about two famous pirates, Blackbeard and Ching Shih. We pretended we were them and wrote about their lives. We used past tense.

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March 25

We are taking a sideways trip into the topic of pirates. We read a story about Pirate Pete by Pauline Cartwright. In it Pirate Pete gets separated from his ship and has to rescue himself. He ends up on an island and we thought about how he will survive there. We are working on the word ‘will’.

One of our friends wrote a story about a sheep and a horse who are BFFs. Here it is.

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March 16

Wency and Anis have written a book based on Lucy Su’s Jinzi and Minzi are friends.

Omsin and Bro have answered the question, “I wonder why aeroplanes explode when they crash but birds don’t”. You can find it here. They chose the pictures as well as putting the presentation together.

View it here.
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March 13

Here we are flying and discussing our fish.

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March 8

We have been making flying fish kites. We learnt how to do it from reading The flying fish by Annette Smith.

Stay tuned for or flight results and processes.

Our classmate asked, “I wonder why aeroplanes explode when they crash but birds don’t”. Stay tuned for the results of his research.

In the meantime we recommend you visit http://www.spellingcity.com/ It’s a fun way to learn your spelling words.
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March 2

We made sled kites. They were easy to make and easy to fly. They also broke easily.

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February 25

We tried flying our kite again after our friend fixed it last night. It spun around like an excited dog. Mr Yamamoto suggested the tail was wrong and fixed it. The kite was a bit better but still not right. We talked about balance and Mr Yamamoto showed us how to balance it. We wondered if we needed a tail so we read about this and decided we did. We realised that we had the picture round the wrong way so retied the bridle. The kite was better but still not perfect. I wonder what we will try next.

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February 24

Over the last couple of days we have been making kites. They are store bought ones. Although they were easy to put together, they haven’t flown well. We are putting our best feet forward and working to improve on the kites.

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February 22

In ESOL we had homework making aeroplanes. Today we discussed our planes. We had to practise inside and outside. We had to fly our aeroplanes to see whose could go furtherest. We went to a high place and had a race. The concrete burnt Bro’s feet.

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February 21

Today we made some aeroplanes. Wency and Omsin taught us how to make them. We wrote our names on our aeroplanes and we raced them together. Our homework is to make our planes fly further and look beautiful.

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Hello and welcome to Hokowhitu ESOL 2011. We have started the year with nine children spread between three groups. More children are arriving soon and we look forward to welcoming them back from their visits home or welcoming them to Hokowhitu School.

The older ESOL group only has two members at the moment but two of our friends from last year are due back soon. Last week one of our friends made a soccer board game. It was very good.