In my orphanage one lady let me feed the baby. Next the lady changed its nappy. The baby did a poonami then the poonami went on the wall. The poonami also went on the lady’s face but the lady didn’t care.

M

Teacher’s note: Parents and caregivers are truly amazing human beings.

We are starting a new unit on making things.
We have to research how to make something, then write instructions, then teach it to the group.
After the group makes it, the children will write about it.

Here are the simple Chinese decorations we made.

Over the past few weeks, many of the ESOL children have been writing books.

We used Puppy Trouble by Joy Cowley as the basis of our own stories.

Each day, over several days, we would write about what was happening on one page. Once we finished out stories, we created beautiful books and shared them with children from Ruma Tahi. Then we recorded them.

 

Here is a story by one of the children about coming to New Zealand from an orphanage in India.

When I left India, we said goodbye to my friend, Preti, and we went in a plane. I slept in the plane and I was the only one who could sleep. Then we arrived in New Zealand and my room. I saw a toy koala. I felt happy because in India they hit me.

M

We read The Shape Game by Anthony Browne.
It is a really good book and he talks about the family trip that motivated his future career.

At the end of the book, he plays a game with his family where one person draws a shape and another person, using a different coloured pen, completes the picture. We played the game, too.

We wrote about one part of our school holidays.

I was so happy to meet my family in Korea but I went back to New Zealand. I cried. Before I went I hugged with my family. I hope I will see them again.

E

My second mum talked to me and to the rest of my family but my dad has cancer. I am so scared he is going to die. On the day my mum talked to me and the rest of my family, I hugged my family that was so happy to see me again because they missed me. When we sat down we laughed so bad because they kept saying funny stuff. So we said bye before we ate the food. There was pudding. I asked, “Can I eat the pudding?” and we cried because we said bye.

I

We read The Race to Green End by Beverley Randell.

We played the game in it then thought of our own games.

Here are picture versions for you to print and play.

Grace’s game.

Guanyu’s game.

Robin’s game.

Emily’s game.

We read Meat Pie.

After that Ms Finikin explained how to eat a meat pie.
You take the top off and add lots of tomato sauce. You stir it in then scoop it onto some buttered bread. This is a filling sandwich. Once the pie shell is empty, you add more sauce. This is a Tomato Sauce Pie. Pick this up in your hands and eat it. Try not to spill sauce down your clothes.

We don’t absolutely believe this is the most proper way to eat a pie.

We wrote about how to eat a food we like.

Here are some reflections on why we enjoy ESOL.
We came up with our own ideas without help.

One of the things we did this term was make slime. Three groups did this at different times. We experimented with different recipes and came up with our own. Sometimes our slime didn’t work, but this gave us the opportunity to think and discuss what we could change. We did lots of research and recipe writing.

Over the last holidays, we kept diaries. We each chose our favourite entry to record.

One of the ESOL groups decided that we needed to do dinosaurs again as we have new students who really like them.

We watched a video where Dr Jack Horner talked about turning on Sleeping DNA to give poultry qualities like dinosaurs. He said it would be cool to have a dino-chicken as a pet. We thought about whether we would like a dinosaur as a pet.