We thought about what we like about ESOL and Hokowhitu School. Here are our ideas.We hope lots of people will join us at our school.

We made alphabet friezes. They were very good and we wondered who would get to keep them. After some discussion we decided to give them to the junior classes. They really liked them. Then we discussed, “Is it better to give or receive?” We decided, as nice as presents can be, it actually feels better inside to give a gift. The feeling lasts longer.

p.s. sorry about the sound quality.

During December we looked at different December festivals. We found out about Yule and created Yule cats. We learnt about Chanukah and made paper menorah and learned to play the dreidel game. We learnt that some people celebrate the birthday of Isa in December. We also looked at Christmas. There is a sad-looking tree up in the staff room at school. As a gift to the staff we made decorations to help improve the look. People admired our decorations but not the tinsel tree. Many of our ideas for the decorations came from the PM book “The Christmas Tree” by Beverley Randell. We are proud of what we did and happy we could give a gift to the staff of Hokowhitu School.

We also discussed Santa. We had many interesting ideas around this. We learnt how Bishop Nichollas evolved into Santa.

The middle ESOL group worked on improving their sentence structure and language choice in writing. We used wordless texts to build up stories over several days. We worked on quality rather than quantity.

The senior ESOL group decided they would like to do a unit on games. We learnt about heaps of different games, teaching each other. We created versions of kick-the-can, we played a game called ‘squirt’, we taught each other cat’s cradle and scoobys, and we played a number of traditional inside games. Here is just a tiny bit of what we did. These are examples of simple games with few rules. First we thought about what rules there are then we played them.

We have done many interesting things this term. Here are a few of the highlights.

Which doll?

Ms Finikin found a bag of old dolls at the Salvation Army store. She brought them to school to show us before they go in the library play box. We thought they were all a bit…..different. We wrote clues about the dolls so you can guess which we are describing.

My two blankets

We read a book called My Two Blankets http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/irena-kobald/my-two-blankets-9781921714764.aspx about a girl arriving in a new country with no help to settle in. We reflected on what helped us settle in to New Zealand.

Woops

We wanted a story from Ms Finikin in the vein of her Subie and Mooshie stories. Ms Finikin told us about the time she was 8 and accidentally dropped her baby cousin (sorry Andrew). Some of us had stories to share that were similar.

When we were sick

Ms Finikin was off school for two days with the ‘adult chicken pocks’. We got talking and wrote about when we were sick.

Space news letters

As well as doing lots of sharing about our lives and looking at freaky dolls, our main focus this term has been on space. We have learnt heaps. Here is our first news letter.

Here is our second news letter

The world according to Glayce

One day Glayce drew a map of the world. He wanted to tell us about it. He also drew some symbols of New Zealand. He did a great job.

Solar system model

We got a solar system model from Scholastic Books. We put it together but the light didn’t go. It is a pretty cool model.

A letter from Scholastic

We wrote letters to Scholastic New Zealand telling them how cool their model was but how the light didn’t work. We finished them for homework. Meanwhile, Mahdia fixed the light. We were happy about the model working but then realised we had to rewrite our letters. We sent the letters off and were excited to receive a package from Scholastic New Zealand, until we realised we had to write a thank you letter. Unfortunately the batteries in the camera didn’t last, but here we are, looking at the letter. Scholastic sent us two very cool books about space as well.

Here are our holiday stories from our July break.

We talked about the man in the moon and stories from our own cultures.Here are our stories.

We brainstormed what we would like to learn about in Term 3. We decided on space.

Here are our picture showing our prior knowledge about space.

We thought about whether we would like to live in the Middle Ages or not. Here are our reasons.

We have produced our fourth newsletter.

We have also had a little competition. We split in to two teams and tried to name as many parts of a castle as possible.