Timothy visits Room 21...

We were lucky to have a visit from Timothy the Cockatiel on Tuesday. She belongs to Emily and her family and we were privileged to meet HER! yes HER! and find out a bit more about cockatiels.

We wrote about our experiences with Timothy. We brainstormed key words and then sorted them into headings - what she eats, what she does, what she looks like...

This week we were learning how to use topic word lists in our writing

Emily wrote

On Tuesday I brought Timothy my Cockatiel into school. She is one year old. She was born on the 9th of February 2010. A few days ago Timothy broke her back toe. She has feathers on her head called a crest. She has orange cheeks and behind them she has her ears. Timothy's colours are called pearl and cinnamon. She has pink feet and sharp black claws. Her crest is like a mohawk! She has yellow tail feathers and she pulls them out sometimes. When she goes to bed at night she sleeps on her highest perch. Then when my mum covers her cage up she gives Mum a goodnight hiss. When she cleans herself, she dips her beak in her oil glands. She chews bark to sharpen her beak. She chews on cuttlefish bone to give her calcium. On a hot day she has a shallow water bath, but too deep would drown her. She eats seeds and her favourite kind of seeds are sunflower seeds. But most of all she likes... butter, melted cheese, paper and toast. She also eats soup and cucumber. Cockatiels come from Australia and are the fastest bird there. I think Timothy is the funniest bird I've ever met.

Katie G wrote

"Hi! I'm Timothy the Cockatiel and I'm pleased to meet you!" Timothy is actually a female and that's a bit strange because Timothy is a boy's name. Timothy eats bird seed but she really like butter and melted cheese. If any of you folks out there are wondering if cockatiels clean themselves, yes they actually have oil in their tail feathers so they dip their beak in it and then they run their beak up their feathers. Timothy is one year old so she's still a baby. Did you know that cuttlefish bones actually give calcium to cockatiels. Among all of the birds, cockatiels are one of the fastest in Asutralia. Cockatiels sleep standing up. Imaging trying that! It would be hard. It was funny having Timothy in our class because all she did was just walk around. At night when Emily puts the blanket on her cage she hisses because she's saying "I dont want to go to bed." Timothy has a mohawk. It actually isn't a mohawk - it's just feathers. I felt sad when she had to go because I really like animals - especially birds.

Hamish wrote...

Yestereday we had a visitor - it was Timothy the Cockatiel. She has big orange cheeks like a clown. Her feathers are orange, black and yellow. She eats bird seed and butter and melted cheese. She stands upright when she sleeps. She's got oil in her tail feathers to keep herself clean. She sharpens her beak on bark. She is one year old. I felt happy.

Jayden wrote...

On Tuesday, we met a one year old cockatiel. Its name was Timothy. They live in Australia. They are the fastest fliers in Australia. She is a girl. She has feathers on her head like a mohawk. She eats bird seed but her favourite is melted cheese and butter - that is Timothy's favourite food.

Carlo wrote...

On Tuesday we met Timothy the cockatiel. She is one year old. She eats bird seeds and she eats butter and melted cheese too. Did you know that cocktaiels come from Australia and they are the fastest flying bird in Australia. Timothy hisses when she does not want to go to bed. She has orange cheeks. Timothy's feathers on her head look like a mohawk and she has oil on her tail feathers. Her feathers are black and yellow. She looked beautiful!

Ben wrote...

On Tuesday we met Timothy the cockatiel. She is one year old. She eats birdseed but her favourite is butter and melted cheese too. Cockatiels are the fastest birds in Australia. She has oil glands in her tail feathers so she can clean her feathers. She slides her beak on the back feather to get the oil and she slides her beak on her other feathers, but not the back feathers. She does this because it gets the bugs off. If a cockatiel hisses, it's a girl. She likes grown-up shoulders. She likes shiny things. I was excited to meet Timothy the cockatiel.

Maddie wrote...

On Tuesday Timothy the Cockatiel came to visit us. Cockatiels come from Australia. People say that they don't really know if they can fly to NZ from Australia but they might do? Timothy has orange cheeks like a clown. She sometimes eats melted cheese and butter. I like her colour on her cheeks - it's a nice orange colour. When she goes to sleep she perches on a branch in the cage. During the night when Emily's mum puts a blanket over her cage she hisses because it gets really dark and gloomy. When she wakes up from that dark and gloomy night, Timothy then starts preening herself just like us cleaning ourselves. I really enjoyed having Timothy around.

What is culture?

Today we were trying to understand a bit more about what culture is? We know that there are many cultures in our world but we really didn't understand what culture was so we looked at a range of pictures and sorted them onto a Venn Diagram.

Some pictures were really easy to sort - but we had to really think about others. One picture was of a pacific Island beach and after discussion we decided that this picture was not culture. It is nature.

Our sorting and dialogue led us to decide that Culture is about people and what makes them different!

Our next step will be to compare our culture with the culture of Samoa to find out what is the SAME BUT DIFFERENT!

There's a FLY on our blog!

Room 21 had a discussion today about one of our followers. His name is FLY and he looks like a sumo wrestler, a half naked Santa Claus, he has a tummy like Kung Fu Panda. We thought he was scary, a stranger and we didn't think we wanted him on our blog. We were so surprised when Ms McPhail told us who he was.

Katie shared her learning about blogs - she said "There are some things that are real and some things that are not real on BLOGS."
Bailey said "Well some people can pick some icons and silly names to put on the internet - we think it could be a stranger, but it can sometimes be someone we do know."
Vaughan said, "I learned that there are followers who watch our blog."
Hayley said, "we have to be careful when we click on pictures because there could be things that are not real, or not good to see." Charlotte suggested, "if we see something we should not be looking at, we can click on the back arrow." Katie G followed up with this..."and then to you tell an adult."
Ben said, "I wouldn't click on anything because there could be viruses."

Ms McPhail thinks there is a lot of learning to be done around using the internet safely - we will be exploring this in the next few weeks.

Talofa and welcome to Room 21!

We have hit the ground running this year! We have been busy getting acquainted with what life is like as a Year three student and...Guess what? We have our very own TOTE TRAYS under our table and we keep all our books in them! We are learning to be responsible for our own books and equipment.

We are part of a vertical community this year based on the teams represented in the Rugby World Cup. Our team is SAMOA and so we will get to do lots of interesting learning about Samoa and how we are the SAME BUT DIFFERENT!

Our first big activity this week has been to combine Maths and Art. We have designed function machines. When you drop a number into the machine, it is programmed to do something to that number, and a new number splits out the other end!Whew - designing takes a lot of energy!

We have also written about our holidays in our new writing books - we did a plan first to help us.

We are keen to share our learning with you so stay posted!