Hi team! Welcome to 2021! 

Let me know in the comments what you are most excited about for Term 2!

Week 6 - Blogging Challenge

This is the last week of the blogging challenge until it restarts in October! The theme for the final week is reflecting. Complete the first two tasks, and the third too if you are looking for a challenge!

Task #1: Complete a short survey on the blogging challenge to give the authors some feedback on what you enjoyed! Click here for the link to the survey.

Task #2: Write a post on your blog reflecting on your participation in the blogging challenge. Here are some ideas you could answer in your post:
- How many weeks of the challenge did you participate in?
- How many comments did you receive in total?
- Which post of yours was most popular?
- Which post did you enjoy writing the most and why?
- What are your plans for your blog now? Will you keep posting? What kind of stuff might you post on your blog?

Task #3: Your Blogging Plans - Write a post about how you plan to keep blogging. What topics might you blog about? How often will you blog? Is there certain school work you would like to publish on your blog?

Post the URL of your second and third task to this link here to receive feedback. Make sure you do this as it is the last week you will be able to get awesome comments from the lovely commenters!

Then, leave your own comments on other student blogs. Click here to search blogs.

Week Five Blogging Challenge

It's time to have some fun with emojis! What's so great about emoji's you might ask? The great thing about emojis is that they are a universal language - people from all around the world understand the same meaning for each emoji, no matter what language they speak! 😊 🙌 💛

Pick one of the four emoji challenges to blog about this week:

1. Emoji Story Prompt - go to byrdseed.com/emoji2. You'll see one random emoji. Press "and then" to continue writing your story. Once you have written it, take a screenshot of your emoji and post it on your blog for people to see. 

2. Emoji Guessing Game - make a quiz! You could either create a Kahoot, google slides quiz, or just as a typed quiz on your blog post. Use the emojis to spell out things that they have to guess - it might be book or movie titles, foods, countries... whatever you can think of!

3. Emoji Maths - go to solvemoji.com, where emojis are used in maths puzzles! Try some of these puzzles and get some inspiration from this website. Then, create some of your own maths puzzles. Here's a google doc tutorial from another teacher to help you make a post of your own.

4. Emoji Art - get creative! You could hand draw an emoji, take a picture of it and upload it to your blog, or make your own emoji on a google doc. You could even go to http://emoji.ink/ to create an artwork using emojis - then take a screenshot of it. 

Submit the URL of your blog post about emojis to this link here so other people can see your fantastic work. Then, check out some other blogs and leave them some feedback!

Week Four - Blogging Challenge

Students participating in the Student Blogging Challenge come from more than 100 schools across the world! This weeks blogging challenge is all about the school that you go to.

You can choose one of the eight ideas in the post below, or you can come up with your own idea. You might even want to discuss the differences between normal school, and the online learning we are doing at the moment!

Once you have written an awesomely interesting post (hopefully!) - submit the URL to this form here so others can see your post. Then, check out other student blogs and leave them some feedback!

Week 3 - Earth Day blogging challenge

Have you heard of Earth Day? Every year it is celebrated on the 22nd of April, all around the world. This year, Earth Day celebrated it's 50th year of celebration!

This week, you are going to choose an environmental topic that's interesting and important to you, and use your blog to let everyone know about protecting and restoring our planet.

Pick a topic related to the environment (some ideas below!), and explain to people why you think it is important. Research some interesting facts about your issue and include some actions that people can take to try and minimise the problem. Think about us in Oamaru, and New Zealand specifically - what can we do? Include photos if you want to.

Then, submit your URL to this link here. Browse other student blogs and leave them feedback.

Blogging Challenge (week 4) Our Term 2, Week 1

The Student Blogging Challenge team have decided this week is a catch up or free blog choice week! You can either look back on the past three weeks of blogging and complete a task you either started and didn't finish, or didn't even start, or you can publish a blog post on anything you like!
Click here for a link with 50 cool blogging prompt ideas if you're stuck for your free choice idea.
Once you have written your post, as always, click here to submit the URL of your post here to this link.
Then visit at least one other blog and leave a comment!
Find the list of the blogs here.

Staff dance

Have you seen what the teachers have been up to?
I got them all to send me some clips of them dancing and put it together in to this video. Check it out.

Writing Competition

Thanks to Olivia who has found this great story writing site. She entered and even got a mention from the creator for having a 'cool twist' in her story.
They have a new competition open now - it finishes on April 18th. They provide you with a story starter and you need to complete it (up to 500 words more).
Check it out, submit your writing and you never know, you could win a book!

Fabo Story Competition

Blogging Challenge - Week 1, Term 2

Welcome back Room 17! This week, we are going to continue with the online learning we began in the first few days of lockdown. Lucky for us the blogging challenge is still going so we will continue to participate in this.

This weeks theme is is "Fun with Images." Hopefully you are aware about how you can't just copy work from Google - this is called plagiarism. It is the same with images and pictures - unless you've taken them or made them, you can't just use them and pretend they're yours! Here are some tips on how to safely use images on your blogs:

There are three tasks to choose from, all in the picture below. Select one of them, and then post it on your blog. Submit the URL of that blog post here - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd3P_-FYfxL0llSiMEDhQ6fGdlkVoWZ8M_zO_W3YQo-dhsOUA/viewform - so that you can receive comments!

Then, go leave some comments on other people's blogs - https://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/mar-2020-students/. Any questions, email me!

Just for fun

First day of lockdown.
Today the kids and I went for a brisk walk around the harbour area, and came across these friendly animals.

 

You can find them too, if someone in your family has an iPhone or Samsung. All you need to do is : go to chrome, search an animal - start with Tiger.  Scroll down until you see this
then click on view in 3D. It takes a while, but another screen should pop up, and at the top it says AR, and then you should be able to position it wherever you are.
It doesn't work with all animals, but definitely these ones: Hedgehog, Tiger, Lion, Horse, ,Penguin, Wolf, Dog, Panda, Shark, Alligator, Bear...

Have a go, you could save your picture to a google doc or slide, and create a piece of writing about it!

It's time to vote!

Thanks to those of you who submitted writing into the 100 word challenge on storyathon.com. Now, we need to help find the winner. You have until Thursday afternoon to vote. You need to log on to Storyathon 
You will be presented with six stories, read them and choose your two favourites. The stories you read, won't be from our class.
Let me know in the comments of this post if you vote.

I will be in touch with your parents over the next couple of days about online learning. In the meantime, remember you can work on the blogging challenges below this post!
Have fun, keep washing your hands, and be kind
x Whaea Jamaya

Let's start the 'Blogging Challenge'

This week, there are three tasks in the blogging challenge. Everyone has two weeks to complete the Week One tasks, meaning we will each have two sessions blogging to achieve these three things.

Week Seven

1. Make your own avatar, and upload it to your blog. Go to http://avatarmaker.abi-station.com/index_en.shtml and make an avatar that looks like you. Download it once you are done. On Blogger, go to settings, user settings, user profile - edit, and update your profile photo.

Then, write a new blog post explaining how your avatar looks similar to you. Upload the photo of your avatar to this blog post too.

Fill out this Google form with the URL of your blog post - this is how others are able to see and comment on your blog! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf47bCnHAsujvxr6ORhuIzv7QsWxj96lqNnYPeu_-a9jaGBoQ/viewform


Week Eight

2. Write an 'About' column on your page, introducing yourself to other bloggers. Tell people your first name, your age/year level, and about some of your interests. Go to Blogger, layout, then add a sidebar gadget 'Text.' Click save arrangement once you have written a little about yourself.

3. Visit other people's blogs and leave comments! Scroll to the bottom of this page https://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/mar-2020-students/ and select some blogs to look at. Read what the bloggers have posted, and comment on their posts.

Get NZ Writing

Over the last few weeks, Room 17 have been learning about different types of poetry through a 'Get Nz Writing' kit. We have had different mapping activities to partake in and discussions around local landmarks, great places to visit and local food to try. Today we finished our kit, and are now sending 32 postcards that form a SESTINA and a poem we collaborated with Kendrick Smithyman on to St Paul's College in Rotorua.