2011 GLOBAL MONSTER PROJECT

We are excited to be one of 42 classes from around the world taking part in the 2011 Global Monster Project.

After seeing the amazing monster that last years Year 2's made, we knew that we wanted to make a monster too! 

Each of the classes participating choose a body part or accessory and come up with an 8-12 word description for that part.The body part we chose is the bellybutton. We imagined what  a monster's bellybutton might look like and after brainstorming, this is our description-

rainbow coloured, hexagonal shaped, 15cm/6inches wide and tall, oozing green blood, hairy worms, 3 rotten apple cores, 5 purple-ringed eyeballs, spider bellybutton ring   

You can see the body part descriptions from all the other participating classes in the table on the MONSTER 2011 home page.

Our task now is to use the descriptions to build our monster by October 31. Building this monster is going to be a HUGE task and will require a LOT of collaboration and teamwork. With only 21 of us and 42 body parts and accessories, we have TWO parts each to construct! We're certainly going to be busy!

We know that each class will interpret the descriptions differently and can't wait to see what all the monsters will look like. We're excited that both Year 3 classes are also taking part. Our school will be a very monstery place to be in 3 weeks!

Have you taken part in the Monster Project before?

Do you have any suggestions for the materials we could use the create each part?

Can you offer any ideas for how we should go about building our monster?

We'd love to hear from you!

WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE BAYS?

OUR OTHER BLOGS PART 2: READING BLOG

Besides our Class blog and our Writing blog, we also have a Reading blog - the 2M Reading Gems!

Our Reading blog is where we post about books

that we are reading.

It's a space where we will share our reading responses

to books we have read, post book reviews and recommend books we think others should read.

It's also a space for us to post audio of ourselves reading and reflect on our oral reading skills.

At the top of our Reading Blog you can also explore websites of our favourite authors and browse our Shelfari to see the books we are reading as a class.

Because of all the building work occurring right beside our classroom, it's been too noisy most days for us to record ourselves reading but now that our hall is finished, we'll be posting more often.

We'd love to know what you think about our reading and if you have any books that you love...please share them with us by leaving a comment on our Reading blog.

We'd love to read them too!

OUR OTHER BLOGS PART 1: WRITING BLOG

Since the first day of Year Two, we've been posting to our writing blog, the 2M Writing Gems.

It's been a place for us to learn how to post and comment as we share our writing with others and one of the coolest things to happen is that some of our parents are posting to the writing blog too!

Our writing blog is a place where we can independently post about whatever we choose. Our posts to this blog are like 'first drafts'.

As we are writing and before we publish, we focus on the CUPS.

The CUPS are-

C - is for capitals. Do I have a capital to start my sentences and for the names of people, places and thin

gs

U- is for understanding. Does my writing make sense?

P-is for punctuation. Have I used my full stops, commas, exclamation marks,

question marks or speech marks?

S-is for spelling. Are all my words spelt correctly on my post?

At the moment, our posts to the writing blog are mainly recounts but as we learn about other text types like narratives, descriptions, opinions and explanations, we will be attempting them as well.

We'd LOVE for you to encourage us with our writing, so please visit our Writing Blog often and leave comments that will help us become better writers.

SHARING OUR LEARNING - THE COMMONCRAFT WAY

At the beginning of the year, to help us understand what a blog was, Mrs M showed us a CommonCraft video about blogging.


We loved how it simply explained what a blog is and we wondered whether we could use this style of video to share our learning.


Mrs M showed us a CommonCraft style video The Kinderkids made about maple syrup and then we saw Mrs Cassidy's class had made CommonCraft style videos about wants and needs.


After seeing their CommonCraft videos, we definitely knew we each wanted to make one too, so here's Matthew's CommonCraft style video about the number 28.





All About 28 from 2M Gems on Vimeo.

What do you think about the CommonCraft style of video?
Have you shared your learning using this style of video?
If not, could you?


We love how other people and classes, through sharing their learning, can inspire our learning. 
We hope through sharing our learning we can inspire others too.

OUR NEW HALL

This week we're excited because our new hall is finished! 
It's been a long 8 months of constant dust and noise.
Some days, the noise almost drove us bananas but it's
been worth it.
Our new hall is AWESOME!

This is what we saw in July last year, when we came back to school after our winter break.

but look what's there now!


It's great to have a new covered area to play in and we LOVE the new green space outside our classroom.


We haven't been 'inside' the hall yet as some electricals are still to be finished. We think it's cool that the wall behind the stage rolls away so that the stage can be viewed by an outside audience or an indoor one. We can't wait to have an assembly in it!


What do you think of our new building and outdoor space?
Do you have a new building at your school?

PANCAKE DAY 2011

Today was SHROVE TUESDAY.

Depending on where you are in the world, it is also known as PANCAKE DAY, PANCAKE TUESDAY, FAT TUESDAY or MARDI GRAS.

Shrove Tuesday is celebrated on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of the church season of LENT. 


In earlier days there were many foods that Christians would not eat during Lent like meat and fish, eggs, and milk, flour and butter. 

To stop food being wasted, families would have a feast on the day before Ash Wednesday, and eat up all the foods that wouldn't last the forty days of Lent.

To celebrate SHROVE TUESDAY, we made pancakes - the EASY way.

This is what we needed:

EQUIPMENT-

• a frypan
• measuring jug
• spatula

INGREDIENTS -

• Pancake Shake
• 1 3/4 cups water
• cooking spray
• our favourite topping - we used Golden Syrup

Do you know the steps we took to make the pancakes?
Watch our ANIMOTO to find out how easy it can be to make pancakes.

Our Year 7's, along with some parent helpers, spent the morning cooking pancakes in our new canteen. They raised over $400 from the sale of pancakes, which will go to Caritas to help needy communities in Nepal.

We enjoyed making pancakes and enjoyed eating them even more!

How did you celebrate PANCAKE DAY?
What's your favourite topping?

Please tell us in a comment. We'd love to know

SES VISIT

This morning, Danny, from the STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE (SES) visited our school to talk to all classes about the service the SES volunteers provide for our community during disasters and emergencies.

Each year the SES receives thousands of calls for assistance. The SES have been extra busy this year helping people affected by the Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi.


Danny let us sit in one of the SES rescue boats while he spoke to us. It's the largest boat the SES uses and has lots of scrapes and dings from being used to rescue people from their homes during the Brisbane floods.





We found it interesting hearing about the important role the SES volunteers play in our community. We're lucky that none of us have needed to call on the SES for help but we like knowing they're there and glad they give of their time to help others.


Do you have a volunteer emergency service in your community?
Have you ever needed help from this service?

INVESTIGATING 2 DIGIT NUMBERS

We have been investigating two digit numbers.
Our investigations have lead us to explore not just how many TENS and ONES make up a particular number but also how we can make that number in other ways by regrouping the TENS and ONES.


Here's a video we made that shows how you can regroup 51.

Place Value with 51 from 2M Gems on Vimeo.

Have you explored the regrouping of two digit numbers?
Which numbers did you explore?
What did you discover?

THE 2011 GEMS ARE HERE!

We are so excited to join Mrs M in the 2M Learning Neighbourhood.

A few of us have older brothers or sisters who have been a Gem. We have heard lots from them and Mrs M about how we will be blogging about our learning and connecting with classes around the world.

We are very excited to be continuing the conversation and following in the footsteps of four previous classes of Gems by sharing our learning on this class blog, our Writing blog, our Reading blog and hopefully by the end of the term, our own blogfolios like previous Gems.

We are proud to be the 2011 Gems.


 Please come back and visit our blog often.
We want you to be part of the CONVERSATION!