What is a mollusc?

We have been learning to write definitions and we are also learning about how to classify different types of animals.
We all know what makes a fish a fish now.
Today we have been finding out about molluscs. We used Kidspiration to sort the information we read.

Quinn's Digital Microscope Recount

experience.

This is a bit tricky to view because you have to click on each page separately and then the last word is left off BUT Quinn did a great job with this writing. He has a good introduction. He's written events in order with good sentence beginnings and he's included his own ideas to give the writing personal voice.

Crystal Cave

Today Robert brought some of his crystal collection to school. At lunchtime, we used the digital microscope to examine some of the crystals more closely. This one was our favourite. It looks like a crystal cave.

Our Yellow Tail Fish

Fish Scale

Today we had a close look at a yellow tail fish using a digital microscope. We checked it out to see if it had all the things a fish has to have to be a fish. Gills? Yes. Fins? Yes. A backbone? Yes, as far as we could tell from the outside. Scales? (most fish have these, but not all) Yes.
The movie showing here is of one of the scales.

Thinking about fish

We haven't decided on our big question about ocean life yet. At the moment, we are just reading and thinking about what we know. Here is some of our writing about fish.
It's straight out of our books.
The first two are by Toby, Nathan S and Grifin. Some of the word fish got missed when I scanned Nathan's writing. See if you can work out where "fish" goes in the sentence.
I'll put more on later.
Here is Len's from the computer:
The water goes in the fish’s mouth and then it comes out of their gills. That is how they breeth.
Fish sleep with their eies opin . a fish has a fin. a fish has scales.

Sea Creature Alphabet

At Kaipara Flats School we are learning about the Habits of Mind that set us up to be successful people.
The Habit of Mind we are learning about at the moment is to think flexibly.
One way you can be a flexible thinker is to work hard to come up with lots of ideas and that is what we tried to do when we brainstormed sea creatures to make this sea creatures alphabet chart.
We have also created our own alphabet charts. You may see some of these later.

Mayor Penny's Reading Challenge

Welcome back everyone.
This is our first blog post for Term 2.
We have been very busy and have lots of things to blog about but today Ms Donnell wants to tell everyone that she is taking up the Mayor's challenge.
She is going to read to Room 2 for half an hour a day for every school day in the month of May. She started on Friday and is looking forward to having an excuse to read lots of books. She is going to try to find books that relate to our topic: Ocean Life.