Melville Intermediate - Teaching Poi Making in the South Island

If you haven't checked out Allanhk's Appleby Class Blog recently, you really need to do so, not just because its such a wonderful resource and place for great work and ideas, but there's a very special post about Poi Making. The videos for this were created by students in Room 8, and the students in Appleby School made the Poi, you can see them using them! Its been another great collaboration between our classes and we're very proud to be featured on their wonderful blog. You can click on the link to their work here or on the picture.

Melville Intermediate - Skyping with Mr McClungs Class

Today in class we had a Skype Conversation with Mr McClungs Class. The students were excited once again to be talking to other students around the world. Its another opportunity to network. We also had some visitors in class, part of our Girls Basketball Team Kelsey from Room 3, Te Mania from Room 5 and Ashley from Room 5. They had never taken part in a Skype Conversation before, it culminated with Mr McClungs Class demonstrating the Pledge of Allegiance before spontaneous renditions of the New Zealand National Anthem, sung by the Girls and the Star Spangled Banner from our friends in Arkansas! A great, great moment in ICT Interaction! If you have not visited Mr McClungs wonderful site you can do so by clicking on the linked picture. Thanks again for making your class available.

Melville Intermediate - Skyping with Appleby School 2

Melville Intermediate - Room 8 in Six Words

This activity came from a class when I was leaving comments for the latest instalment of comments4kids. I was visiting a class blog in the USA, All Things Preeteen and I thought, wow that's a clever idea, so I threw out the intended lesson and told the students to come up with six words to describe themselves. The students really enjoyed it (and it was a lot harder than they had thought!) and it got the day off to a really positive start! Thanks so much to 'Comments4kids' and

These are some of the results from our students:

Vitolina - talented, quick, funny, smart, nice, Vitolina.
Molinda - happy, important, quickly, funny, girl, Molinda.
Rachana - sporty, funny, nice, awesome, important, smart.
Liam - sporty, active, supreme, tall, fantastic, fighter.
Arahia - funny, important, cool, talented, smart, strong.
Nick - sporty, smart, fun, caring, skilled fair.
Nicole - active, funny, shopaholic, fast, smart, Nicole.
Keegan - happy, funny, kind, big, friendly.
Kalem - fun, exciting, happy, smart, active, awesome.
Raukawa - cool, funny, fast, caring, sporty, shy, fair, rich.
Kaleb - happy, smart, caring, healthy, kind, fast.
Bailey - happy, smart, biker, stubborn, reckless, awesome.
Jamie - funny, nice, helpful, happy, caring, fast, helpful.
Prashant - happy, cool, funny, caring, fast, helpful.
Caitlyn - fun, out there (!), different, crazy, shy, friendly.
Scott - sporty, stinky, freckly, skill, outdoors, ugly.
Dylan - dangerous, energetic, sporty, smart, smelly, artistic.
Kaiya - kind, fast, sporty, skilled, smelly, reckless, strong.
Bradyn - funny, cool, fast, rich, speedy, Gokarter.
Janice - sporty, funny, nice, awesome, important, Janice.
Meighan - important, nice, mean, funny, healthy.
Michael - musician, funny, distracting, human, independant, random

Thanks for Molinda for putting this list together!

Melville Intermediate - Appleby School in Nelson.

In the coming days we're very excited about an opportunity to help and interact with Allanh K's Class from Appleby School near Nelson in New Zealand. They have a wonderful, wonderful blog full of great ideas and teaching resources which you can contact by clicking on the picture to your left. The students in the class have been learning a Mihi, a Maori greeting and our students are going to be listening to their Mihi and helping them (if required!) by Skyping with their class.

We've only just tried a few class to class link ups and this is something that the Room 8 students are really excited about. Its a great opportunity for our students to further their learning. We had a look on Google Maps and if we drove to the School it would take us 14 hours to get there!

Melville Intermediate - Using Twitter to Work Out the Price of Milk.

In Room 8 last week, we put a post on this site asking for people around the world to tell us how much milk cost in their country. We had so many responses! Over 20 comments from around the world! We took all the comments and printed them out and made a display on our window outside the classroom. The students and staff from all over our school have been reading them. The big piece of paper you can see is the learning intention and an explanation of what we did, the smaller posts are the tweets themselves. After converting all of the currency to New Zealand dollars we have discovered that India has the cheapest Milk in the world at 8c a litre! This even had some of the teachers at our school sceptical but we've also been given addresses, contact information and websites within the original comments and we've started checking through these to double check all the information - if you were one of the many people who helped us with this post and gave us feedback on behalf of the entire class thank you very much, the students were thrilled with the response and really appreciated it.

Melville Intermediate - Online Movie Festival

At Melville Intermediate School we are very excited about one of the upcoming projects that our students are about to be involved in. There's a group of Schools in a cluster who have a film festival and this year Melville Intermediate School will be entering! To get an idea of what the festival was last year, you can follow this link to the Schools Cluster Site, and also go here to see all of the videos from last year. There were some great videos - a highlight was the St Pius X School Dancing in the Community Video, you can watch that here. You also had some students from Point England School, who were only Year 1 Students create this wonderful video about a lost Hippo Called 'Api's Hippo'. There was also a great video with a healthy message about eating fruit from Point Englands Year 4 students, you can watch that video here.

We'll be announcing how you, anywhere in the world can help with the Melville Intermediate School entry for 2009. We'll be posting the details of that here tomorrow, please stay tuned and if you'd be prepared to help us out we'd really, really, really appreciate it!

Melville Intermediate - Tutpup Strikes Again!

I say strikes again, because there are students in Room 8 very familiar with this from Deanwell Primary School and other locations. At the Ulearn ICT Conference in New Zealand last week there were a number of stalls, including a couple of online games being sold. I've always been a big fan of Tutpup because of its accessibility. We've decided to further up the ante by having a competition as a class through the site, which is incredibly easy to do. I know that a lot of you are really familiar with it, but if you haven't checked out Tutpup you really should it is a magical site and the kids will love it!

Melville Intermediate - ICT International Interaction

Later this week we're very excited to be looking at another Skyping Conversation. This will be taking place between ourselves and School in Australia. The Blogging All Stars have just finished Whale Rider the wonderful book by Witi Ihimaera They're looking to chatting with a class at Melville Intermediate. Their class blog can be accessed by clicking here.

As a reference point for what we're doing we're going to highlight again some of our cultural work this year - we've created Mihi, introductions, which was one of the very first things we did this year. We have also helped Mr Lamsheds class in Adelaide in their preparation for their audition for the Adelaide Schools Cultural festival, you can view that link here.

Also although its not work from 2009 this work is by the class that Mr Webb used to teach in Auckland. There's link to a series of poi making videos and instructional poi using videos. The students also prepared some videos relating to Rakau (stick games).

While we're on the subject of the coming week, Tuesday see's the Inter-Intermediate Waikato Netball Competition. Melville's Y8 Girls have been having a strong form in the lead up to the finals but Peachgrove Intermediate have been the dominate force in sport so far this year.

Melville Intermediate - Maori Haka

Today something special happened in Room 8. As you know our students are very excited about Mr Lamshed's class and his Boys Haka preparation for the upcoming Adelaide Arts Festival. Well having viewed their Haka numerous times online Destyn and Cleveland decided to model their own Haka for our friends in Australia and produce it here. That was the filming idea that they planned for, what I didn't expect was them to invite Tavita the Room Eight Teacher Aide to join in and also to do such an amazing performance. While this was filmed in the Hall the rest of Room 8 was in the classroom - I could hear the noise from the CLASS, which is a considerable distance away and I thought that they'd had a group of Boys doing Kapa Haka. Its an amazing intense performance and I am so, so proud of the Boys. Mr Lamshed and class this is for you.

Melville Intermediate - Peeps Slideshow

These are just some of the pictures in the series that we took when we received from Mossy Oaks Intermediate in Texas a box of Peeps. The students were blown away by the interaction at that a teacher (thanks again Mrs Cranford) would take the time and expense to send something to us for our class to enjoy. It was a wonderful moment in the classroom and a fantastic networking opportunity that we were able to share with the entire school of Melville Intermediate.

Melville Intermediate - A package from Texas!

Today is a very exciting day in class, we received yesterday a package from Mrs Cranfords Class in While Oaks Texas! The students are thrilled with this as already we've had students come into class and see the package! What does it contain? We will be finding our later today! If you haven't been to a Blog in Texas then click here to see Mrs Cranfords WONDERFUL CLASS!

Melville Intermediate - Skyping with Appleby School

This animation is a little special as its a result of a collaboration that took place last week between Melville Intermediate and students from Appleby School in Nelson. Their wonderful site can be contacted by clicking here. During the day we used Skype to contact their class and Nick received instructions of how to create a pivot animation. He'd never used the program before but as a result of the tutoring that he received he was able to create his own animation and then also scaffold (teach) Scott from our classroom! Our wonderful thanks again to Alanahk and her class!

Nick wrote the following about the Skype Chat:
"It was a great experience Skyping with a school in Nelson. I learnt to do animations on pivot. George was a great helper. I learnt some skills and will pass them onto other classmates, in my class. Pivot is Fun!"

Melville Intermediate - Online Tutor

At Melville Intermediate, in Room 8 we had a wonderful moment today. Thanks to AlanahK's Class at Appleby School in Nelson we were able to do some real time interactive learning. We've been admiring there online work when they're teacher said "what about a Skype link up?". We were thrilled and a bit nervous at the same time, never-the-less at 1:30pm today we duly connected. Nick did the honours for Room Eight. Some students were so excited when we saw the faces from AlanahK classroom they couldn't help rushing the screen to wave! We had an excellent experience, one of those motivating lessons for students and teacher and as a result Nick will be producing a Pivot animation which we'll post online in the next few days. If there is anyone else intersted in Skype-ing with us, let us know! A massive wonderful thanks to AlanahK and her class!