Dear Joy Cowley

After reading A Letter from Fish Bay about Joy Cowley, some of us wrote letters to her. Here's Quinn's letter:

M13

Island Bay School

Thames St

Island Bay

Wellington 6023

Friday 29^th August

Dear Joy Cowley,

I go to Island Bay School at the bottom of the North Island. I like your book, Dunger, because it is really descriptive. My favourite bit is when the kids don’t want to go to the grandma’s house and the story about them forgetting to flush the toilet.

Did an author make you want to become an author? How many times have you started a book in 2014? How old is the train set in your office? Is Dunger an adult book? What type of ice-cream do you like best? What’s your favourite spider? I’ve just been learning about spiders for my Inquiry.

What’s your favourite fish out of the salmon, sole, and mullet and that you catch? I want to know because I can tell how much you like fishing.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Quinn 

Jamieson's rocks and minerals

This morning Jamieson carefully brought two boxes of precious rocks to school.

Everyone chose their favourite one:

Francesca: "I like this one because it has patterns coming out from the middle"

Breea: "it's nice and smooth; really really smooth."

Amelie: "I like that crystal because it's quite shiny and I like the shape of it."

Breea wrote a poem about it:

Right and white
for everybody
sparkly and rough and hard
a pinch of red
of wool on the head.
I'm gonna call it Mark.
It's pointy on the bottom.
It doesn't hurt too much
a little grazed on the inside
a little grazed on the out.
It's middle name is Sassy
and it cannot be changed
by the law of Wellington's mayor.

 Joe: "I like them because they're quite shiny and they glow and the colour fades together and they're quite unique."

Aliya: "I like this because it's big and shiny and you can hold it easily. And it can't cut people and it's interesting."

Cody: "I like this one because it's shiny and pointy on the top and it looks like it has real crystal."

Noah: "I like all the details of both of the carvings of the mouse and the crocodile. They're both really cool."

Jamieson's dad carved this mouse when he was five years old, and he carved the crocodile when he was only eight!

From the left, we have obsidian, silver in the middle, and rose quartz on the right.

This is a Maori spearhead carved out of obsidian. Cody wrote a poem about it:

Jamieson's obsidian

Shiny and bright
all black, curved and Maori
off the top of a spear.

Luca also wrote a poem about it:

Knife

Its smooth surface
glints like the sea on a dark moonlit night.
I turn its crinkled lining up to the light
and it turns a pale milk colour.
The knife.

This is a fossil egg. Laila wrote a poem about it:

An old man, old and young
was having fun
today.

One day an animal came out
out came a dinosaur,
a triceratops.

Mel wrote a poem about this rock; it's a polished piece of amethyst:

Shining bright
under the light,
it curves and swirls.
Cracks widen
and let out
happiness of purple.
Shining bright
under the light,
swirly whirly twirl.

The ginormous crystal | by Quinn

The crystal shines in the sunlight.
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it.
I said to myself, who brought in this crystal?
It is amazing.

POETRY SLAM

On Monday we had a poetry slam. We were celebrating the fact that we've now had more than 2000 visitors to our blog, and combining this with a chance to share all the fantastic poems we've been writing lately.

Slam Poetry is a way to perform your poems for others. We also drew our inspiration from the Beat Poets, a generation of writers from the 1950s who used poetry to tell the world about their ideas. As well as some fabulous costumes,

we even had Beat-inspired food!

In the afternoon everyone had a chance to perform a poem - we'll post these performances to the blog soon...

Our writers' circle

Every Wednesday we start the day by writing observations in our Writer's Journals.  Today, at Tama's suggestion, we sat in a circle outside afterwards to share our writing with each other.  We always give each other feedback at the end - today we really liked each other's descriptive writing.

Spiky

The spiky feeling you get when you touch it...

You look closely 
it's a nut
spiky and crumbled, 
sharp.

It tastes like vanilla
and feels like a knife
poking you hard

and it looks like a spiky brush!

By Cody

The nut

It looks like a hedgehog
but it is a nut.

It's got razor-sharp spikes
to protect it from getting eaten.

It feels rough.
It tastes like vanilla.
It smells like toast.

By Quinn



Tree sap

Glowing in the sun
see through 
once golden-brown
with bubbles of goo
shining in the sun

By Eve



It flows off the pohutukawa tree
it fades and loses its colour
then lies still like sand
but it can still travel the world

By Meline



A knot tied of prickles
they're the colour of corn
burnt on fire
black streaks

By Peta



Lumpy crusty shell:
it tastes like paint
it has a gloomy shadow
pink green blue orange and silver
it brings the sea with it.

by Peta



Freezing white shell
sitting on the sand.
The wind swaying 
from side to side
forcing the waves to crash 
and wash the rocks.
The shell still sits there.

By Jamie




In the city 
a poster of a shell
shines in the light
glistening till night-time

By Jamie

The shining rock | By Quinn

The rock shines so much I can't see
because it is so sparkly.

It looks like a crystal
it could be marble.

I wonder if it's a crystal
or marble?

Our multiple intelligences

Today we were thinking about the health of our BRAINS.  We looked at a whole lot of pictures of kids doing different things, and discussed what we think they might be good at.  We wrote these ideas in yellow.  As we placed the pictures on our poster, we thought about how these talents might be connected, and tried to place and group similar talents together.  Then we talked about Howard Gardner.  He has done a lot of research on how we think and has come up with a theory of multiple intelligences, describing how different people's brains work in different ways.  When we looked at his list of multiple intelligences we found that it was very similar to ours.  We stuck his words (in white) alongside our own ideas.

Howard Gardner says, "All of us have the full range of intelligences; that is what makes us human beings, cognitively speaking. No two individuals—not even identical twins—have exactly the same intellectual profile."

Our intellectual profile is a way of describing which intelligences we feel more or less confident in.

Tomorrow we're going to think more about our own intelligences.   Which do you think are your strengths?  Which do you want to develop more?