Should We Get a Class Pet

What’s your favourite animal? Think about it. I bet you already have one picked out. How much fun would it be to have that favourite animal as a pet in the classroom? Have you thought about what it would be like? Would this animal be difficult to take care of? Is it a normal house-hold animal? It’s alright if it is not a normal house-hold animal like a cat or dog, and it’s alright if it is. Think about how fun and exciting it would be to have this animal  to play with at break times, take it for walks (or have it take you). Do you ride it around? Does it fly? Think of all these questions. Ask yourself more!
               

Your aim is to write a persuasive letter to Mrs Singh, asking her to adopt this animal as a classroom pet for Term 3. 

Step One: Choose your animal! Although you probably already have, keep in mind that this animal, if your teacher is persuaded, will live in your classroom.

Step Two: Research your animal! You will provide in your letter as much as you can about this animal. What kind of animal is it?

• Is it a mammal, amphibian, reptile, fish, bird? 
• How long is its lifespan? 
• Does it have babies or lay eggs? 
• How big does it get? 
• What does it eat to survive? 
• What is its natural habitat? 

Step Three: Begin your graphic organizer. These are the circle web graphs we do in class to organize our thoughts and ideas before writing that look like this! Fill in your ideas, opinions, and facts you think are appropriate that will persuade your teacher to want this animal in the classroom. You will find your graphic organizer in your Google Drive.

Step Four: Start your rough draft of your persuasive letter. Remember, a rough draft is just putting your ideas down into one constructive piece. Don’t forget to save your document as “step 4 (last name in Google Drive Pet Folder)”.

Step Five: Begin your first edit. Read through your rough draft and make all spelling corrections!

Step Six: Begin your second edit. Read through your first edit and make all grammar and punctuation corrections!

Step Seven: Here, you will go through your second edit and make a final revision. This is when you will catch everything else you missed and your writing should become perfect with no mistakes!

Step Eight: This is your published, final draft you will hand in to Mrs Singh. Before you hand it in, read through one more time and ask yourself if you really think this will convince Mrs Singh to adopt this animal as your classroom pet.

Step Nine: Print your final letter. Your letter should be black ink, 14 point font size, double spaced, Times New Roman, title alignment centred.   You need to insert an image acknowledging the site you have copied the image from.  Staple your graphic organizer to the back of your final draft and hand it in by Week 7 Friday 20th June.


You would probably say that a pet is too messy and our classroom is too small. You may be right, but I would say that we don’t need to have such a big pet like cats or dogs. If nobody has fur allergies, then we could get a hamster, rabbit or guinea pig. If there are fur allergies, then we could get fish, turtles or maybe even a lizard! To get money to buy a pet, we could make a (bake) sale, and if there’s extra money, we could donate it to the charity (SPCA)! Rules would certainly be set, and for the people who don’t want to participate, they don’t have to. The rules would be who and when takes care of the pet during the holidays.  If we should get a class pet. We could learn about the pet and connect it to whatever we’re doing, and we can learn to be cooperative, caring, independent, responsible and many more attributes.

Today in class we became scientists and investigated what would happen if we added water to cornflour.  What an unbelievable experiment it was!

We all wrote up:

• What we wanted to investigate
• What we thought would happen
• The materials we would need
• What method we would use to mix the cornflour and water together.

This is what we did:

Make Your Own Quick Sand

What you'll need:

• 2 cups of cornflour
• 1 cup of water
• A large plastic container
• A spoon

Procedure:

1.     Slowly add the cornstarch to the water in the bowl and stir.

2.     Notice how the slower the motion the more fluid the substance.

3.     Quickly stir the cornstarch and water mixture.

4.     Notice how the faster motion creates a more solid substance. It might feel like you're "breaking" the cornstarch and water mixture.

5.     Play with your quicksand! 

The result:

We ended up with a goo that changed from a solid to a liquid depending on how much pressure we applied to it.  What an exciting lesson it was!  We found out that this is called a suspension.

Our Amazing School Garden

Our keen gardeners have been busy gardening this week. They are becoming very independent and can cultivate the soil and plant our new plants with care and ease. Great to see all the co-operative and management skills being used.

Our selling team 

Lots of silverbeet

 
 

pick me!

our spinach are ready for selling

snow peas are ready to be picked

by Beyonce

Pink Day

We had a Pink Shirt Day at Rosebank School to show our support for the Anti bullying message.  Lots of children and teachers wore pink to show that we think bullying is not OK and we do not want bullies in our school.  During the assembly Mrs Bell told us the story how Pink Shirt Day started in a school in Canada.  Now Pink Shirt Day is celebrated worldwide to raise awareness and help stop bullying in schools.

Room 28 was given a mini greenhouse  with a seed tray.  We have decided to experiment using this mini greenhouse to sow leek seeds and see how fast will it germinate than compared to sowing seeds outdoors.

Week 1 Thursday 6 May
Here is our mini greenhouse.

Week 2 Wednesday 14 May
When we checked our mini greenhouse this morning we spotted a tiny sprout.  See if you can spot the sprout.

keep checking this post for weekly updates!

Wednesday 21 May
Our leek sprouts  have grown a lot bigger since our last post. The tallest sprout is about 11cm long.  we have about 80% of the seeds sprouted.  During the day time we left the tray out in the sun with the cover over it so it generates more heat.

Monday 26 May
Our leeks have grown a lot since our last update.  The leek seedling are looking very healthy.  We watered it this morning.  We reckon that the seedling are ready to be transplanted into our school garden by the end of next week. 

Check our blog for more weekly updates!

done by :Sophie Sebla

This is a working progress by the students.

week 6 Thursday 12 June

We decided it was time to start transplanting our leek seedlings in to our school garden.  We thought it might be best to plant it in the morning because the weather forecast was rain in the afternoon.  Why plant before rain as the rain settles the seedlings right in.

  
This is just before the transplanting process.

These leeks are officially part of our Rosebank School Garden

 

 Room 28 members are helping to plant our leeks!

Now its ready to water.

Done by: Isadora and Sophie 

Dog safety with Diana and Lincoln (the dog)

On Wednesday afternoon Room 28 went to the hall for the dog safety show. The special instructor was Diana and her dog Lincoln.  Diana taught us how to be safe around dogs and how to greet a dog when you are out and about.

We learned that you always:

• Ask the owner before you touch a dog-NO OWNER, NO TOUCHING!
• Make your hand into a rock to allow the dog to sniff you
• Touch the dog on the chin and chest
• Stand like a tree if you feel scared of a dog-NEVER RUN AWAY!
• Make yourself into a rock and cover your ears with a fist if you get knocked over by a dog 

This is Lincoln

Diana got Lincoln when he was seven weeks old.

Post by Rahil and Jared