Miss T's Classroom.

We are about 75% the way through the book Mr Terupt. I don’t know about everybody in the class, but I am loving reading this book. I love the characters and of course Mr Terupt. I like the way situations have developed, relationships changed and things have happened!

What are your thoughts about this book. Your questions? Predictions? Your views? Who do you think is responsible for having Mr Terupt where he is now? Will he recover? What will happen for Jessica, Peter, Luke and the others. Why do you think Rob Buyea wrote this book? What is he getting us to think about?

Below is an interview with the author, Rob Buyea. He is interviewed by a well known adult author, John Irving.

Whitcoulls has released its list of the top 50 books voted for by children in New Zealand.  Click on the link to see them.  How many of them have you read?   What would be your favourite one from the list?  What one that you haven’t read, would you like to read?  I would love to hear from the class and from any visitors to our blog.

At the moment one group in our class is in the process of making book trailers, using Photo Story 3.  If you want, you can download that, see the left hand side bar for the site to go to.
Here is a link for you to view ones that students have already done in other schools. Watch some of them and see which ones you think are great examples of well produced book trailers.  Book Trailers.

I am looking forward to what our group will come up with, I know they are nearing completion.  And in actual fact you can view the first one to be fully completed here.   Teegan’s Book Trailer.

Now we have a few more completed.  Here is Simone’s Book Trailer.   And here is Antonio’s Book Trailer.

At present on the  Whitcoulls website  they are inviting you to vote for the top 50 books for Children.  I know many of you love to read and have enjoyed some great books.  Why not spend a bit of time over on the site and place your vote.  There are prizes for some lucky voters, but don’t make that your sole reason for voting.  Do it for the joy of having your say.  Let me know if you do vote and what you voted for.   You have to be 16 years or under, so I guess that counts me out!

We are almost finished reading this book in class.  It was nominated for the New Zealand post book awards this year.  Our Mastermind team read it, and then we thought we would read it as our class book as the beginning really hooked us in with its mysterious beginning.  You can read a summary of the book here.  Des Hunt is a New Zealand author and this is not his first book!  We have at least one other  in the school library.

What was your favourite part of the book?  You might also leave a comment on the link blog, making a response to the summary the writer gives and the recommendation he makes for the age group who might enjoy this book.

As Beatrice says in her post on her blog, holidays are here and we all deserve it after working hard for the term.  I am looking forward to them.  I am off to Australia, by boat!!  And then a week at Surfers Paradise.  Wonderful. 

Usually I go on holiday armed with books.  This time I am taking my new Kobo ereader, which has 6 or 7 books on it that I would like to read.  It will hardly take up any space at all.

These holidays I am going to challenge each of you to read a book that you haven’t already read and then add a book report to your blog.  Or if you don’t have your own blog yet, post on this classroom blog. The one that I like the most will receive a special award that I will let you know about in class.

Have the title and author of the book.  Why you chose the book.    An image of the book.    Four to five sentences telling what the book is about.  Don’t give the ending away.   Name a character you liked or disliked and write a descriptive paragraph about the character.   Finally a recommendation to the kind of readers who you think might enjoy reading your book. When you are finished it link it to this post below using the link button.

How to avoid a Wombat’s Bum is an amazing fact book on all the things you would like to find out about!  From the Solar System to the smallest animals on earth, to frogs, trivia and even toilets!  And now I will tell you how to avoid a wombat’s bum: Don’t chase it! Wombats run really fast, and stop in half a stride. They kill their predators this way. The predator runs into the wombat’s bum bone and smashes it’s face!  If we chased one, we wouldn’t smash our face, but we probably would smash our foot!  Ouchy ouch!  Ah, well apart  from that, I think you should read it, it’s a good book!