My Tropical Rainforest Project - Kokona

 

Orang-Utans live in Indonesia's rainforest. Orang-Utans sleep in nests in trees and eat birds, insects, some frogs. 

Bali Mynas live in Indonesia's rainforest. Bali Mynas eat insects and fruit. 

Atlas moths eat smaller insects. Atlas moths lives in Sarawak.

Rina's snow animal - not melting!

We'd love to know what you think about Rina's after reading creation! Please leave a comment!

 

A talking platypus

Check out Minami's unseen platypus project, as an after reading piece for her graded reader (OUP Read & Discover) series. She narrates her illustration beautifully :)

 

 

Kenshin's platypus project

Check out Kenshin's description of Australia's very shy platypus (an animal he's never seen( but we read about in an Oxford Read & Discover graded reader - we can travel in our minds!
 

Yushin's snow animal

Check out Yushin's after reading project! How cool is his snow animal (in the middle of summer - we're melting!)

 

Hazuki talks about...her chimpanzee

 

Although we do not have chimpanzees native to Japan, we do have loads of monkeys up in the hills, and famously a monkey onsen in Nagano prefecture, which is a very popular tourist attraction

This is Hazuki's after reading project, where the task was to write about her favourite wild animal (and sketch it) then narrate using Chatterpix on (my) iPhone. As you can see & hear, a really good expansion beyond a graded reader, and a piece of work to be proud of.

Waving at the International Space Station

As regular readers will know, we are really keen to get our students at Luna into the reading habit, and creating independent thinkers & travellers of the mind. I think it is really important to enjoy what you are reading, and that it means something to you.                                                                                                                I was thrilled we managed a stellar "Eureka" moment last night with a group of extremely chuffed Eigonauts! Having finished their first choice readers (action packed stories) the last one in the bag was "In the Sky". Potentially a bit dull & flat - except we have an incredible resource just outside the front door!                                                                                                                                        During our previous lesson we'd talked about planets & stars, constellations too; we'd spotted Orion easily and noticed the half moon from the car park. Tonight's mission was time critical (and weather). My satellite tracking app told me it'd appear on the southern horizon at 18:32, giving us 8 minutes before the end of class to spot the International Space Station. My girls were watching the countdown while we did a few other tasks, and coordinated with our classmate in Nagano - via Zoom - what we were going to do & how (needed to use my iPad to "take the class for a walk!").                                                                                                                                                                                                            First of all we found Orion again, and tried to spot Gemini. We had watched a short NASA video

constellation identification

explaining the constellations in view in March, but we could not see Castor or Pollux. The moon was hiding brightly, behind BigBoy (restaurant next door) which was also very lit up, making our view west & south somewhat obscured. Next, we realised the buildings in front of us hid the horizon, and from the app we could see the ISS was going to keep fairly low as it tracked westwards over Utsugushigahara.                                                                                            We dashed upstairs and turned all the lights off, stepped onto the roof (safely!) and were immediately able to see the bright white dot moving across the dark sky exactly where the teacher said it would be! The girls realised that if they might be able to see it again in an hour & a half, it must be going very fast indeed! I asked them if they thought the seven astronauts would be waving back ("probably not, it's dinner time" they decided!)...but they kept waving frantically anyway :)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        And that was about all we had time for, though homework is to draw a picture of the night sky (I found them in the waiting room with the lights off, being very diligent, later!). "Happy?" I asked them. Far from it - they were deliriously chuffed to bits...and so, therefore, is the teacher.

Tracking satellites 

The "AHA!" moment :)