The Mighty Tohunga and the Little Baby Hikinui

Today, we have gone back in time and interviewed some major characters from the Legend of the Seven Whales. Here is a treat from Ezra and Taylor. Look for others on our student blogs! Also, look out for the stunning introduction by Jack!

Calling the Commonwealth Games Village

Commonwealth Skype from Kieren Moriarty on Vimeo.

On Tuesday, Room 6 (along with Room 8) had the amazing opportunity to Skype Scotland and talk to Craig Palmer, the sports scientist in the New Zealand cycling team! I was very impressed with the questions that the children asked. Craig did a wonderful job, answering their questions. A huge thank you to Cameron, his brother Thomas and his mum Tania Potts for organising this. We were so lucky! Go the New Zealand team!

Check out these posts, reflecting on the experience:

• Elijah
• Traylan
• Jaidyn
• Matilda
• Jack
• Brayden
• Julius
• Taylor
• Jared
• Liam

Buddy Hot Seat

Check out Episode 2 of our Character Hot Seat series!
Buddy Hot Seat from Kieren Moriarty on Vimeo.

Here is the transcript that the Droids reading group created on Google docs:

BUDDY AND CHANTAL HOT SEAT Q’S 

Josh: Brody

Chantal: Casey

Presenter: Felicity

Presenter: Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the one and only Character Hot seat. Tonight we have Chantal and Josh from the fabulous novel Buddy.
Applause

Chantal’s Q’s

Felicity:  Hi Chantal my name is Felicity, my question for you (Chantal) is what made you adore Splash the cute little kitten?

ANSWER: Well she is full of mischief and excitement and she is very cute.

Katherine: Hi Chantal my name is Katherine and I have a question for you. Why does your dad not let you have pets?

ANSWER: Because since we move around every now and then it is too hard to take a pet on the move.

Brody:  My question for you today Chantal is were you hooked to Josh when you first met or did you need to get to know him?

ANSWER: I got to know him.     

Sami: Hi Chantal I’m Sami My question for you is Why did you like music so much?

Answer: Because it is exciting to learn different songs and things.

Natasha: Hello Chantal, I'm Natasha and my question for you today is, did you ever like Shane?

Answer: No I did not because he did not think I could carry my own bag to the bike shed.   

Josh’s Questions

Flossie: Hi Josh I’m Felicity and my question for you ( Josh ) is how was it like running with Jake in the wheelchair?

ANSWER: It was exhilarating, I loved every bit of it.

Natasha: Hi Josh, I’m Natasha and my question for you today is how did you feel when Suzanne was talking to you about her life.

ANSWER: It was awkward.

Casey: Hi Josh, my question for you is did you like it when Chantal kissed you?

ANSWER: I don’t know, she kind of just did it.

Sami: Hi Josh, I’m Sami. My question for you is why did you want to keep Jake a secret?

Answer: Because he will get picked on, he was already a secret so I thought it should stay that way. Obviously until the triathlon came around.      

Kazzie : How did you feel when you were pushing Jake to the finish line at the triathlon and you were coming first, then Shane bet you?

Answer: I didn’t really mind because all I cared about was Buddy.   

V.M. Jones Answers Our Questions!

Today we received an email from the author V.M. Jones answering questions we had asked her about the book Buddy. Read her wonderful response below!

Hello there to all you wonderful readers and writers!
 
I'm sorry it has taken me so long to reply to your lovely letters. I'm also sorry I can't reply to every one of them individually, but my life is so busy at the moment that answering just a few questions was the best I could promise to do.
 
I am so thrilled that you have been reading Buddy as a class, and have enjoyed it so much. Let me tell you a little about how I came to write it, and some other bits and pieces I hope you will find interesting. Hopefully I will answer some of your questions in the process!
 

Writing has always been a hugely important part of my life. When I was at school English and particularly Creative Writing were by far my favourite subjects, and since then all my jobs have involved some kind of writing, to a greater of lesser extent. For some reason it never occurred to me to actually become an author until a few years ago ... but thinking back I believe it was always in my destiny. I think that for me it was important to live first ... certainly I could never have written the books I have without having had my two boys, watched them grow up, and learn all over again what it means to be a child (and to learn for the first time what it means to be a boy!)

You ask what inspires me to write. The answer is simple: life! I believe that ideas for stories are floating in the air all round us, like those dandelion seeds my sons used to call ‘fairies’ when they were younger – things that happen, remarks you overhear, people’s interesting faces, stories your kids tell you about what happened at school – and sometimes one of those seeds taken root and grows into a book. Though all my stories are imaginary, they do have a seed of reality at their heart - even if it's just the reality of an idea or concept I find interesting or believe in passionately.

 

The plot of Buddy was mostly made up, though I do remember my grandmother telling us about a friend of hers with one ‘normal’ child and one disabled one who lived in a special home … that was years and years ago, when I was about 6 or so. As an author, you find lots of ideas unexpectedly resurfacing from your past – things you thought you’d forgotten completely. Maybe the seed for Buddy came from that. More immediately, though, when I decided to write a book I thought I’d write about an apparently very ordinary boy who had a hidden secret he’d do anything to prevent anyone from finding out. I gave Josh not one secret, but two – Buddy, and his fear of water. Finding a link between them, and exploring what happened next, led to the plot of the book.

I think part of what inspired me was wondering how it would feel to be Josh and have a brother like Buddy, and how I personally would respond. That is fortunately impossible to answer; all I do know is that the emotions involved would be very complex.

I'm often asked whether Buddy has a moral to it. I think in many ways it’s important to write books that make people think about difficult issues, and whose characters grow and develop – hopefully in a positive way. Travelling through a book with the characters makes the reader learn and grow too, and I guess that’s what is meant by a ‘moral’. If you think about all that Josh learns about himself and various aspects of life – such as the importance of family, honesty, courage, love, and what it really means to win – you will be getting pretty close to what I regard as the heart of the novel. Shane also grows and develops in much the same way - he is a different person at the end of the book than at the beginning, but that is partly because Josh has matured and sees him differently. Maybe Shane was really nice all along!

No, there won’t be a sequel to Buddy. Some books, like another of my books, Juggling with Mandarins, almost demand to be explored further – as the writer, you have a compelling sense that there is more to be told. With Buddy, I felt that the characters had reached a stage where they were ready to be left in peace to get on with their lives without my intervention!

Chantal reminds  me a little of myself when I was a little girl, so perhaps parts of her are based on me!

Buddy as a nickname came from an imaginary game one of my sisters and I played when we were children. We pretended we were two friends at a boarding school who had all sorts of adventures together. We could never decide on names for ourselves, so we called each other 'Friend'. The name of the game was 'Friends'. The idea of twins who called each other Budddy came from that.

Lastly, what do I like best about my story 'Buddy'? The answer is the characters, who came alive for me while I was writing the book and who I like to think come alive in their own way for every single person who reads it. And my favourite character, of course, is Josh.

Thank you again for reading and enjoying Buddy, and for taking the time to write to me. Read lots, write lots, and above all: have fun!

Lots of love

Vicky Jones

What we want to find out about the Olympics

Yesterday Room 20 posted these questions on a Wallwisher I created for our class. I am impressed by how the class asked effective questions. This is a skill we have been practising in reading.

Click on image to make it bigger

Challenge: research and answer any of these questions. Put your answer and a possible link in as a comment.

Interview With Jax

Character Hot Seat Episode 1 from Kieren Moriarty on Vimeo.

The Stormtroopers have been learning to ask effective questions to gain a deeper understanding of what they are reading. As part of this learning they created a Character Hot Seat for the character Jax who narrates the story "Going after Humbug" by Viktor Allen. It's a good story in the School Journal Level 3, April 2012.

Character Hot Seats from my old blog:

• Madam Spry
• Dracula
• Howard Carter