Cardboard Boat Challenge

Success

Ra Whakangahau

Ten students in our class are part of our Ra Whakangahau group.
They performed a dress rehearsal today. We were so proud of them

Boat Building

We are designing boats that will carry one student across the width of the pool. 

Dive Zone Visit

Some true 'Give It A Go' students visited the Dive Zone yesterday. They learned how to take a Giant Stride into the water, tip backwards off a boat, huddle, form a survival chain and get under a boat to find air. Some great safety and survival lessons.

Fantastic Fish

Billy George and Larissa's dad brought us in some fish today.
We had to research to find out what they were.
Once we discovered they were Carpet Sharks we found out how long they grow and measured that length outside on the concrete.
Fun

Little Garden Plants

Each child in our class has a Little Garden plant from New World that they will be nurturing over this term. We will be doing some research around our plants as well.

Dangerous Journeys To School

We have been focussing on the setting of our writing

• colours
• shapes
• temperature
• size
• weather
• texture

Here are a few sentences based on this photo of one of the 25 most dangerous journeys to school.

Under me is a huge half hanging wet bridge that has holes in it. I can barely walk on it without falling off. By Holly

In front of me is my friend clinging on to the rusty wire, looking at her feet so she knows where to step next. Chloe

MBots

We used the amazing MBot resources from The House of Science. We tried to move the robots using a remote and then a tablet which was linked via bluetooth to the MBot. It was interesting moving the MBot - and when mistakes were made trying to reverse the last step we took instead of just picking up the robot and moving it by hand.

A project for the holidays

In class the children have been amazed by the sudden growth of our kumara. This is a great activity for children to do at home. I wonder who can grow the longest plant?

Cleaning up oil experiments

We have been trying to discover the best way to clean up an oil spill. We have tried

• absorbing, 
• dispersing 
• skimming 

This has involved getting very messy. We have also looked at the scientific experiment process - posing a question, hypothesising, going through the method, making observations, looking at the results and drawing conclusions.

We have also discussed the importance of conducting a fair test.

Keep Te Puna Tidy

We had a short walk down Te Puna Road towards Maramatanga Park and discovered so much rubbish some of our bags broke as they couldn't hold it all. The children were horrified by what they found - bottles, paper, straws, tin, even a wallet.

Litterless lunches

We have been investigating the effect of pollution in the ocean.
We have collected rubbish in our playground and realised much of it comes out of lunchboxes. Some of this rubbish ends up in drains or is blown away by all the wind we have been having lately.
We thought we could start with limiting the wrappings that we use in our lunches.
We have set a challenge to have litter free lunches. (I understand that this can be difficult at times but we are aiming to minimise our rubbish)
Here are some examples.

I also showed the children some cool litterless lunches that had been made into pieces of art. Holly decided to try some lunch art of her own

Click on the picture below to visit the websites we looked at as inspiration.

Guinea Pig Visit

Harriet bought along her new baby guinea pigs. They are hiding under the mother at the moment.
We learnt that it is really important to always provide water and food for our pets.
Being a responsible owner means taking care of them lovingly which even includes doing unpleasant jobs like making sure their cages are clean.

Rubbish Walk

We are learning about the importance of keeping Te Moana clean. it starts with our immediate environment. If we keep our school clean of rubbish then it won't be carried down the drains or by the wind down to Te Puna Beach.

Whakatauki

When Room 6 were with Miss Shilling they discussed the meanings of some Whakatauki - Maori proverbs, which they illustrated for our class.

Te Reo Maori

We have been learning how to speak simple sentences in the present tense - I am .....

Kei te oma a Tawhiao

Kei te peke a Kaydn

Kei te oma a Holly

Kei te moe a Amber

Waiata With Matua Loius

Matua Louis visited our class to hear our wonderful singing. He taught us 2 new waiata.
Every Thursday we will be joining with his class to learn even more new waiata.

Te Moana - no not the movie

Didn't we do well!!!!

I was so proud of my class - they performed so brilliantly during the production.
Thank you so much for all the parent help with props and costumes.
I thought our set looked amazing and we certainly used all of the stage and had a variety in our performance - acting, singing and dancing.

Let Me Introduce Myself

We have been learning how to introduce ourselves.

To do this we have been

• making eye contact
• shaking hands firmly
• saying 'Hello' my name is..... and adding a little comment - I'm from Room 6, or It's nice to meet you.

 

Term 3 Contract

The children are busy organising their own timetables this term. They have a set number of tasks to complete and a blank timetable in which to do them. They do have to see me at set times for Reading and Maths but can manage their other activities themselves. This is a great chance for children to practice independence and time management skills.
Here they are with their timetables in front of them. Some children are doing poem reciting, handwriting, spelling learning, writing tasks.

Miss Walpole - Guest teacher for the morning

Miss Walpole is leading the class this morning. She earned this privilege as she displays great diligence in class. Here she is leading the class for a spelling activity. She then went on to review the criteria for instruction writing. I am impressed by her behaviour management - look at the focussed students.

Te Reo Maori

We have been learning some more Maori phrases.
Do you know what the children are saying?

Boat Building Challenge

Today we completed a boat building challenge.

We had to build a boat that could be used on a voyage.
It needed to:-
float for 2 minutes
hold 10 100 blocks
have a space for storage and shelter
be no larger than an A3 piece of paper.

There was a lot of cooperating, revising, problem solving, testing, designing, compromise and creativity taking place in our room.

Floating and Sinking Experiments

How's this for exciting learning?

It's great when kids jump for joy discovering new things.
We have been predicting which items will float and sink. Harriet was jumping for joy every time her prediction came true.

Incredible writers

We are just sitting down to write a story about an adventure on a vaka. I am creating a word bank for their writing. I asked for some words that they might need. This is what they suggested

adventurous
lightning
tsunami
courageous
overboard

I am so impressed with how more complex their vocab has become. they want their writing to be specific.
At the beginning of the year the suggestions would have been
water
sea
boat

What a great class.

Tawhiao's Pepeha

Tawhiao brought in his Pepeha to show the class. He was very proud of his whanau and it created great discussion about where we are from. What an awesome way to present it too.

Maori

Here we are practicing some of our new sentences about our whanau.
We stand in two lines - introduce ourselves to our opposite partner and when the time is up one line moves a step down the line to a new partner. I explained it is like speed dating where we get to know a little bit about each other (not that I have done it!!!)
Our sentences

Ko wai koe?    Ko (name) ahau
No hea koe?  No (place) ahau
Ko (name) toku mama
Ko (name) toku papa
Ko (name) toku kuia
Ko (name) toku koro.

Music

Here we are on the glockenspiels and ukelele playing music from The Wizard of Oz.
I am impressed with our ability to keep time.

Kahoot

We have discovered a great quiz game to play to review our learning.
You could probably hear our screams of excitement from your house.
The children had to answer questions on their own devices and they were timed and the top scores were displayed on screen. Such competition.

Kei te pehea koe?

Kei te hiamoe ahau

Kensuke's Kingdom

Jacob has created a google drawing of some of the significant places and items involved in the Kensuke's Kingdom - the story I am reading daily to the class. He has worked so steadily on this in class and also at home.

Te Moana Disco

Wow what a happy looking bunch who came out to support the school last Friday.

Cross Country Training

We have started our cross country training and are well on the way to building our fitness. It's great to see the kids challenging themselves to run further each day.