Netball Tag

In P.E we have been focusing on chest passing and catching correctly. We went over the important steps we need to remember like; making a w with our fingers, following through with the ball and cushioning the ball when catching it. To practice these skills we played a new game, Netball Tag. We had lots of fun.

Andy Warhol Art

Last week we finished creating our Andy Warhol Artworks. I think they turned out fabulously!

Derek Has Arrived

At the start of this week we were all very excited. Derek the Koala arrived! He is from Australia and will be spending the term with us. While he is coming to school with us, Kingi is going to school in Australia. We hope he is having a good time. We have really enjoyed showing Derek around and can't wait to take him home and give him lots of adventures.

Movies

On Friday the whole senior school went to the movies. We watched a documentary called first position. Below is the trailer for the movie. What did you think of it? Did you learn anything?

Breaking Out Our Moves

Today for our inquiry we had a go at dancing to help us further understand what dance is. Mrs Larsen played different styles of music that Kahu had selected for us. We then danced to them they way we thought we should. Some of us listened really carefully to the music and danced to the beat etc. We all had lots of fun.Mrs Larsen particularly enjoyed watching their ballet moves. So do you think we can make it as dancers?

Habit of Mind

Yesterday we talked some more about the Habit of Mind we have been focusing on. We ran around the school to find the Gathering Data Through All senses poster to find out who was on it. It was Evermore. A lot of us didn't know who Evermore was so we looked them up on You Tube. We discovered they were a band so we watched one of their music videos.

Click here to watch the music video on You Tube

We discussed why they would be good at gathering data through all senses. Joshua H summed it up well, "To be able to write their songs they have to experience things for themselves, see things, feels things, hear things etc. Evermore can use those experiences to write their songs."

After watching the video clip we discussed the five senses and all the things that came to our mind when watching the video. We created a Wordle with all of our words.

A New Student

Hi my name is Anton. I am new to Room 15. I like to go for a bike rides. I like to go to my uncle and my auties house and play with my cousin and my bother. We take turns on my bike and we have races sometimes. We go down and up the street. I came 2 in the race. I like racing because it makes me laugh and I like to race.

Kingi's Holiday - Even More!

More photo's from Kingi. He is one lucky lion!

Procedure

Yesterday we wrote a procedure as a class about how to make a Hacky Sack. Here it is.

How to make a Hacky Sack

What you need:

3 balloons

A handful of rice

Scissors

A bottle (like a drink bottle)

Steps:

1. Gather the things you need.

2. Collect your handful of rice and tip it into your bottle. Note: make sure it’s over something so it doesn’t spill everywhere.

3. Stretch 1 of your balloons over the top of the bottle. Note: Be careful so it doesn’t rip and make sure it is pulled down over the whole top.

4. Tip your bottle upside-down and shake, after three shakes, run your index finger and thumb down the neck of the balloon to push all the rice in to fill the balloon. While you are shaking the bottle make sure that the hand that is holding the bottle is also holding the balloon.

5. Once the balloon has been filled with the rice carefully take the balloon off the bottle, holding the neck so the rice doesn’t spill.

6. Carefully cut the balloon about 2 thirds of the way down the neck so the rice doesn’t spill.

7. Grab the other 2 balloons and cut them at bottom of the neck.

8. Take one of the balloons, stretch it open and carefully put it over the balloon with rice in it.

9. Repeat step 8 with the 3^rd balloon.

You have now made a Hacky Sack. Enjoy!

BP Technology Challenge

Today 9 lucky people were able to take part in the BP Technology Challenge. They were split into 3 groups of 3. One person in each team had 1 minute to collect whatever they could around the class to create the tallest tower. The other members of the team just had to watch, they weren't allowed to help in any way. After that the teams were given 6 minutes to build the tallest free standing tower. Some were successful. Some not so much. Well done Zhyon, Cylis and VJ for having the winning tower.

Independent Reading

Today we started to include independent reading in our reading rotation. I was surprised to see the positions some boys like to read in.

Kingi's Holiday So Far

Well this morning I got an email from Kingi. He sent me some photos of his holiday so far. I think he is having lots of fun.

King of the Den

Student Blogging Challenge

Our 10 Favourite website we use in class

Khan Academy is a great website where we learn new maths skills. We can watch videos which help us learn the new skill. The website tracks our progress and the skills we have learnt. We use Khan Academy every day. We enjoy going on and learning new maths skills.

Spelling City is a fun website we use to learn our spelling words. Our teacher loads up our spelling words so we can play games, take tests, all sorts.

Weeworld. We enjoyed using weeworld to create a weeme. We used this website to make our avatars for our blogs. We had lots of fun adding all the different features.

Build your wildself is a fun place where you can create your own creature. Your wild self can have all sorts of different features.

Glogster is where you can create a poster online. You can include links to other websites and you tube clips. Its fun making and interactive posters with different pictures and backgrounds.

Kerpoof is a fun website where you can create pictures, movies card etc. We have used this website mainly to create pictures. It is fun creating pictures that motivate us to write some fantastic stories.

Wordle is a type of word cloud. You write a whole lot of words about something then click go. If you ant some words bigger you just write the word more than once. You are able to choose all sorts of different colours, layout and font. We use Wordles for lots of different things in class.

Bubbleus is a good website where you can create a brainstorm online. We use this website to help us plan our stories and whenever we want to share our ideas. https://bubbl.us/

Prezi. We love using prezi to create an online presentation. You can insert lots of different slides like in powerpoint. You have can have images and you tube clips too.

Minecraft. When we are lucky we get to play minecraft. We get to play Minecraft when we have finished all of our work. Minecraft is good because it teaches us problem solving skills, to be creative and its fun too.

Kingi's Holiday

Well on Wednesday Kingi set sail. He decided he wasn't ready to come back to school so he has taken an extra long holiday. At the moment he is on a really big cruise ship heading towards Vila, Vanuatu. Lucky him!

Kingi in his room

View from the top deck

BP Technology Challenge

Today we had our first BP Technology Challenge. BP Technology Challenges give us an opportunity to further develop and use our problem solving skills in groups or independently. Today was an independent challenge. We were given an A4 piece of paper. We had 5 minutes to create a paper plane that we thought would fly the furthest. After we made our plans we were given a chance to practice flying them before we challenged each other. We had a flew planes which crashed and burned, some did fancy twirls but it was TePaerangi's whose took the lead followed closely by Tangata. Well done TePaerangi. Our first challenge winner!

Procedures

Today we started our new writing topic, procedures. Mrs Larsen taught us what a procedure is, why we write procedures and how to structure a procedure. After learning a little bit about procedures we read one 'How to make a paper cup'. We identified the different parts, the goal, materials needed and the steps. Lastly we had some fun following the procedure and made the paper cup. We were all surprised they actually worked. We had fun drinking out of our cups.

We found it easy to follow the procedure because the instructions were written clearly and there were pictures to show what we had to do. We all really enjoyed learning about procedures.

Welcome Back - Term Two

Wow, we have a busy term ahead. Check out the Wordle below to see some of the things we will be getting up to.

Wheels Relay

On Thursday we had a Wheels Relay in the afternoon. We completed in houses. Each house was split into 4 teams. We had sack races, soccer dribbling, skipping and a few more. It was great to see everyone having fun and working together.

Congratulations Kowhai and Puriri who took out first equal.