Life Ed links

Www.knzb.org.nz

Www.doc.govt.nz/get-involved

Www.stompoutbullying.org

Www.redcross.org.nz

Week 5, Term 3

"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail." Edwin Land

This week is going to be more interesting than usual. We are going to learn about keeping ourselves safe online, and about the choices we make. Innovation, failure and creativity will be the vehicle for learning this week as we embark on a new frontier... tinkerEd (explain everything!). Hopefully through completing science fair projects, students will have a better grasp of the process of creating new information, gathering current information, and using the scientific method for testing a theory/prototype.

Life Ed

Our class will be visiting life ed for two sessions this week, followed by one more next week Tuesday. Hopefully we will meet the infamous giraffe and learn a bit about being a better person. It was a great first session in which our classroom was given some amazing feedback about the depth of our responses, reasoning and questions. Tu meke Ruma Rima! :)

Learning Teams

This week we have started to develop a better understanding of what a 'Good team member' is like. We are working on developing a better understanding of the attributes of a skilled games player (Social, Physical, and Thinking Skills). Our teams are not just for taking part in 'PE' or for learning about running competitions, but about developing transferable skills that will lead to success in the future. These are the blogs that our teams have set up so far. Thanks for the hard work and learning about leadership captains! You guys are doing a superb job, along with your teams!

Team Blogs: Blogs for News, updates and info.
Howling Huskies
Anonymous Badgers
Stars Out East
Turtle Eclipse
Wolf Pack
Pride of Five

Mindlab

On Monday the 31st August we hope to attend Mindlab for a second session. The hope is to make 'battle robots' and to hopefully learn about coding. The basic idea would be robotics. In class before this visit we will use some time to take apart different electronics to get an idea of design using components. Students will hopefully get a better idea of drawing/designing prototypes, and testing their effectiveness before going back to the design process.

Parents/caregivers... could you please complete the form below to grant permission, and hopefully offer support for transport there. We will leave GisInt at 12:10pm (for a 12:30pm start), and head back at 2:30pm. I would love to gamble with the weather... but would be safer to travel there and back using vehicles. Thank you in advance for your support. Sessions will be $2 per child.

Week 4, Term 3

Our learning theme in Ruma Rima, for students and the teacher, continues to revolve around developing an understanding of what a 'Growth Mindset' is. Our focus has been on overcoming challenge, and learning about what to do when you are stuck. Science fair, innovative ways of learning, and learning to work together has helped us to develop towards being open to new ways of learning.

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill

Science Fair

Managing time and using strategies/tools to complete tasks, has ensured that most students are comfortably completing their science projects that are due next week. Part of having a 'Growth Mindset' is about making sure that we keep on improving (unlike the timing of our classroom blog posts!) on skills, attitudes and effort. Below is an image (which is similar to the image from the 'Science Fair' booklets distributed last term) which serves as a reminder of the required parts/aspects of your science fair project that should be displayed on the board. A few students have forgotten about the journal, which is kind of like a blog or record of the experience. Don't panic if this has not been complete - will be something to improve on for next year.

PE Teams

Sport education is about using the 'sport team' model to learn about cooperation, collaboration, problem solving, and making connections with people. This term we are working to establish teams within the classroom who will work together to 'gain points' in a competition that mimics a sport tournament. We have six teams that are lead by 6 students voted in by the rest of the class as 'leaders' in our room. These captains, with Mr Fourie's guidance, selected teams that would be fair and effective in helping students to learn skills that will be useful for working as a team in the future. They have had their first challenge (maths challenge) to try working together. We will use the video below to reflect/improve on our team's strategies for working together.

Learning about Light

Light is an interesting subject of conversation. It's all around us, yet we have no idea of what it looks like! Jack's science fair project is about creating a hologram using a smart phone. As a class we will be building on Jack's idea of a smart phone hologram to see if we can come up with something even better... or at least bigger. We have used words to try to explain what happens when a hologram is created. Traditionally we would have written an 'Explanation' of the science concept... but we tried to use a creative solution to understand what is happening a bit better. Our creative solution is using the basics of the concept of a hologram to create a recount (story) about the experience from a 'Proto' perspective. Very complex language and concepts... but makes for interesting discussion and learning! Below are videos we have used to understand light and holograms better.

  

Week 3, Term 3

He waka eke noa means that we are all in the same waka. We all need to work together to get to the same place. This week our classroom worked on cooperation by contributing to the kanikani video, working together to complete infographics, writing stories together, constructing science fair projects together, and helped each other to learn about chess.

Te Reo Maori Week:

It was my intention to have our kanikani video of 'Maui and Mahuika' uploaded onto the blog by yesterday (along with this post) but it seems that time and technology is not on our side at the moment... mostly time ;)

Last week's experience learning about the legend of Maui and Mahuika was very challenging, exciting, and interesting. With the help and support of her Whanau, TK managed to create 9 parts of the legend that would be transformed into a video showcasing some of the amazing skills that were taught about using poi and mau rakau. Our main actor (Dan Lee) plays the role of Maui, who is an inquisitive and innovative young man.

We will hopefully share the video later this week.

Infographics:

This week has had an interesting start with students spending some time in other classes to help Mr Fourie have time to extend his Te Reo Maori knowledge. It was a very rewarding session for Mr Fourie. For the remainder of the week we will be focussing on developing our infographics to showcase data in a creative way - can't believe people get paid to do what our students are doing in class at the moment! Some very innovative designs and displays appearing that show the difference between our lives and that of others in the world.

Free Writing:

At the end of last week we started to use 'Free Writing' to construct amazing pieces of writing inspired by images/writing promtps. This week we will be using picture books as inspiration to make a storybook come alive in another story. We will focus on developing language and visual techniques to better craft, edit and display our work. Might be handy skills for creating science fair displays ;)

Science Fair:

DUE IN LESS THAN 2 WEEKS! Where has time gone! Most students are under way now, but will need parent support to meet targets and requirements. I am hoping to organise a trip to Lytton High to learn and extend knowledge around science. More details on this by next week.

Chess:

We used the vehicle of chess to develop logical thinking skills, that will add to our understanding of 'coding and programming' before our next mindlab session in Week 7 (31st August) where we will construct robots and learn about coding! Exciting times!