This term in maths we have been looking at measurement. As part of this unit we looked into area and volume. We made our own planter boxes and measured the volume of these.
First the children designed what they needed to look like. There were some problems they needed to overcome, including taking into account the thickness of the wood when determining their measurements. Once these were seen they then moved onto marking the measurements on the wood. Mr Sutherland then cut the wood in the hard materials room.
After all this was done it was time to put the planter boxes together. We spent a couple of very loud sessions in the hard materials room hammering these into the desired shapes.
In the end children came up with a wide variety of shapes and sizes for their planter boxes.
It has been a while since I last updated this blog so apologies for that.
After long hard work last term we raised enough money for BBQ tables in our courtyard. Here they are with all the wonderful students that helped raise money for them. Congratulations you guys, you rock!
Today we had a visit from The Hits radio station. Lexxie won a competition and they came to our class and gave us a bunch of free stuff. Each student got a voucher for some frozen yoghurt, a pass to Funky Farm and a round of Par 2 Minigolf.
The class were able to ask a bunch of questions to find out more about their jobs and what they do.
Thank you very much The Hits.
Earlier this week we finished our Rube Goldberg Machines.
The class had a while lot of fun making them but more importantly they learned many of the skills that Changemakers exhibit. All the class had to show resilience because they needed to refine their designs many times to get them working properly. Some designs were extremely complex while others a bit more simple (but still complex) have a look at this video to see the successes.
With our reading this term one of our foci is on inference. With one of the groups we read a story called "Grandad's Blood pressure Pills" The title was kept hidden from the students though and they had to try to infer what was happening in the text from the clues they were given. The students in the group came up with a variety of different ideas all with valid answers based upon the clues in the short story.
Here are some answers
Short Story: Grandad’s Blood Pressure Pills.
Name
My inference
Clues that tell me this
Student 1
Mother is panicking
Hit someone, fire,
I think that the kid could have broken a bone (theirs or someone else’s)
I think the kid has eaten something that they're allergic to and they need to throw up to get it out
TITLE: Get it out?
She had small drops of sweat on her face, she’s running around madly, I can sense my mother's fear
They need to go somewhere fast, there rushing out of the house.
They went to the hospital
Take this pill it’ll make you sick.
Student 2
The mother is panicking
There's a fire
I think that he/she is sick or injured
I think he's allergic to something
Title: the weird hospital trip
Sense the mother's fear. She races around madly. Small drops of sweat build up on her forehead.
They need to get out as quick as possible.
There at the hospital. She picks him up
Take this pill and it will make you sick
Student 3
The mother is afraid
There’s a fire
I think that he or she is injured
He’s allergic to something
Title: Blowing up?
She got pink on her forehead and she had small sweat drops. Shes running around madly.
They need to get in the car and get out.
There at the hospital
It will make him sick
Student 4
The Mother is panicking
There’s a fire.
I think that he/she is injured
He or she is allergic to something.
Title:
She is running around madly. She has small drops of sweet. She has a pink forehead
They need to get out as fast as possible.
There at the hospital
Student 5
The Mother is panicking
There might be a fire
He might be injured
He might of ate something that he is allergic too
Title
She is running around madly. She has small drops of sweat on her pink face. He can sense the mother's fear.
She is trying to get him out of the house as fast as humanly possible.
He needs to go to the hospital quickly. He wants to throw up he needs to take a pill to make him sick to get him feeling better.
Late last term some of the extension maths children were helping out in our class learning about different fraction skills. The regular maths class got to choose which subject they wished to learn more about and the extension maths class each took 2 small groups teaching each group the same skill.
Here are some pictures of the work in action.
We have been developing an understanding of the changes a body goes through during puberty. The last session we discussed and role played some embarrassing situations and what you could do in these situations. Here are some pictures of the kids in action. They didn't want videos, too embarrassing.
Our class has been doing a lot of work on body systems lately. We decided to take a break from individual projects and create a model set of lungs to illustrate how the lungs work in our body. All the children created a set of pretend lungs and used a balloon on the bottom to act as the diaphragm which helped to show inhaling and exhaling.
For P.E. our class has been rotating around the teachers doing a variety of different sports, Netball, Soccer, Basketball and Rugby. Here they are learning passing and catching with rugby.
We have started to learn about the body and over the past few days we have been doing some whole class learning about a part of the body chosen by the class. The class decided to look at hair (maybe they are trying to tell me something). The first part of our learning looked at developing questions and sharing our prior knowledge. "Hair" are a couple of padlets that we used to do this as a class.
A lot of the children had similar questions so we deleted duplicates so it was easier to focus on what we wanted to know.
And here is the video that was shown to the class. The students took notes about this video and answered the majority of the questions they had developed first.
On Monday I introduced the topic of transformation to the class. We did a super-quick, simple exercise with paint to start our understanding of reflection. We will be looking into this in a lot more detail as the next few weeks progress.
Over the last couple of weeks we have been focusing on ANZAC day and some of the things the ANZACs had to endure during their time at Gallipoli.
Today a group of boys spent some of their lunch time making hard tack. Basically just wheat flour and water mixed to a hard dough and then baked for an hour. Here are some pictures of them at work
Over the last couple of weeks the class had to create a static image or collage about ANZAC day. Ere are a few examples of what the class produced. As you will see the class goes above and beyond my expectations. Well done room 12B.
This week is kotahitanga week. One of the things we have been learning is how to conduct a powhiri in the correct way. Here are some photos of our class at the powhiri. Check out the students individual blogs for more information about the powhiri.
For homeowrk last week, Sheppard classes had to see what it was like to live in a trench in WWI. The class really did an amazing job on this and didn't hold back on their work.
Here are a few examples of the work the completed.
Lexxie's video and word cloud
Henny in a very old looking photo in her trench.
Tess with a time-lapse trench build.
Aimee's slide about the trench
Sophia's trench log:
Noon- It is the 17th March, St Patrick’s day. Back in Ireland we would be celebrating, but oh no not here. The mood is very serious as we might get found out by the enemies. With only “Book” to keep me company and pen and paper it quite boring… I have decided to draw for a bit.
Stomp, stomp, stomp Oh no that sounds like the enemy I have to hide. Stomp, stomp… “Sophia?”
“This is Homework” I answered as the enemy surveyed the scene.
“OK” The enemy retreated and finally I could sit up properly.
Mid afternoon- An hour has passed and I am sitting here with my friend open on page 56, it is reading to me (his name is “Book”.)
Early evening- In the last 15 minutes the enemy approached again but again he didn’t see me in my hidden trench, luckily. I have started writing a card* to my family back home, I hope I will get a chance to post it.
Just ate dinner- Phew only 15 more days (or at least that it is what the General said) it is rather cramped and warm I am not sure if I can stand it much longer.
Sometime when I am dying of boredom- I have got pins and needles and my head hurts (literally).
The war has finished. I can now retreat from the trench. The Nazi’s have come to surrender, this is even better than Christmas (that is probably because it is nearly christmas/ easter).
Many other videos, slides and photos were shared with the class and they showed a huge amount of effort and thought about what it would be like to be in a WWI trench. Thanks Room 12b for such excellent work.
Last week the class had the task of creating a comicstrip about our school values, Resilience, Engagement, Accountability, Courtesy and Honesty.
There were some absolutely great examples but I can't show all the brilliance here.
Here is one from Stella showing COURTESY.
Our main focus for writing this term is planning. Our class will be learning a variety of planning styles so they can choose the one that suits them best when it comes to writing.
Yesterday we discussed burgers and the class jotted down some ideas on a piece of paper in groups. They came up with loads of different ingredients and opinions about burgers.
We drew a picture of the burger on the board (someone even wanted a whole chicken in there).
The reason for focusing on burgers is that I was introducing them to a burger format. The top bun being the introduction, the middle being the main part of the writing (The meat of the text so to speak) and the bottom bun being the conclusion.
Today we started constructing our burger planning in groups. Then we will begin to craft our writing.
The class all worked today on a padlet and linked in some videos of how to keep safe on the internet and why we need to keep safe on the internet. Here it is:
Today in class we looked at some thinkers keys. The students had to think about our five school values; Resilience, Engagement, Accountability, Courtesy and Honesty.
Some children were role playing themselves in a canteen line while someone pushed in. They had to show what you should AND shouldn't do. Some were quite funny. Other students were developing a recipe for a good student. There were ten tasks in total.
