Leading the Learning with Room 2

This afternoon we became the teachers....

Our task was to use the tech skills we have been learning during term 1 and teach our buddy class room 2. We have become a GAFE (Google Apps for Education) school in our syndicate and Miss Maguire has been teaching us how to use google in our daily classroom programme. Through this we have extended our learning from the class to outside the class.

Our job today was to teach room 2 using the steps we went through with Miss Maguire. Our first session saw us buddy up with a student from room 2, give them their school domain email address, show them how to use it and send emails from their gmail to Mr Atkins (their teacher), then gave them a quick tour around Google Drive.

We then shared with room 2 some of the things that we really like about using digital technology in our classroom...
- it is setting us up for success at high school
- we can do our learning at home
- we even do our learning when sick at home
- it is a fun way to learn
- we get to share with a real audience.

We gave room 2 homework for tonight, they have to go home and show their parents how to log into their emails to help them practise ready for tomorrow.

Tomorrow our next step is to get them writing a reflection using Google Doc's then sharing it with Mr Atkins.

Fair Testing

With Mr Maple today we are looking at what fair testing.

We started by having 3 kids, 3 cars and 3 balloons of no specific size. Eve, Suz and JackE blew up their balloons and let them go....
Some went further than others....why was this so? Could we accurately record what happened and why it happened.

We then talked about how we can...it was decided that some guidelines had to be decided upon.

So, what is fair testing? Fair testing is where we do a range of tests that stay constant, or as close as possible.

To be able to test something we have to make sure everything stays the same. An example would be...where we start a race, what balloons are used.

You need to come up with a standard way of doing the tests. Example: the surface being used, the same type of balloons, starting line etc.

For it to be fair and as close to accurate, it must be done at least 3 times using the same conditions each time. Then the average is recorded.

Commemoration Liturgy @ St Joseph's

This afternoon we had our whole school ANZAC Liturgy / Commemoration Service to honour those service men and women who

Students from Room 1 and 2 led the proceedings, while six students from Room 5 brought up items as they were called out to be placed with the candle. These items were all symbols of our brave soldiers who lost their lives in WW1.

We then all said the Ode together, sang the National Anthem, went outside for the Last post which was played by Aileen Lawrie.

The Ugly Shakespeare Company

We are currently at Trudent High School watching a humorous  take of the story Hamelet.

ANZAC writing experience

Today was the day to step into the shoes of a soldier. We did a writing task that included simulation of a trench, listening to diary entries from soldiers, and sounds of war as motivation playing in the background to help set the mood.


The scene was set...

• we had been stuck in our trenches for at least 48hrs straight, 
• the sound of gun fire and raining shrapnel was all around us,
• at least one of our mates (comrades) had been shot beside us, and
• another of our comrades had been killed.

After a lot of talking, sharing ideas and brainstorming the kinds of descriptive language we might use we were ready to produce a piece of writing from the trenches.

      

(Keep an eye on our personal blogs over the next couple of weeks to read the results. )

Life in the Trenches by Stefan

In the trenches by Jean

Tama Tu

This afternoon we watched a remake of the Maori Battalion in Italy WW2. This video showed that although war is a serious and depressing thing to be part of, there can be a humerus side to it too. It is moments like these that show that our soldiers were human and needed that release when times allowed.

Here is the video...

The ANZAC's

It is our first week back for the term and we are already full steam ahead.

This week is the lead up to a very important time of the year for us, as New Zealanders as we prepare for the 100th year commemoration of our ANZAC's. As part of our learning we have been investigating the history of the ANZAC's, how they came about, about their part in WW1 and other aspects of our service men and woman. (Keep an eye out over the next few weeks as we start publishing our learning on our individual blogs)

During our learning we have been watching videos, analysing photographs, reading diary entries and reading articles online to help us get a sense of what it might have been like to be a soldier.

  

We have been comparing photographs of the trenches in Belgium, France and Gallipoli to get a sense of the conditions our ANZAC's fought in.



We have made a commemoration wall display for the fallen soldiers, we added the names of the relatives that we have who served in WW1 and those who died during this war. We made our own poppies and attached them to our crosses as a sign of respect.

We have also setup a small table with some artefacts that include our NZ flag, a wooden cross, a picture of a Lemon Squeezer, a bugle (thanks to Miss Elrick) and an empty casing from ammunition.

OZ / NZ Blogging

Miss Maguire has introduced us to our OZ/NZ blogging classes. We were able to go and have a look around at what they have been up to. Some of the things we have read or seen are...

There is evidence of fun activities such as, surfing, dissecting animals-they were looking at the different body parts, and interesting things like how much air the lungs can hold etc, Jerry the Teddy went to Dubai on holiday, one of the classes really like spelling, one school had friendship posts including a video on friendship soup, how they celebrated special occasions like Chinese New Year,  and one class shared 'Harmonies they wrote, story writing. Like us they are using websites to enhance their learning.

 

We are looking forward to following these classes and being able to share learning experiences and ideas with them.

Energy Options

Energy Options with Mr Maple began today. Mr Maple will be in school for the next 6 weeks.

We will looking at different types of energy, how it is made and used.

Today's session was about looking at what we already know.

We are going to make a simple model car to show how potential energy becomes kinetic in our next session.

Here are some photos of us making our models and testing them to see how far they went.

  

Before we trialled our rubber band cars we had to make predictions on what we thought would happen and then reflect on what actually happened once we tested them. Our next session we will be looking at fair testing.

OZ/NZ Blogging

Writing Challenge for term 2. Starting on the 4th of May we are participating in an OZ / NZ blogging challenge,where each week / day we will be reading blog posts from 3 other blogs and commenting on their writing / learning / posts. Check out the details below...

Whanau Art

During this term we have been working on identifying who we are, what makes us who we are and how our families influence who we are. One of the followup art activities we have done is our Whanau Art. 

The objective was to try using a dying technique that gave us natural texture and variances in appearance, this was done by using dry brush techniques. 

Our pictures has certain elements, which included...family / whanau representation, an element of our heritage if we were from another country, elements of maori design, and simple lines.

These are photo's of us in action...