2017 has BEGUN

               

A screenshot of the eggs close up.
They look like a raspberry! Tucked in under the light. 

    ROOM 9 is known as the HAURAKI group.

We had only two days in class in our first week and were so busy getting to know each other, the new class environment and pets, and our new chromebooks that no pictures got taken!  Except..... some ideas on looking after our chromebooks (important) and the new eggs that the giant water snails we have had laid behind the light in our tank, and ON the light. They are bright pink! We will be watching with interest to see if they hatch.
The snails are fascinating to watch on the glass.

Water snails on the glass. 

The snail and goldfish tank.

The second lot of eggs they have laid this week!! 

Getting to use our chromebooks is very exciting for those new to it, and for those who haven't had them over the holidays. We will be doing more work on learning how we can look after them at all times.
SO FAR we know .....
...to leave it in a safe place so no one can stand or sit on it
...to make sure it is not near the edge of a surface so no one can knock it off the table or bench
...to walk with the screen closed and
...to use two hands when carrying it
...to close the lid carefully and not slam it
...to work on a hard surface so it doesn't overheat
...to not use it when we are eating of drinking
😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁

We Have Been BUSY!!

OH DEAR!! We have not put anything up on our class blog page for nearly a month! Room 9 has spent their time and energy on getting work completed to put on their personal blogs. They have completed all sorts of great things. Once the testing was all over in Week 6 we reflected on our Production, then got cracking on making toys, researching a toy to create a documentary, writing a script for our documentary, organising our end of year events and items for the final assembly. Below is a collection of work from some of the students.
We wrote reflections on the Production we were all involved in.
Here is Izzy's.........
 

 Here is Kobe's..........
 
All the class completed a reflection using deBono's Thinking Hats. Check them out too.

This is Charlotte's Slideshow Book Review on a book she read.

Hilary's Slideshow Book Review on a book she read.

All the class completed a Book Review on a novel they read. Check them out too.


We have looked at what makes a great documentary. Joyce's work on that....
And this is Travis's work...

Finally for now a couple of examples of some compare and contrast work we did in Inquiry with toys old and new.
Antonio looked at the similarities and differences between pull along caterpillars. 
Kayci chose the trucks to compare...

Overall Room 9 have become very adept at using their chromebooks to produce all sorts of work. They are teaching me new skills and tricks every day!
They have also been making Cybersmart Games with James. They will upload their games to their blogs next week.

Stars in the Making!!

Last week Waikowhai Primary School put on the Production Alice in Wonderland. There were 74 students in the senior syndicate who made up the main cast, backstage, sound and lighting, dance crew and a musician group. As well as that all the other classes in the school were involved in a class dance that were woven into the story throughout the event. It was a heap of fun and a huge amount of effort!! Here are some of the Room 9 students who were in the main cast. More pictures and reflections to follow. 

Diversity is positive and important.

The students in the Waikowhai Primary School Senior Syndicate come from many many different places around the world.  Diversity is important. In Room 9 we have several students that were born overseas. Many more had parents born overseas. We are working on why people shift away from the
country they were born in. All the students have added this map and the answers to these questions on their personal blogs.

We had a look at how this video makes us feel. It is about racism. It would be interesting to see what 10 year olds say about racism in New Zealand.

https://vimeo.com/182020903

Comparing toys

Caroline

When we were at MOTAT we went into a learning space with an Educator. They had many different tables of toys that could be looked at, played with, learnt about and compared. The table that had toys to compare, had 6 different pairs of toys. One was much older than the other.

Isabelle

Back in class we had to compare and contrast some of the toys from the compare and contrast table. Caroline, Isabelle and Kayci had some great ideas about how the two toys were the same and different.

Then they wrote a statement about what they had found out.

Kayci

MOTAT in Week 1

The slideshow has all the syndicate kids in it.

The term is well underway already with so much to do!! We have our whole school production of Alice in Wonderland coming up next week. There will be 4 showings for the public plus moving everything we need to the Intermediate down the road.  Of course there is testing happening throughout these first few weeks. Back in Week 1 we had a trip to MOTAT to check out the De Vinci exhibition and old toys in particular, and all the other displays in general. We went with the other classes in our syndicate and mixed up all the groups between the 3 classes.   We wrote recounts about our experiences. Check out all our individual blogs to hear about out day.

"The exhibition was so awesome also did you know Leonardo Da Vinci was also the start of I think like cars and all of the other cool modern stuff we have today!  He made a automatic hammer and lots of stuff with that you have to spin to work there really awesome plus there was a video talking about Da Vinci but I didn’t look at it. After the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition. We went to  play with toys with the instructors! I would say this was my favourite  by far! We played with the Jacobs ladder and it was fun." Benson

"Time was up and we moved to the next thing to do on our list. The Tram! My class, class 3 gathered up so that we could together as a group to the tram station. We waited for a bit on the bench at the station. After a few minutes the tram finally came. We had to wait for the other people to get off first before we could get on. We all hopped onto the tram and got seated comfortably. The tram started and the whole of the duration was bumpy/wobbly but super fun. At halfway the driver stopped and told us about the Melbourne, Sydney, England, Wellington trams etc. The driver then switched sides of the tram to drive back where we came from. Unfortunately we had to get off the tram because time was up. My favourite part of the tram ride was when the team crossed the road. I know it isn’t that interesting but it super cool to watch." Joyce

Our Birth Places.

My Maps: Looking at where we are born - in pink and where our parents are born - in blue. We haven't finished all the parents yet but can add information to My Maps and it will update this map. One of the students thought it would be interesting to add grandparents in a different colour too!! That could mean many markers on our map.
We learnt how to use My Maps in Cybersmart today.  At the moment this map shows where all the students in the class are born. 18 of our 26 class members were born in Auckland. So we are adding where our parents were born as well to show from how far away we have all travelled to be in New Zealand. My Maps will be a great tool for Inquiry investigations.

Feeding Gratitude

As an example for the students of Room 9 to understand the concept of Installation Art I came up with my own idea for an installation piece, that was relevant to school life, and then enlisted their help with the organisation of it.
We created a piece of Installation in our student kitchen area that looked at the packaging and rubbish that was created by only
6 weeks of food that was given to the school through different schemes that was then free to the students. We looked at how much of it there is and if we valued it and were grateful for what it offered us and our families. We called it Feeding Gratitude. 


We stacked boxes, collected wrappers to put into buckets, bundled up lunch bags and fruit bags, washed out yoghurt and fruit pots, arranging it all in the area that was most relevant to the concept or idea, of the work. Then we counted and estimated the quantities of each item that is given to the school and created signs that could be hung from the ceiling. Our piece was ready for the school Art Festival and could be viewed along with all the students work.




At Waikowhai students can attend Breakfast Club. They also have access to food from a Kai Basket in the classroom and a daily fruit box. At lunchtime there are some lunches available for those who have none.  The main companies or organisations that provide these items are.......

Installation Artworks

 The Art Festival on Tuesday night was very successful. We used the previous Thinglink to let visitors know where our Installation Art pieces were and what they were about.  Below is a slideshow of pictures of the 13 pieces. As well as these works we also all had an Abstract Artwork in the festival as well. Our abstract work will be posted on our individual blogs this week.

                 

The students worked extremely hard on their pieces over many days. They developed excellent ideas about issues that are important to them; things in life they hate to see or are passionate about. I am very proud of the work they have produced.

Installation Thinkpieces

This term Room 9 have been working on installation art as part of our contribution to the bi-annual Art fair.  We have created pieces of installation art that are situated in and around teh senior school block.  Below you will see an interactive map created using thinglink that shows the location and explanation of these pieces of art.  We look forward to updating you with more photos of the work following the opening of the art festival.

Hope to see you here.

Fab Blog? Good Blog? OK Blog? Bad Blog?

Last week, with James our Cybersmart teacher, we looked at all the components that make a good blog comment; a comment that others will want to read again, consider and respond to. We were working on our Learn Create Share cycle in the session. We have learnt about blogging a few times since creating our own blogs, and so we could share ideas on the padlet below. The whole class created this padlet together. 



Then we looked at some comment examples and checked them against what we thought makes a good comment, and against a rubric for great commenting. Next it was time to write some good comments using the learning we had just completed. Before posting them, (or sharing) we checked each others work. 
We all work at different paces, so some of us can whiz through the three parts of the Learn Create Share Cycle. Others of us are challenged to fit all three parts of the cycle into the time we have, we have to stay focused and that's more learning too! 
BUT we all got great comments posted AND we shared our learning through a screenshot of our work and an explanation of what we did,  for our own individual bogs. 
You can check them out on the side panel of our class blog. 

Created with Padlet

RESPECT

At our school,  our core VALUE is …. RESPECT.

It comes with a

RESPECT CODE.

Four important areas

that we all need to

make sure we have

respect in.

This code tells us the best way of behaving all the time, with everyone that belongs to this school or visits
this school.

In Room 9 we have spent a lot of time looking at our goals for learning, behaving and using our chromebooks.

We were asked to think about the areas in the Respect Code that we needed to work on and write ourselves a Respect Goal to work on and to share at our assembly.

These were our ideas...

To make the most of our time at school it is important that we look after each other, work together and acknowledge our differences. 

Ms Southwell Leaves

Students arriving to school late, with an 'interesting' range of excuses,
that they delivered to Travis who played Ms Southwell. 

When told that our gorgeous receptionist was leaving our school after ten years of service, one student piped up "Wow! That's longer than I have been alive!"

Which put the time and effort Ms Southwell had put into our school into very clear perspective for the whole class.  We were given the task of organising her final farewell assembly, and the students were determined to give her the best of send offs.
Room 9 pulled together an amazing performance of small skits that highlighted some of the jobs and activities that Ms Southwell performed in her daily routine. Tasks that touched the lives of every student and adult in the school.

Ms Southwell, well loved. 

Singing Ms Southwell up to the front.

Max and Caroline giving her flowers. 

       

Mrs Petersen showing off the special book. 

Then she was asked to come and sit on a special chair on the stage where the school gave her flowers and a specially made book of many messages of love and care. After speeches the whole school sang her two very special songs, before heading home for the weekend.

We wish her well in her new job in the city and look forward to her visiting us.

A final farewell song and a salute to her dreams of a different future. 

Practise at Abstract Art

In Week Seven Waikowhai School will hold an Art Show. We are completing two art pieces for it. One will be an Abstract Artwork created from several different media on a large rectangular panel. We have spent several sessions playing with different shapes and media to understand what abstract art is. Some ideas we had around what Abstract Art is .... art that looks at how colour and shapes go together. It does NOT depict a person, place or thing. Instead it is about feelings and patterns and forms that make you WONDER what the artist is thinking about. Sometimes it might have clues to help you.  It can be painting or sculpture with any material or media.  
We have completed 8 different test pieces so far, to prepare for a final piece of artwork. We did them quite fast, with music and examples flicking through on a slideshow. The improvement in our quality of work as we have gone through the process is often really noticeable. We did 3 pieces in pastel, 2 pieces in crayon and dye, 1 in a mix of both and masking tape, 2 pieces in paint.
Below is a padlet of some of our work. We will put posts up on our individual blogs soon.

Created with Padlet

Music Knowledge

Room 9 has Music this term. The focus is on percussion after seeing the Strike performance last term. We will look at percussion that uses the human body, instruments and found objects. We will create and use sound cards to use when we put music to narrated story. A quick 3 minute challenge to get as many words we know about music into a shared padlet is a great way to use padlet, we find.

Created with Padlet