Animal Classification

Last Thursday and Friday we worked on investigating words that are part of the Scientific Classification of animals. Words like Vertebrates, Invertebrates, Mammals, Birds, Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Crustaceans, Arachnids and Insects. This was part of our Inquiry this year which is Curiosity.



We were put into groups and given one chromebook per group. Then we were given four minutes to find information about one of the words, to write onto a large piece of paper. When four minutes were up we shifted to the next piece of paper and word in a bus stop activity. Each time we needed to find new information if we could, to add to the page. We shifted nine times so we looked at all ten words!  There were two rotations of these groups happening in our syndicate at the same time and we found out heaps of information.

The following day we were matched up with the other group that started at the word we started with and told we had to choose the most important pieces of information that described this animal group and present it to an audience in some way. We had about 20-25 minutes over 2 days to come up with something fun. Here are our video clips of what we presented.

Sunken Forest by Des Hunt

Hauraki is reading Sunken Forest as a class novel and LOVING IT. Nothing better than giant eels and spooky trees!
We are only up to Chapter 9 but really engrossed in the story and looking forward to finding out what happens. Yesterday we created personal responses in groups of three, after just 3 chapters so we could discuss how we felt about the story. We will probably do this at the end of the book to see how our thinking has changed.



We looked at these six categories.....

 

Check out some of the groups work.....

Lavinia, Abby, Shabeera                  Faith, Ayva, Manisha                 Bruno, Toby Alex    
      
      Des Hunt is a New Zealand Author who uses adventure and suspense in his books a lot. they are always based in New Zealand with Kiwi kids and real environmental and social issues. 

We have a task board of activities that we will complete. As each item is finished we will attached it to a slide on our slideshows and blog them when we have finished.


If you wanted to check out the Synopsis of the book on Des Hunts Website the link is here.

Swimming

In this HOT HOT HOT weather we are thankful our school has a pool and a caretaker that keeps it super clean. Each week we have two lessons in our school pool and two opportunities to swim at lunchtime. Then 2 days a week for the first 5 weeks of term we also visit the local council pool for lessons in Water Safety as well as basic swimming skills.
We put together a movie of our first few times in the pools, but it is too large for our blog! :( Sad.
However here are some pictures of the awesome action happening.

 

 

 




Most of Hauraki love swimming and they nearly always bring their togs. They are really improving their diving  underwater swimming and general confidence in the water. Nearly all the class can swim 100m, which is 4 lengths of the Cameron Pool, nonstop. The others are well on the way and their skills have improved heaps in the last 4 weeks. Plus it is a heap of fun!!  

Check out these videos as well.




Cameron Pool is in the Mt Roskill area of Auckland and is run by the council through the YMCA Organisation.

Their Website is .......
https://www.ymcaauckland.org.nz/find-your-local/cameron-pool-leisure-centre/

Te Tiriti o Waitangi

Toby's Work 

In the month of February our Syndicate did lots of learning around The Treaty of Waitangi.
We read the books The Treehouse Treaty by .....
This is the House That Jack Built by Gavin Bishop and The Treaty House by .......

We also covered Te Tiriti o Waitangi by      from the School Journals, in group work and had questions to answer afterwards. Finally we competed in two Kahoots about The Treaty to see what we remembered. they were great fun and we did extremely well.
Zoe and Toby completed some great work and haven't yet got their own blog. Check out what they learnt.

Zoe's Work