Room 5 at Raranga Matihiko

 On Monday Room 5 went to Waitangi to participate in our last Raranga Matihiko lesson. We learned about electrical circuits and how they are required to power electronics, we also got to make a simple circuit to help us understand this better. 

We then learned about microbits (little computers that are inside all electronics) and used makecode.com to program it. Our task was to first program the microbit to show our name, this was pretty easy and we completed it quickly. Two of us even managed to program it to sing happy birthday to Whaea Christina as it was her birthday. Our final task was to imagine the special taonga in the museum. We had to write a code that would make the mircobit send an alarm sound and write a warning, that would alert security if the item was picked up. There were some very interesting ideas for what we wanted the warning system to be!

Finally, we got to walk around the museum, looking at how a microbit can pick up temperature and light in the museum to protect the taonga. 

We had a really awesome day and learned heaps!  Massive thanks to Whaea Kerry and Whaea Christina for helping us through the world of block coding. We look forward to using the programs more in our learning.

Typing Practice

Last week I introduced the typing programme  https://www.typingclub.com/ to Room 5 to help them practice touch typing. The engagement in this task is phenomenal! They all worked hard to master the levels and challenged each other. One student got 100% and 76 words per minute! Outstanding!
I have put the challenge to my class that the top 3 typists at the end of the year will receive a lunch shout. They are pretty eager to win and are practising at any chance they get. Our teacher aides are also getting involved and pretty competitive haha.
The goal is to be able to type quickly, without much thought, so that ideas can flow onto the page more easily. I look forward to seeing how fast they get!

Kawakawa Balm Packaging

Last week we finally managed to finish our kawakawa balm packaging and we are pretty proud of the results! I am even very impressed with the creative way that the kids took photos of their finished product.
We made nets using Google drawings, and learnt how to make the shapes even sized using format options. We added pictures, natural colours and information to the boxes as you would expect to see when you buy a product.
When they were printed out, we glued them onto card, cut them out, folded along the lines, and put the box together. We learnt that it is not easy to fold card and we should have used cereal boxes which is a bit thinner. We also learnt the importance of cutting and folding tidily and ensuring our net was fully glued on. When we did this they boxes came out tidier.
We also made a label to go on the balm container. These had to be tiny, so we had to adjust the Google drawing size and view it at 100% to allow us to get the right size. We then increased the view to 200% to allow us to work on it. These were printed onto labels and stuck on.

Rongoa Maori

Room 5 and 6 have been looking at rongoa Maori this term. We have learnt how rongoa is about healing the mind, body and spirit through karakia, mirimiri, and plant based medicines. We learnt about the medicinal properties of some native plants and chose kawakawa to use in our oil and balm. 

It has been fun making kawakawa oil and kawakawa balm. Our next step is to create packaging and labels for our balm so watch this space.

 

Picture Books - Something Bad Happened

After lockdown we did a lot of work around our feelings and understanding what had happened over this crazy time. We listened to the story 'Something Bad Happened' by Dr Dawn Huebner. She gave us heaps of tips for how to cope when something big and bad happens in our world. We realised that this information was not the easiest for our younger students to access, so we made picture books to share with them and help them learn the strategies we learnt. Here are some of the amazing examples that Room 5 kids wrote. Hopefully we never need to use these strategies again, but if we do, we know what to do.

 

Collaborative Art

After lockdown we did some collaborative art in Room 5. After two fails (due to Whaea Dana's appalling printing skills) we finally managed to complete this lion and we love how it looks.

Whaea Dana found a picture on the internet and put it though an online image splitter to get 24 pieces. Each person in the class coloured in at least one piece of the lion using colouring pencils with felt outlines. Our only instruction was to use bright colours. A couple of keen students tidied up the final few and then we pieced it together.

We were blown away with how amazing and bright it looked when completed and were very proud of our efforts. What do you think?

Golden Child

Room 5 have just discovered the game 'Golden Child', thanks to Ana for sharing it with us.

In this game one team is trying to shoot hoops constantly, while the other team is running the perimeter of the court one at a time. If a hoop has been scored, the runner must sit down and wait for the last person in their team (the golden child) and the next person in the team begins their run.

When it is the golden child's turn, they sprint around the court tagging the frozen runners, who then get up to run to the finish before another hoop has been scored.

The winning team is the team who get the most people home.

It is a super fun game that involves a lot of positive reinforcement and resilience (shooting hoops under pressure is not easy!) as well as team work and skills in shooting, passing, catching, running, dodging.

Game of Awesome

Room 5 have been learning how to play 'The Game of Awesome' and we are having a lot of fun with it. Watching the game in action, I have witnessed debate, justification, laughter, crazy ideas, complete engagement, hilarious story telling, imaginative connections and so much more. This is definitely a game that is worth giving a go.

 

Kaiarahi 2020

Congratulations to our Kaiarahi for 2020 (especially to Noah, LJ and Dayton from Room 5 and 6).

I know all of these students are going to lead our kura with pride and be great role models of our school values. Well done, I am so very proud of you all!

Room 5 Domino Challenge

Room 5 have been doing a challenge each Friday. Our first one was a domino challenge, to create a domino pathway in small groups, that linked with other groups, to create the ultimate domino run. We got this idea from Room 12 who did a great job and made it look super easy. Turns out, it was not! However, we worked together, we completed our sections, and although there were some stops along the way, we managed to achieve our task with creativity and problem solving.
We did this over 2 weeks as we learnt lessons from the first try and wanted to try and do better. We used the bigger blocks first and worked down to the smaller blocks which was more effective. We found it hard to space out the blocks to ensure we weren't using too many, but were close enough to knock the next one over.
Have a go in your class, we would love to see your attempts.
 

A Bit of Kindness

Last week Room 5 decided to spread a little kindness to kaumatua and kuia in our community. We wrote letters for the Red Cross which will be delivered to people in rest homes in our region, and we made cards for Kotahi Aroha - All For Heart which will go out in their winter packs. Our aim was simply to do something nice for others and hopefully put a smile on their faces. We wonder if we might receive some letters of reply, but also are not expecting them.  

I was blown away with the effort and care that was put into each piece. Awesome work Room 5! You make me proud!

Checking the Bees

Last week we finally got to get outside and check on our bee babies. Bailey and Tahlia suited up with me, Bailey helping me with the hive, and Tahlia the chief photographer. We opened up the hive. It is looking healthy and we still have heaps of bees living in there. We topped up the sugar syrup in the top feeder to make sure the bees don't go hungry over winter. We will check it again every 2 or 3 weeks, but not too often when it gets cold. It was exciting to see them again, but now need to get into the garden, it is quite overgrown, despite the drought we have been in.

Friends and Cars

Today we compared friends to our dream car. We looked at each individual part of the car and and wrote down similes for how friends were the same. Here are some of the ideas that Room 5 students came up with. I was very impressed with their creativity.
Friends are like...
- GPS systems, helping us find our way.
- Exhaust pipes, getting rid of the negative energy.
- Tyres, carrying a heavy load.
- Air conditioner, cooling us down when we are mad.
- A windscreen, protecting us from everything.
What similes can you make?

Making Inferences

Last week we were looking at making inferences for reading. We know that when we make inferences we need to look for clues in the text and use our prior knowledge to help us.
On Friday our class was challenged to write a paragraph that made the reader infer where they were. Here are a couple of examples that were written. Can you figure out where they are?

LJ's Trick Shot

Our class was given the challenge to practice and film a trick shot of some kind while in lock down. It was no easy feat and very few took up the challenge and shared it with us. But, check out LJ's effort. I am most impressed! We will keep this challenge going for a little longer and see if anyone can beat that. We would love to your isolation trick shots if you have done one.

Pass the Toilet Paper Challenge - Room 5 Meet

Today Room 5 had a go at passing a toilet paper roll through the class in our daily Meet. It was a fun challenge that is actually much harder than we thought it would be. Loukwon-Dre had to tap out because he kept freezing on us but we will try again tomorrow. What challenges have you been doing in your hangouts?

Meeting Houses Around the World

One of our subjects last term focused on Marae and the importance of them to our Maori community. We then looked at different meeting houses around the world and how they compared.
We did a T-Shaped learning grid to gather our information then we wrote an information report to show what we learnt. This was a big job during lock down!
Here is Kaia's information report that she wrote. Please click on the picture to view it more clearly.

Tempting Tangrams

This term we have been doing some geometry on Fridays and have been enjoying the hands on challenges. Our first task was to create tangram pieces. We didn't really understand what this was at the beginning, but we followed instructions to create the pieces. Then Whaea Dana told us to make a square again. We were perplexed! It took us quite some time to figure this out, but when we did we were ecstatic! We then had to have a go at making other shapes. It is not as easy as it looks, but is a very engaging task.

This is Just to Say... Parody poems to William Carlos'

Last week we started our Get NZ Writing project from School Kit where we create poems, explore language and eventually end up creating a class poem as well as individual ones to send to another class in NZ. Our first task was to create some parody poems based on William Carlos' poem, 'This is Just to Say'. We had to talk about a time that we did something naughty. We then published them mostly on Canva.com, but some used Google Slides or Drawings too. Here are some of Room 5's examples. Check out our individual blogs to see some more :)

                                 

Navy Helicopter Visit

Last week the Navy helicopter came to visit us at school. It was an awesome experience watching (and feeling) it  land and take off again. We got to learn about how the helicopter works and about their jobs. One of them was a pilot, one signals when the helicopter is landing and another stays in the back and organises the weapons and gear.  We all got to strap into the seats to see what it is like inside. Thank you to the Navy for sharing your helicopter and staff with us for the afternoon!