Wetland Demonstration

Baking with the Year 6’s

The Year 7 and 8 students were at Wairoa College today for technology. The Year 6’s and I planned on doing some baking. On the menu was Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies. The tamariki had a lot of fun measuring out the ingredients, using their muscles to stir the mixture and refraining themselves from eating the chocolate chips before they made it into the biscuit mixture..

It was awesome to see the tamariki discussed their roles in biscuit making, shared the workload amongst each other, and worked together to make some very scrumptious biscuits! I received a lot of positive feedback from the staff on your baking skills Master Chefs.

And the answer to the big question year 7 and 8’s, yes we still did classwork.

An Industrial Designer in our class

 Last week Room 1 was lucky enough to have a visit from Alex Fraser (Miss D’Ath’s friend). Alex has a Bachelor Degree in Industrial Design and has recently completed her teaching placement at Wairoa College. She shared with us her many talents and talked to the tamariki about some of the work and designs she had completed in her degree. The tamariki were in awe of her designs and were very fond of the skull door-knocker mould she showed them.

Alex has also worked for Pacific Helmets, a company that specialises in manufacturing and exporting safety helmet products to the exacting design and performance specifications of each customer. Alex mentioned that a lot of processes were involved in making a helmet therefore a lot of people played a major role in making one helmet (each person specialized in an area of the design, aesthetics, function, ergonomics and safety construction of a helmet. This information made the children realize that a lot of thought goes into producing something from start to finish, there is a lot of trial and error, a lengthy process and technology (machines both small and big) is involved in manufacturing something on a large scale.

Room 1 was very grateful for the visit and the ideas they gained for their own inquiry learning. Thanks Alex!!

                              

One of the many helmets made at Pacific Helmets

Why Wetlands are important!!

Pictured are some of the reasons why Wetlands are important, along with very important information and facts learnt from Mummy O'B (Sue O'Brien). 

Our Enviro School Adventure!!

Last week the Te Mahia School tamariki went on an Enviro Adventure. The morning began with planting at Whangawehi. A Totara tree was planted in memory of Matua Edward. All of our tamariki have spent time with Matua Edward in some Enviroschool workshops like pumice carving and the senior’s making purerehua. It was definitely a special moment for us all. Memories of Matua Edward are instilled within us through the sharing of his art skills, his whakaaro, his tikanga and most of all his strength and support in our community. Some of the trees the tamariki had to plant were Pohutukawa, toitoi and flax. The tamariki enjoyed planting the trees using fertilizer tablets to help the plants grow, knowing where to plant certain trees because some trees had to be planted in wet soil (closer to the river) and the other trees had to be planted further inland in the dry soil, and also working together with our junior tamariki.

Our adventure then continued up onto O’Brien’s farm. The tamariki had a blast they enjoyed exploring the farm, seeing calves, horses and a bull, and learning about the wetlands. The focus of our visit to the O’Brien’s farm was on the wetlands and sustainability of the wetlands to ensure a prosperous future for the farm. Many thanks to the parents who came, and to our Enviroschools team!!

Wetlands - Our Visit To The Farm

Room 1 happenings

This term we are focusing on writing personal summaries and explanations. The tamariki identified that the explanation type of writing explains how things work or why things happen, the writing is in sequence, and uses technical language (language that relates to the topic). We have looked at some examples but more unpacking of this text type is needed to further understand the purpose, structure and language of writing explanations.

For reading we are reading texts in the 'Connect Series' journals. They have some really interesting maths, science and technology readings. We have reading tasks in class where the children work in groups with the teacher (guided reading), write summaries on the text they have read, independent reading where the children get to select their own text then summarise what they have read. I also spend 10 minutes modelling reading to the children. I have selected a novel by Maurice Gee called 'The Halfmen of O', the children listen intently and have 3-5 questions to answer every 4 chapters. So far the children are engaged in the story and always eager to find out what happens next.

In maths the children are learning strategies to help solve multiplication and division problems more efficiently. The children have been learning rounding and compensating, doubling and halving, trebling and thirding and proportional adjustment strategies in math. Ask your child about these strategies (different groups have been learning different strategies) and get them to show you how to do it. Some children are really grasping the maths strategies and it is great to see the discussions and sharing of thoughts in maths.

We are at the exploring stage of our inquiry learning. is based on ‘how the big wide world works?’. The children are looking at writing down questions that they want to research and find out more information about their chosen big idea. Some of the ideas the children are going to research in more depth are televisions, speakers, gaming consoles, bicycles, typewriters and many other interesting tech devices or objects made on a larger scale using technology.

We have another busy term ahead of us with Year 7 and 8 technology (manual) beginning this week, another Tech challenge for the week and other exciting activities and learning tasks.