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Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Pop! Pop! Pop!

As part of our Station Rotation we have been doing science. Yesterday with Miss McKenna two groups were learning to predict, observe and describe changes in matter. What matter did we look at? Corn kernels! 

We observed them and described what they looked like, felt like, tasted like and smelt like. "They look like mandarin seeds," said Jireh. Or "little, hard stones" he described. "It's hard to eat it," said Ayla. "It tastes plain as", added Keanu.


Miss McKenna read us the story 'Toni's Popcorn' where Toni and her sister make popcorn together. In the story Toni's sister says they should pour all the popping corn into the saucepan. Miss McKenna asked us to predict if that was a good idea or a bad idea, and we had to say why we thought that. 

Some children thought it was a bad idea and some thought it was a good idea. Lucy said that if they had lots of popcorn it would be good "so it can be shared to the whole family". But Reupena and Nigel thought, "It might explode" and Keanu said "It's gonna make a big mess". "It will pop all over the place," said Damian. And they were right! Toni's sister lifter the lid before it was finished popping and it made a huge mess.

We weren't going to make the same mistake! When we made popcorn with Miss McKenna she put oil in a saucepan and when it was hot added the corn kernels and put a lid on it. We listened excitedly to the pop, pop, popping and Miss McKenna took off the lid when it got quiet and stopped popping.

Then we got to see how it had changed...and, importantly, taste the popcorn!


    

"Kernels turn into popcorn", observed Ayla. "It tastes yum!" said Iliyas. Mikke agreed. "Yeah, we want some more!" he said.

We talked about how heating the kernels had made them edible and we noticed changes in colour, shape, size and taste. Teddy said "There's no sugar." Maybe you could make some popcorn together at home and add some flavours. if you do, tell us about it by commenting below! 

Friday, August 28, 2015

Daffodil Day is Awesome

Today was Daffodil Day and we began the day as a whole school with a prayer Mrs Driver had picked out for us.


Then Miss Goodier gave us all a daffodil to wear and we laid our donation coins on the chalk daffodils Jeslyn had drawn out on the asphalt.



At writing time some of us wrote stories about Daffodil Day. Isabelle wrote 'I like flowers'. 'Daffodil Day is awesome,' wrote Britney as part of her story. And Tausala wrote, 'I like Daffodil Day. I really like my flower. It is yellow'.


Did you get a yellow flower for Daffodil Day?

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Is God made of matter?

Have you heard about our 'Station Rotation'? Every Tuesday and Thursday Room Eight joins with Rooms Two and Three to do group activities in a rotation. There are five 'vertical' groups, which means that in each group there are some New Entrant children, some Year One children and some Year Two children - as well as a mix of boys and girls.

This rotation we are focusing on art and science, and this blog is about our science focus: matter. Three of our five stations this round are focusing on matter: what matter is, states of matter and properties of matter.

Miss McKenna told her group they were going to be learning about matter. "Matter?" Kori questioned. "What's matter?" asked Tausala. "Good question," Miss McKenna replied and she told the group that everything we can see and touch in the world is made of matter. One of her groups was incredulous (especially John Paul and Ryan) - "Dinosaurs?" they asked. Yes. "Mars?" Yes. "The sun?" Yes. "The Universe?" Yes. "Everything we can touch or see is made of matter." said Miss McKenna. 

"Gravity?" questioned Esrom. "Can you touch or see gravity?" asked Miss McKenna. We decided that gravity wasn't made of matter but then came a more challenging question: "Is God made of matter?" asked Ryan. We haven't answered this question yet. We pray to God and listen for him but we haven't seen him or touched him. Maybe one day in heaven we will - we don't know yet! 

We named lots of things that were made of matter - including our bodies and body parts. "Our skin," said Iliyas. "Blood," said another child. We also named lots of different things in the classroom - books, lights, posters, paintings - everything we could see and touch. 

Then we talked about the different kinds of matter there are: matter that is made by God and other matter that is made by people out of matter that God made. We broke into small groups and went for a walk outside to be scientists and observe things made by God and things made by people. 




For social sciences we are also learning that people have different roles to play as part of a group. So, each person in our groups chose a role to play. We had:

  • a photographer to take photos on the iPad of the matter we saw
  • a recorder to write down in two columns the things we saw made by God and the things we saw made by people
  • a noise controller to make sure we were working at a good volume
  • an encourager to make sure everyone was included and joining in (this is perhaps the most important role as we look at the value of 'justice' this term)
  • a 'task checker' to make sure we were all doing the right thing
  • a reporter to share back at the end what their group had found that was made by God and made by people

...and Miss McKenna was the time-keeper! We noticed lots of things outside but needed some help from Miss McKenna to know if they were made by God or people. Some examples of things we saw on our walk that God made were clouds, grass, dirt, mud, birds, the sky, the Earth and the sun. Some things we saw that people made were concrete, paper, taps, stairs and doors.



Here is Astyn - he was his group's recorder.


After our walk we reported back what we had observed and then Miss McKenna gave us a big pile of pictures to sort into different groups - those things made by people (man-made) and those made by God. We had lots of discussion about this - and it was trickier than you might think!


Mrs. Nobre's group is learning about water and the three different forms it can take: liquid, solid and gas. They looked at a picture of an iceberg floating in the ocean to prompt discussion and then talked about the different states water can be found in.

Then they had a sorting activity where they had to look at different pictures and decide whether it was a picture of water as a solid, liquid or gas and glue it into the correct column.



Miss T's group was looking at some properties of matter and they went on a treasure hunt in the classroom to find, and then draw, objects that were:

  • smooth
  • rough
  • shiny
  • dull
  • sharp
  • blunt
  • liquid
  • solid
  • hard
  • soft
  • flexible
  • inflexible

Some of these words were new and we are doing lots of good learning to understand what they mean. Help us at home by finding things around the house that have these properties. Maybe you can help us out with our wondering about matter too. What do you think - is God made of matter?


Monday, August 24, 2015

A tiger came to school today!

Did you know we have our very own classroom letterbox? We do. But something arrived today that was too big to fit in the mailbox. After lunch Mrs Jones from the office came to our class with a special delivery. It came in a brown crate and had breathing holes. Can you guess what it was?


We were really excited and examined the box for clues. We had some different ideas about what would be in the crate. We found the word 'Zoo' on the side and Amelia thought all the animals in the zoo might be in the box - but it wasn't big enough. Keanu thought statues of animals might be in the box - "little ones", he said. Teddy thought there might be a toy lion in the box.

Tausala spotted a tiger picture on the side. "What do you think is inside?" asked Miss McKenna. "A tiger?" Tausala questioned. "A real baby tiger", Victoria wondered. "A little tiger", Elina said. Isabelle thought there might be a note inside too...


...and she was right - when John Paul opened the box we saw there was a note inside! It read: 


So, we had been sent a pet to name and look after! Was it a tiger? Was it a lion? As John Paul dug deeper into the box we were all creeping ever so slightly forwards in anticipation - what is in the box we all wondered. We didn't have to wait long to find out as John Paul reached further into the box and pulled out...



...a Sumatran tiger; wow! We were all enamoured with this new creature. Now we need to name it and look after it. Everybody wanted to take our new pet home with them tonight but only one (or two - if you're twins!) children can take it home each night. When it does come home we need to:

  • take him/her (we don't know yet if it's a boy or a girl!) on our normal after-school activities with us
  • read a story to our pet and tuck him/her in at night
  • write about our time with our class pet in his/her journal and draw a picture to go with it (or take a photo and print and stick it in)

We get to have the pet stay with us for up to two nights and then we need to bring him/her back to school to share with the class what we did by showing our pictures, reading our story and talking with the class. This will be a good way to help with our reading, writing and oral language all together. We can't wait to bring our new class pet home to share!



Tonight lucky Victoria who was working hard all day (and her sister Vania) get to bring the tiger home! And...everybody needs to think of some names for our tiger. So far we have thought of 'Roseflower' (Britney's suggestion), 'Lion Rescue' (Teddy's suggestion), 'Tiger' (John Paul and Tausala's suggestion), 'Lion Rolly' (Melody's suggestion) and 'Super hero tiger' (Kayty's suggestion). Have you got another idea? If you do, please comment below and Miss McKenna will share your suggestions with us!


Saturday, August 22, 2015

Word Power

We have been learning to write words 'off-by-heart'. We are doing this because when we know how to write simple words without having to sound them out or find them to copy then we can write them quickly in our stories. This means that we can spend more time working on the content and ideas in our stories.

So, we get eight minutes each Friday to write all the words we know. Each week we try to beat our last score. It's a competition against ourselves - not against each other. 

If we write 15 words correctly we get a bronze certificate. 30 words gets us a silver certificate. And, if we write 60 words correctly we'll get a gold certificate (something to aim for at the end of the year!). John Paul, Tausala, Rhoda and Matthias have all already got a bronze certificate - well done you four!




Four more children will be receiving their bronze certificates at our next assembly. I wonder who they will be?!

This term, as well as other areas of mathematics, we are studying statistics. So we made graphs of how many words we know how to write. Miss McKenna made the scale go from one to 25 but already Tausala has had to colour above the graph - last week she wrote a fantastic 26 words. Way to go Tausala!

Come into our classroom to see each of our graphs and see how we are doing!


To try and learn more words that we can write automatically Miss McKenna and Mrs Nobre have been talking with us about our work and we practise so that the next week we can get more words than the previous Friday.

Some of the things we are learning and practising when we write words are:
  • putting letters in the correct order
  • writing letters the correct way around 
  • using little letters and capital (big) letters in the correct places

You can help us at home by writing to uswriting with us and writing around us. Here are some ideas for how to make this fun:

  • let us see you writing (you can use your first language) because when we see you do something we know that you value it and we will learn to value it to
  • include us when you're writing shopping lists and let us write them with you
  • help us make birthday cards for friends and family instead of buying them
  • put magnetic alphabet letters on the fridge and help us make words with them like our family member's names (or 'mum' and 'dad')
  • take a paintbrush and water and write words together on the path outside 
  • write little notes to your child and pop them in their lunchbox so they get a surprise at lunchtime and can write you back
  • encourage your child to write notes and cards to their friends at school - they can pop them in our class letterbox

Whatever you do - make it fun!


Friday, August 21, 2015

Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

Room Two was excited about our trip to Auckland Zoo. For our 'Poem of the Week' last week we learnt the song 'Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo' by Peter, Paul and Mary (although we changed some of the words...can you hear which?). Play the video below to hear some of us singing!


Melody took the role of director (you'll hear her calling 'Hit it!' at the beginning of the video) and John Paul helped as choreographer with the cool walking move in time to the beat for 'We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo.' Don't the tamariki in our class have such sweet singing voices? We'll have to put more videos up for you in the future.

Our day at the zoo started with the bus ride to Point Chevalier and the children had fun singing 'The Wheels on the Bus' and were getting super excited. When we got to the zoo we had morning tea and waited for a zoo educator to take us on our 'Zoofari' experience.


 

Our educator was Sue. She took us to see some exotic animals (animals that are not native to New Zealand). First she sat us down and told us she would be taking us to the Australian Walkabout where we would see different animals - including emus. Here Sue is showing us an emu egg:


In the Australian Walkabout Sue talked to us about the wallabies and told us not to get too close to the emu. We were good at following her instructions and staying on the path.


Next, Sue took us into the Australian aviary to see some very colourful and interesting birds. Here are Rafa and his dad looking at a rainbow lorikeet. One of the birds flew so close to us - brushing past Miss McKenna's hair as it flew from one side of the enclosure to the other!


After the aviary we saw the brolga. Sue said these birds like to dance but, unfortunately, we didn't see any dancing while we were there. We liked looking at the birds and watching them though.


We also really liked looking at our maps and finding where we were and where we wanted to go! (All children have a map in class which they will be able to bring home later in the term to keep as a souvenir.)


After our tour we split into smaller groups for an hour and explored the zoo with our parent helpers/teachers. This meant that we got to go to the enclosures we most wanted to see. Miss McKenna's group went through the meerkat tunnels - which was a bit squishy for Miss McKenna (!) but exciting to crawl through and we all had lots of fun!

After that we walked through the bones (well, fake ones) of a whale (!) to get to the seal enclosure. We saw the seals from above the water...and then went below.

  


We loved watching the fur seals and sea lions from the lower level. They came so close to the glass it made some of us jump back! Here is a video we took of the sea lions and fur seals and a photo of our whole small group together with Miss Aspeling's group:




As we had seen exotic animals in the morning we went to see some more native animals before stopping for lunch by the elephants. Some of them were hard to spot but we were good at looking and finding them. Our observation skills are pretty good and we were curious to see all the animals.


Just before lunch we headed to see the hippopotamuses which turned out to be one of the most memorable parts of the day. I think you'll know why after reading Keanu and John Paul's stories:


"My whole school went to the zoo!!!!!!! The big hippo pooed. It smelled gross." By Keanu


"My whole school went to the zoo and we saw a hippo. He was pooing when he was sitting down in the mud." By John Paul


After the hippos we saw the flamingo and had a go ourselves at standing on one leg just like them - we are good at balancing and could do it pretty easily!  


The next stop was lunch and we were lucky that the elephants came right out on show while we were there. We even saw some 'elephant yoga'! (One of the trainers was making the elephant do some stretches.)


When an announcement that we could see the baboons being fed came over the loudspeaker we walked to see them and - wow - we saw big ones, baby ones, mummy ones, daddy ones...all sorts of baboons (about eleven of them) right there in front of us.


Our trip to the zoo was a great experience and since being back at school we have enjoyed drawing and writing about our experience. We have also spent time in our Tuesday and Thursday station rotations doing more animal-themed learning. We have done some animal drama, started some tiger paintings with Mrs Driver and even painted some animal faces with Miss T. Check out some of us with our faces painted here. Some Miss T. painted...and some we did ourselves!



If you want to find out more about our trip to the zoo ask us and/or come into our classroom to see our fantastic pictures and read the rest of our stories about our trip which Miss McKenna has just hung up!