We are a collaborative learning space, with over 50 learners at Wainui Beach School in Gisborne. Our teachers are Kōkā Rozie, Kōkā Ngaire & Kōkā Pip.
We are so lucky to go to school right across the road from the beach...
Last term our school wide inquiry was 'Hauora - Physical Health & Well being'. It was really interesting learning about our 4 taha and how they keep us healthy. Our 4 taha are:
* Taha tinana - physical well-being
* Taha whānau - social well-being
* Taha hinengaro - mental & emotional well-being
* Taha wairua - spiritual well-being
We participated in lots of activities and the most memorable two were planning and running a school wide tabloids day and work in our buzz groups on our 'Big Body'!
Our last week was a focus week where we looked at how our bodies work and what we need to do to keep them healthy.... we made BIG BODY! Gender fluid and about 10 feet tall! Again, we worked in our Buzz Groups and had a fun interactive day on the last day of term where we each had experiments for each part of our body. What a great way to learn about ourselves!
Wow - 8 of our students were selected to head to Auckland to the GEGNZ Learner Summit at the beginning of August.
They spent 6 weeks working on a presentation about how to use the following Google tools:
My Maps, Tour Creator and Tour Builder to show a visual and interactive representation of their pepeha.
The team also got to attend other learner workshops that included music with Makey Makey, Ozobots and Sphero's. We are excited to think we could be getting some of these to work with at WBS!
The Summit was held at a brand new school in Kumeu - Matua Ngaru. It was very exciting to see such a future proofed school and the learners and teachers all came away with exciting new knowledge!
The team also met Suan Yeo - Head of Education at Google in Sydney and Michael Davidson who creates amazing Digital Breakouts that we use in class.
Many thanks to all of our parents, peers and staff that supported us in getting to this amazing opportunity!
This term we had some independent learners who researched, explored and experimented and then got themselves ready for Science Fair!
This was work all done in their own time and we had 9 MLH entries. The projects ranged from Holograms to Eggs and pretty much everything in between.
All of the entrants gave MLH a run down on their project and answered questions. It was VERY interesting for us all!
We were lucky to have a science guru Dr Amber Dunn come in and judge for us and then a few of the projects went forward to the recent Tairawhiti Regional Science Fair.
Congratulations in our School Science Fair to:
Olivia - The Floating Egg (2nd)
Jett & Matai - Paper Planes (3rd) and in the Regional Science Fair
Olivia - The Floating Egg (Silver)
Caitlyn & Kya - Waste Watchers (Silver - Technology)
Jett & Matai - Paper Planes (Bronze)
A pōwhiri, cross-country training, Netball, Rugby, two new students - welcome Alice and Brodie - and Where in the World is Kōkā Nolian? Oh, how this week has flown by!
In our Kiwi Reading workshops, we have had the pleasure of using Science Kits from The House of Science. This weeks topic was Climate Change. We took part in 3 different activities/experiments all related to understanding the changes that are occurring currently on our Earth.
Firstly, we discussed and debated different pictures and classified these into groups. Then we learned about the Atmosphere, Biosphere, Geosphere and the Hydrosphere and decided which pictures belonged where. We found out through a game of Jenga that our Earths Systems depend on each other.
Our next activity looked into how much water and how much land makes up our Earth. Most of us agreed that there is more water than land on Earth, but a couple of us disagreed so we did an experiment to find out. We had to catch a globe and write down if our thumbs landed on land or water. At the end of 20 go's we calculated the percentage and came to the conclusion that yes there is more water than land. In fact, the earth is made up of 70% of water.
Our last experiment required us to freeze a mixture of water, salt, and blue food coloring inside of a balloon overnight. We then had to add this to a container of saltwater to emulate sea ice and seawater. In this experiment, we learned that melting sea ice does not contribute to sea-level rise but land ice (icebergs, glaciers and ice shelves) does.
This week we have been learning about Matariki as a wonderful way to end our busy term 2.
Everyone had a choice of activities to complete - including make and do, reading, writing, art, maths etc
One of the challenges was to create a rap sharing new learning about Matariki. This group of boys spent a very long time discussing, writing, editing and recrafting.
They are super proud of their finished product - and so are we! What do YOU think?
As our term draws to a close, we have had the opportunity today to share our learning with our parents and extended whanau. Our Retro Tech open day was fantastic!
All of the classes had their learning up on display in the hall. We got the chance to share our learning and creating with each other and our families.
There were lots of discussions, thinking, giggles and amazement at all of the different ways technology have helped us and also changed as time has passed. It has really made us think about the past, the present and the future.
Here is a video summary of our term of learning in MLH.
Geometry learning was delicious in MLH today. But what does food have to do geometry you ask?
Koka Terri set us the task of creating 3D shapes out of the above materials. We figured out that the marshmallows represented the vertices and the kebab sticks represented the edges.
In order to get the materials, we had to choose one of the shapes Koka Terri selected for us to make and let her know how many vertices and edges we would need to build it. If we asked for a clue, we would get a penalty = loss of marshmallows! None of us wanted to lose one of those so we had to engage in lots of learning discussions and undergo trial and error in order to get it right.
Check out some of our square-based pyramids, then head over to the kids blogs next week to see more!
What on earth is ECMOT, you ask?!
Well, it is the East Coast Museum of Technology! A total treasure trove of all sorts of gadgets and transport from the past and we got to visit there for a WHOLE day!
We had to share our advertisements for our Retro Gadgets with Barry (who had loaned us most of the gadgets from the museum) and he let us know if we were correct or not in our guess of what our object was.
A solar panel heater?
A hair straightener?
These were 2 objects that we were not so sure of.... and we were amazed to find out that this object on the left was actually a gadget to put the seams back in your pants and the object on the right was a stick on de-mister for the back window of a car!!!
Our advertisements were fun to make - here are a couple:
We got to look all around the museum - go on things, touch, feel, ask questions, make connections and share our recent learning with our parent helpers... it was fantastic!!! In our buzz groups, we had to find at least 3 other items that related to our original Retro Tech gadget from our beginning of term unveiling. That was a lot of fun finding them and we learnt lots from our parent helps and Barry. Some of the boys were totally intrigued by the old computers and computer games that were in working condition.... they decided that computers had DEFINITELY come along way!!!
We were all really interested in the HOME section - lots of irons, toasters, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, ovens etc . It was fascinating to imagine how people used to use these items. The was much amazement too at the 'hair salon'... some of the gadgets looked really dangerous!
It was such a fun trip - we have learned lots this term and it was great to make connections to everything that we have seen from the past and to think about what it might evolve into, in the future.
Last week our teacher went missing. Koka Terri was missing her partner in teaching crime so we set out on a mission to find her.
We had to use the clues she had left to help us figure out where she was.
We organised a Google Hangout with her and were allowed to ask her 5 yes/no questions to help us locate her. In our Buzz groups, we discussed which questions would give us the most information and narrowed them down to our top 5.
In the end, we asked these 5 questions:
During our Google Hangout we had to write down Koka Ngaire's answers and then use these to help us to narrow down Koka Ngaire's exact location. She made it tricky by moving around the country!
In the end, we managed to figure out that Koka Ngaire landed in Christchurch, drove to Akaroa then headed off to Hamner Springs.
Lucky we were super detectives so she is back in class this week!
Last Friday afternoon we skated, scootered and biked down to Koka Terri's whanau Pou about 2kms away from school. Koka Terri and Koka Ngaire biked too - Koka Terri rode her cool bike and Koka Ngaire got to borrow Koka Sue's awesome e-bike!
We learnt about the new pou from Koka Terri sharing what she knew and we had a look at the awesome design created and placed in to the concrete to wish everyone a safe journey on the new cycleway.
We loved getting out and about in our local environment - 50 of us in a line must have looked pretty impressive!!
Last Thursday MLH headed to the Tairawhiti Museum and the Electric Village for more learning to support our Retro Tech inquiry topic.
Half of us had a hands on time at the museum with old gadgets, while the other half of us headed to the Electric Village to find out more about electricity and where to in the future.
RETRO TECH @ THE MUSEUM We discussed what gadgets we knew about and looked at some from the museum archives - mostly around communicating: camera's, typewriters, quill pens, record players, gramophones etc. A couple of boys got stuck with a tape recorder. Have a giggle at the video of them trying to work out what it was and how it worked!
We then got to write our names with a quill pen and ink.... lots of practice needed! We were amazed that this is how so many people used to write. You certainly got messy fingers!
We had a look through Wyllie Cottage (the oldest European style house in the Gisborne area, built in 1872) where there were lots of kitchen gadgets were on display and some old fashioned games for us to play.
ELECTRIC VILLAGE This was really fun! We learnt about renewable and sustainable electricity resources and how & why e-transport is getting so big. We got to have a go on e-scooters (so cool!) and play with coding robots and a game that took a lot of concentration to not make a BUZZ sound!
We learnt about electric cars, bikes, scooters and even motorbikes! It made us think alot about our future because this stuff will be all around us soon... imagine when it will become Retro!!
Well, it has been a whole term since we last went down to Hamanatua Stream to weed and mulch around the native plants down there..... and the weeds are winning! Argh.
Today, we had to move a whole lot of mulch, but we had to weed around our natives first. We kind of got set up into a weeding team and a mulching team because that's just what needed to be done. We are learning a lot from Kauri Forno who worked hard with R1 last year. They have set the scene for us to follow this year.
We were pretty glad though to see that even though the fennel had got tall again, it was nowhere near the height it was when we first started! Back then, we couldn't really even see if there were natives anywhere amongst the fennel.
Some of the natives we are looking after are: flax, kawakawa, ngaio, whau and pohutukawa. We want them to grow big and strong. The weeding helps the plants to do this and the mulch keeps water in and the roots warm over winter.
MLH are committing to going down to our awa every second Friday this term to make sure we keep on top of all that fennel!! We hope that some community members will come along and help us out too. We will have to create some posters to encourage our community whanau and so that they are learning as well! It feels really good to share our knowledge and new learning of this important part of our school environment.
