Real Life Maths

We had lots of fun in our L3 Maths group today estimating to the nearest tenth and then adding and/or subtracting numbers including decimals.

Our challenge: To be the one with the closest measurement of string to Kōkā Terri's baby belly.

Firstly, we had to cut some string to the size we guessed would be the closest to Kōkā Terri's belly. Then we had to estimate the length of our string to the nearest tenth. After that, we had to measure the actual length and then figure out the difference between the two. Once we had completed this, Kōkā Terri put each piece of string around her belly to see who was the closest. No one got it exactly correct, some of us made them waaaay to big ('How rude!' Kōkā Terri exclaimed) but a couple of us got pretty close.

Kōkā Terri then measured her belly with some string, we measured this then figured out who the winner was.

And the winner was ... CAEL! He is going to be assisting Kōkā Terri with changing BABY NAPPIES! Congratulations Cael 👧😋😂

 

                          

Jam Packed First Week Back at School!

What an awesome start to the year we have had in Moana Learning Hub. 

A round of People Bingo first up allowed us to mix and mingle with classmates helping us to learn something new about each other. Who knew so many in our class could touch their noses with their tongues! We continued to learn more about each other (and different animals) in a classification game, which resulted in us finding our new Buzz Groups. Our Buzz Groups are groups that we will continue to Learn, Create and Share with throughout the year.

            

 

          

This week we got stuck into swimming and begun Quickwrites which will become a weekly priority. In this week's writing, we had to decide which was better: Chocolate or Cheese? Which would you choose? You can make a comment below with your choice. Don't forget to add your reason/s why.

With Thursday out of the classroom, we also got started on some learning about the Treaty of Waitangi. Next week we will be able to bring home some booklets so you can see our learning too.

The week wouldn't have been complete if we didn't spend more time in our Buzz groups getting our license to use our Chromebooks (Kawa of Care), playing Tension and having a go at some team-building exercises.

                             

                             

                    

We can't wait for all of the fun 2020 has in store for us!

Kia Ora!

Jam Packed Week 1!

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.


                       

Mellow Maths

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!

Where in NZ is Koka Ngaire?

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!

TinkerLab - Balloon Powered Vehicles!

In Moana 3, every Friday we have our TinkerLab challenge... last week we started our challenge with CREATE.  

Creating, Thinking, Problem Solving, Collaborating!

We have our big junk box and our challenge this week was to create a vehicle that was powered by air out of a balloon.  

Most of us worked in buddies and created many different vehicles.  

We soon realised that we had to have free moving wheels and we had to think hard about how the propulsion from the air coming out of the balloon was going to move our vehicles and where we needed to attach the balloons - did we blow them up first or did we have to attach them and then blow them up?  Lots of critical thinking!

There was lots of practicing, taping and re-taping, modifications, changes and discussion!

At the end of our 30 minutes we had a SHARING session with each other where we looked at each other's creations and discussed what modifications we could make for next time.  

We then did some LEARNING where we researched balloon powered cars and found out how to make the most of the propulsion coming from the balloon.

We are going to TRY AGAIN this week, using what we learned from our own creations and what we researched.  Watch this space to see how we got on...

UPDATE:  Some of our cars were slightly more successful than others!  We learned that it was all about the wheels and axle.  Those cars with good round wheels went the best.  We also learned that to make an axle, we needed a skewer to go through a straw.  We were really happy with the results!!!
Our next challenge - using what we have learned here, we are going to create powered boats: propellors, balloon or jet.