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.


                       

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs written by Jon Scieszka

The Fantail and Pukeko reading groups learned and rehearsed a Reader's Theatre of this story over the last couple of weeks.
We learned lots about:
- speaking clearly
- using expression
- speaking loudly
- working as a team
- helping each other to be successful

We were pretty happy with how our Reader's Theatre turned out - we are going to share it with all our classes so that everyone can hear how great this story is!

Who knew there was another side to the story?!!!

Graffiti: Art or Vandalism?

Our Huia reading group was given an interesting question from Koka Ngaire... is Graffiti Art or Vandalism?

We read a couple of L4 texts and looked at a video about the history of graffiti and we had to form our opinion from these and our prior knowledge.

We all came to the conclusion that it depends.  It depends where it is and what the message is...  WHAT DO YOU THINK?  We would love to hear your feedback in the comments.

Koka Ngaire took some photos of real life graffiti and street art in Melbourne - we had lots of discussion about those!

Have a read through a couple of examples of our presentations.... from Kaya, Carys, Daniel B and Obe

Earth Paints...

In the Fantails reading group, we read an article called 'Earth Paints' as part of our Culture Club topic this term and learned about aboriginal painting and how they made their paint from the earth...

We followed the instructions that the kids in the article set out... we went off to find several different dirt colours from around our school.  We found yellow, green, dark brown, light brown and a bluey colour.

We were looking at bossy verbs and following instructions.  We had to grind, rub, crush, sieve, mix, stir... we turned our dirt into a paint like paste.  It was exciting to get our fingers into the 'paste' and create our own paintings like the ones in the article.

Planes from the Amazon!

By Bjorn

A wee selection of the planes created from descriptions in our shared Chapter Chat book 'The Explorer' by Katherine Rundell.

By Giacomo & Toa

We have come to the end of the story - we loved it and rated it a solid 8.5 out of 10. 

By Daniel P

It has been a very interesting, exciting and informative book where we have learnt lots of new facts about the Amazon Jungle and the creatures that live within it.

The story of Matariki...

The Huia reading group were tasked with retelling the Story of Matariki.  After reading information, they viewed a few video clips and got some ideas... then they chose how they presented their retell.   We shared as a group and we were all impressed with the quality!

Buddy reading!

Moana 3 enjoys buddy reading on Friday's with Room 10.  Either they come and visit with us or we go and see them in Room 10.

There are always interesting stories to share and we mix buddies.  Sometimes our Room 10 friends read to us or we read to them or we read together!

You are never too old to enjoy a good picture book!

Enjoying Chapter Chat!

The hidden ruins
by Sophie & Carys

Information report about Caracara's - Natalie

We are really enjoying the current Year 5/6 Chapter Chat book - 'The Explorer' by Katherine Rundell.  



There are many interesting things about the Amazon Rainforest that we are learning about: different animals, plants and places.

Electric blue butterflies - Bjorn

Information report about sloths - by Jacob

The stranger by Toa

The story revolves around 4 young children lost in the Amazon and it is an exciting, funny and catchy story.

A secret map - by Daniel P

Information about Honey - by Charlie W

Here are some of our differing Chapter Chat activities that we have created over the past few weeks.  We have used google drawings, google slides and pen & paper to create!

The hidden ruins - by Bjorn

Egg-cellent Experiments!

The Pukeko reading group have been having lots of fun learning to make inferences and identify key information from texts.  We have also been tying our reading learning into our Science Fair term topic.

This week we are looking at 'The Acid Effect'!  Natalie bought some eggs from her chickens and Koka Ngaire bought the vinegar... we have put the egg into the jar with the vinegar and we are now leaving it for a week.

What can you see already happening?

We discovered that this is the calcium of the egg reacting with the vinegar (the acid) - the bubbles are the shell being dissolved by the acid (vinegar).

We can't wait to see what happens... our hypothesis is that we think the egg is going to lose its shell completely and be 'bendy'.

Our modifications - what acid did we use?

We thought about our previous experiment with acid's and came up with a modification to this experiment.  Looking at our earlier blogs - what acid do you think we have added to water to see if we can make the same reaction with the egg?











UPDATE: The egg has been in the vinegar for one week... today we took it out and had a feel and a look at what was left.  Ewwww... but exciting!  Listen to Izzy, Poppy and Santino explain the experiment and the results.
And for the big finale - WHAT WAS INSIDE THE EGG?
*We thought the egg may have 'cooked' from the vinegar
*We thought the white and yolk may be solid like a hard boiled egg

The results surprised us!!  And we were pretty impressed that the egg bounced!

Science Experiments in Reading...

We have a science focus this term to get ready for our Science Fair.  During reading workshop time, the Fantail & Pukeko groups have been reading about and completing some simple science experiments.

We discuss our hypothesis, method, results and make conclusions.  We also have been thinking about modifications that we could make if we complete the investigation again. 

Making crystals with Epsom Salts

We have looked at how puddles evaporate, what happens (reaction) when an acid is put with a non-acid and how crystals grow.





The crystals were great to watch because the Epsom Salt crystals starting growing almost straight away.  We learned that every type of chemical that makes a crystal grows a different way.  The epsom salt crystals are long.

What happens with baking powder,
baking soda, water
and vinegar

We were pretty excited about putting an acid (baking powder) with an acid (vinegar) and seeing the reaction - our hypothesis was that it would make a BIG FIZZ... and we were right!

Thinking about puddles & evaporation

When we read about evaporation, we learned that the sun plays a big part on how fast the puddles evaporate.  However, we also found that we did not complete a FAIR TEST.  We had a big discussion about what we could do better next time to make it a fair test.  Now we just have to wait for the sun to shine again!