Arts Celebration Poetry

As part of our Arts Celebration, we wanted to showcase our poetry. Here is our Arts Celebration Poetry movie: 

Grit at Athletics

Our learner attribute this term is "I am Powerful." Part of being powerful is about Grit. We showed Grit today in Athletics. Grit is about using persistence and resilience to overcome challenges.

Data Talks

Once a week, our Maths sessions are all about digging into data. This week we connected with some other learning around environmental sustainability and biodiversity. We examined an interesting graph which shows the levels of native or exotic species in Wellington, Kāpiti and Wairarapa. 

After a whole class discussion, we moved into our tuakana-teina learning groups to discuss. We set a collaboration goal before recording what we noticed and what we wondered. This particular graph invited us to use our knowledge of fractions and percentages, as well as reading multiple variables (land cover, population density, species richness). You can read more about Data Talks here. 

Inventions: Weird and Wonderful

Our Inquiry this term is called “Business Time.” We will be designing and making products to be sold at our Market Day. Students will be going through the full design process to design a product (or service) which meets a need or responds to an opportunity.The profits from Market Day will be used to host another school or class for a day during Beach Week.

Our Learner Attribute this term is “I am Powerful.” We will be focusing on:

• demonstrating hard work, grit, resilience, perseverance to achieve goals
• thinking originally and outside of the box and come up with an idea that is unique
• think fluently and generate at least 5- 10 ideas and explain them.

We have begun an Inquiry looking at how people respond to needs and opportunities to create inventions. We have been wondering about the design process; how did the inventor come up with the idea?

We made a Backwards Map, starting with the invention and working back to the beginning, the need and the ideas, the failed prototypes and finally the successful one.

Next week we will begin thinking about problems and designing things to meet that need. Watch this space for exciting developments!

We invite you to continue the conversations at home. 

Basic Facts Games

We are starting back into Maths sessions with a hiss and a roar! To get our brains 'switched on' to maths we have been doing quick fire games to begin our sessions. These are FUN they also help us to have quick recall of facts - neat! Some examples are here with pictures of students playing them:

Four in a Row (addition)

What you need:

• The game template 
• Counters in two colours
• Two markers to indicate the numbers being added.

What to do:

• Player One starts by putting a marker under two numbers in the row below the board.
• The numbers are added and the answer on the board is covered with a counter of their chosen colour.
• Player Two moves only one marker to a new number in the row beneath the board. The new combination is added together and the answer is covered with a counter of their chosen colour.
• Play continues until one player has four of their counters in a row vertically, horizontally or diagonally. They are the winner.
• If the answer to adding two markers together is already covered the player loses that turn.

Forehead Addition

What you need:

• a pack of cards (Jack= 11, Queen =12 etc)
• 3 players

What to do:

• Two players are 'the Guessers', the other is 'the Adder'. The cards are all together in a pile
• The Guessers both grab a card and (without peaking) hold it to their forehead,  so the other two can see it.
• The Adder looks at both the cards and says what the two numbers add to, for example, if there was a 2 and a 3 the Adder would say ' 5'.
• The Guessers then look at the others forehead to work out what their card is. If a guesser saw their buddy had a 2 they can work out theirs must be 3. The winner calls their number out first.
• The winner is the one who collects the most cards.

Walking from Cape Reinga to Bluff!

This is the Year 3 and 4 students on our walk

School Kits challenged us to walk the length of New Zealand in a day! We needed 278 people, walking 10,000 steps each to walk from Cape Reinga to Bluff. We reached out to the community to ask you to "donate" 10,000 steps. We also did our own walk (it wasn't quite 10,000 steps but we know that we would've done 10,000 each by the end of the day!) 

This activity was designed to help us connect with the community and to promote healthy activity. 

Thank you to everyone for your donations. We made it! Now for a holiday... 

A map of our walk