We have been exploring people who have created change in New Zealand as part of our inquiry into "Do good, Feel Good?".
This week we chose a person to investigate and researched to find out how and why they have created change. We needed to find out what was the problem and what was their response/s and action/s?
From this we created a flow chart showing the process of this change.
Here are some of our flow charts:
We have been working on a Visual Arts project for the last couple of weeks, first of all learning how to control the paint brush, blend paint and manage a controlled colour palette. We have also been sketching, drawing what we see and feel.
The Artist Models we have been using are local artist Melvin Day, Toss Woollaston and Nigel Brown. Melvin Day lived in Seatoun until he died about 5 years ago. His view of the mountains is almost identical to the view we look out on everyday.
We will continue to build up our paintings but here are some of our initial efforts.
The sketches.......
We have been learning new techniques, shading and layering paint. I think it is clear that we are really in the Flow!
When Murray Edridge from the Wellington City Mission came to talk to us about what he did we were all very interested and asked him some questions about what the Wellington City Mission did and we asked him about his job.
He told us about what The Mission does to help homeless people and how they will try to help them get essentials like food, water and shelter.
He also said that they are trying to encourage people to go to normal supermarkets instead of going to their own free ones. They would make supermarkets so people without a lot of money can still get the food they need and buy essentials for they’re family. In their ideal world people will only need to use their supermarkets once, after that they hope to be in a better position.
They have over 400 people a day in their housing. When Murray spoke to us it made me think about how much of a difference they make in Wellington and how they help people in need and told us how we are able to help by donating.
On Tuesday Francesca from Charity Services came to visit us as part of our inquiry into positive purpose and caring for others.
"Francesca (Said Fran-ches-ca) from Charity Services (CS), came to visit us. She told us about herself, and what the CS do to help people who want to start a fundraising charity.
She told us that there are 28,137 charities in NZ, that's about 1 charity for every 180 people in NZ (There are 5,127,100 people in Aotearoa).
She also told us that charity law is old, Queen Elizabeth 1 created these laws in order to try and wipe out poverty:
In England, the Church looked after people in need till the middle ages.
Priests knew the people who needed help and they would help them with food, education, hospitals"
By Olive
On Wednesday we had an art focused day.
We focused on three key areas which we will then build on to create a painting later in the term.
Jenny focused on the human form using the New Zealand artist Nigel Brown for influence
We looked at body shape from different perspectives, posing for each other and sketching what we see
Hayley focused on the value of paint - moving from light to dark, shade, tint and tone.
We painted some value strips using the primary colours which we will use later on during our painting to check that we have used a depth of colour
John focused on the artist Toss Woollaston for influence, looking at the way he draws with a loose hand, a thousand lines and draws what he sees.
We then went outside and drew our beautiful landscape.
Taxes
We had great conversations about why we should our should not pay tax.
For:
"In Positive Education last week we learnt about Neuroplasticity, Growth Mindset, Grit and Optimism. We got into groups and worked together to come up with three main ideas in each branch.
Optimism is about looking on the bright side and seeing things as “glass half full“ instead of “glass half empty”.
Grit is basically keeping on going when you feel like you’re going to give up.
Growth Mindset is a bit like grit and optimism mushed together, it’s being positive about learning new things and making mistakes." - Nina
In our P.E programme this Term we are exploring the question: What makes a good game?
In the next few weeks we will be trying some new games to explore this question.
"On Thursday we did cooperative games during P.E. We did this in our base groups, they were all based around working together as a team.
Hayleys activity was called “Hot Potato” where we had to move a series of items from one side of the court to the other without using our hands and later, our feet. Jenny's activity was a game where there is 3 pirates and 1 sailor "
- Charlie
