On Thursday 20th May 2021 we celebrated outside classroom learning day.
We had an outdoor scavenger hunt around the school. We had to work together to search for a range of objects and record our findings with our group.
The winning group for 2021 were Cairo, Tyler, and Abraham. They quickly found the items and worked as a team sticking together throughout the scavenger hunt. They showed great teamwork and listened to each others ideas.
A highlight of the scavenger hunt was being blown away by Matua Ken and his leaf blower!
Again we have been working hard in Team Maunga in our reading. This week our shared book was called Bertha and the Beeman. Here are some examples of work that children have produced. They have also been busy learning about bees using our 'BEE AMAZING' site. They are also busy working on the 'create' part of our bee theme with some amazing artwork being produced as well as the creating of stop motion movies. Looking forward to being able to share all this amazing mahi with you soon.
Team Maunga was really engaged in the process of beeswax wrap making and 2 groups of children decided to make a movie to share the process on how we would make them and created storyboards to show this. They then recorded the rest of the class making their beeswax wraps. They then went back and added to their storyboard.
Once the videos and storyboards were sorted, children worked with Mrs G on editing and trimming these in iMovie. The groups worked hard on this and were able to cut movies down (Then Mrs G did cut a bit more out as well to make it a better length). The next day the groups worked on their movies again recording and typing in the words from their storyboards. Finally, the groups choose backing music and turned its volume down on this, so they could still hear their recorded words.
This week our shared book has been based around Bees and much of our 'Bee amazing' learning. Here are a few examples of Explain everythings that have been completed by students to share some of what they have been learning.
We have also had students starting to work on the Create part of our 'Bee Amazing' learning. Most students have also made a Bees-Wax wrap (we just have a few people who have been away to catch up). We also had 2 groups of students recording this and have been working hard to make this into a movie. Watch out next week for the upload on this, as one group has a little bit more tweeking to do.
All in all it has BEEn a full on week with lots of great learning.
Hawaiki
(Hawaiki you have become so independent at completeing these and uploading them to the right place)
Tyler
(Love how excited and focused you have become at reading time)
L'Sayn
(What a great example of work you have shared this way! Well done on perserveering to get it finished and uploaded. Keep it up. I can't wait to see next weeks!)
Here is another post of work from last week. Well done both Hawaiki and Tyler for fixing a few mistakes and posting your work to Drive and Seesaw! You are all doing a fantastic job.
Greats and Grands 2020 was again a great hit with both grandparents and students. It is such a fantastic opportunity to see these generations together and sharing/connecting with each other. Grandparents a such an important connection to our students. This year in team Maunga we even had 'fill-in grandparents' as some whanau couldn't make it due to our current COVID-19 situation. To those grandparents who traveled from across New Zealand to be with us; thank you so much.
As normal our morning started with an assembly but today was a little bit different as this was in front of a large crowd of visiting grandparents. We performed our kapa haka with Matua Dwayne's help. It also rained while we were performing so we had to quickly move to an inside space to continue. This did not phase us at all!
When we got to the new space, it was time to share a few speeches about our special people. Evie, Hawaiki-Roa, James, and Tyler did an amazing job of sharing their work. We were all very nervous but did a great job. (We will upload 3 of these as movies at the bottom of this post)
After our assembly, we took our grandparents back to our classes to have a look around and to present them with special Tonga we had created, and a card and story about them. We also had made little bookmarks that said things like 'I love you'. Our grandparents were excited about these and most wore their Tonga for the rest of the time. Mrs G snapped some pictures of us before we all headed back around the front for some yummy Kai.
After our yummy Kai, we did a quick jump jam with our grandparents (even as it started raining again). Our normal games had been called off due to the weather. All in all it was a fantastic day, making memories with our grandparents.
As part of our learning about our local area we all wrote stories (including Mrs G). We also published them by creating a story map and then using Explain Everything to share and record our versions. Our writing was amazing as we had so much to write about and it was a great experience for us all. We hope you enjoy our work.
In reading we have been trialing lots of different things to excite our readers in class. What we plan to do is to use instructions as a reading task and children need to follow the instructions to either make something or do something. Today the task was to use a Scratch instruction card to make characters move and dance.
We think they have done a great job. What do you think?
Currently, we are doing a fantastic school kit called 'the farming kit' So lots of our learning at the moment is all about farming and what it is like, the animals, who work on farms and why they are important.
This week we had lots of fun working together to create small movies using the blocks, farm animals, and vehicles that Mrs G brought in.
Some things we have been learning about when making Stop Motion movies
You need to set your scene up, where it's not in the way (otherwise it gets broken by accident)
You have to take LOTS of pictures
Each picture is only slightly different from the last picture (MOVE IT JUST A LITTLE BIT).
Your iPad needs to be set up so it doesn't fall over or get moved.
Here are some examples of what we have been doing to practice these skills.
Well done Evie and Tyler for getting 100% on list 2. You now have an extra list added to your ring of words. Well done. You also got to choose the colour for the list 3 words cards. Onwards and upwards.
Keep practicing your lists everyone and this can be you too. Remember that you must get 100% on the whole list before you can move up to the next level, not just all your spelling words for the week. So keep practicing reading and writing ALL your list words. They are also super helpful when writing little stories at school and at home.
Today we had Tyler ace our List 1 words. He is so excited at being able to read and write all of these words independently. Here is Tyler with his certificate and a photo of him with his Ring of Words.
On Friday we shared our learning at our assembly.
Here are are our movies that show our space writing that we put onto green screen. Nui wrote about a starry night, Iti were using adjectives to describe the sun. Come into our class and have a look at all our published stories on our writing frames.
In the afternoons Maunga Iti have been working with Team Maunga exploring rocket launches into space. Hannah worked with Harley Barlow, Susanna worked with Kaelan, Tyler worked with Rakai, and Andrew worked with Ivy and Daniel S, to create a Stop Motion of a rocket launch. First they had to create their rockets in the LEGO room. Then we learnt how to take lots of pictures moving our rocket slowly each step. When we played our movie it made our rockets look like they were launching into space all by themselves. This week we are learning about gravity. The children choose the activity they want to do over the week to learn and explore more about our theme.
Today we have been working with coding in scratch again. We linked this to our learning in class which is about space and ROCKETS which we are VERY excited about.
Here are a few examples our coding. Enjoy and don't forget to comment and ask us questions.
Today, Tyler's nan came to Maunga Iti to visit us and bring us a fish tank and brand new filter from Tyler's Uncle Mike. Inside the fish tank is seaweed and sea snails. Sea snails clean slime off the tank. This weekend, Tyler will catch tadpoles that we will put in our fish tank until they grow legs and become frogs.We are so excited! Thank you to Tyler's Uncle Mike for the donation to Team Maunga Iti.
