Cross Country

We all did really well in our School Cross Country.  

We are very lucky as our school cross country is also the local inter-schools cross country.  Here are some photos of us doing a walk through will all our local schools.  

We love our cross country track.  A big thanks to our Local Farmer Mr Gravatt who lets us use the paddocks around our school to make this event so memorable - complete with cow poo and mud!

Whaea Mal and Whaea Hellen

We are having fun with Whaea Mal and Whaea Hellen in Team Maunga learning with us!
They have been reading to us, and helping us with our work like maths. We now have 4 teachers!
By Te Marama

DR SEUSS DAY

Morning View of our school entrance way!  Just a few strange characters here!

 Going for a parade in our local community!  We enjoyed going through the neighboring preschool and then around past our local shops.  

 Back at school (our class) we had a quick snap shot of our classes amazing costumes before we went off for some fun activities run across all levels in all classes!

 Mrs G's group did a Coding in the morning followed by a Dr Seuss Breakout.  Great learning and collaborating across all year levels - Love seeing Te Maunga kids learning alongside the Te Moana kids and also being able to tell the Te Moana kids what they think will work.  

Great breaking into the breakout box all of you.

Ohaeawai's Science Fair

Here are a few snapshots that students took of each other presenting at our recent Science Fair.  The children were fantastic presenters and got better and better as the time went on.  In the end they were making people who were coming to visit make predictions about what they though would happen when they re-did the experiment and then asked further questions about what might happen if one of the variables were changed.  Great learning

"What do you think will happen when we turn on the hair dryer?"

"What object will go the highest?"

"What would happen if we used a different setting on the hair dryer?"

"This is how we made a paper areoplane..."

"What would happen if we used different paper?"

"What would happen if we made smaller/bigger planes?" 

"What do you think will happen to the duvet when we turn the fan on?"

"What would happen if someone was inside it?"

"What would happen if Mrs G's phone was on-top of it?"

"What would happen if the hole around the fan was bigger?"

 "What will happen when we let the balloon go?"

"Does it matter how much air is inside the balloon?"

"Does it matter where we attach the balloon?"

How to Make a Paper Plane

For the last week we have been learning about air pressure. Veon wanted to make a paper plane to see what would happen to it with the pressure from different air forces. On Monday we learnt how to make a paper plane. We looked at YouTube tutorials to show us how people present instructions. Olivia, Ella, Shiah, and Kaira have put together a video explaining how to make a basic paper plane. The Hovercrafts (reading group) wrote up the steps for us on Pic Collage. Tomorrow we will try to follow these instructions to make planes to test with different air pressures, like a fan, hair dryer, or air released from a balloon. Cheyne wants to try and make different designs to see which paper plane will fly the longest distance.

Check out our video to see if you can make a paper plane. Please let us know how it goes!

Yay! Balloon Rocket Experiment

For science we have been investigating different ways to make things move using air.  This is one we did today.

Question
What will happen to the Balloon Rocket when we let it go.
Hypothesis
We think the balloon rocket will go half the distance from one of our teachers whiteboards to the orange table.
Method/Observations
First, we got some string. Second, we blew the Balloon Rocket up and then put the straw on the string and attached the balloon rocket to the straw with cello tape. Last, we let the Balloon Rocket go. Yay!! it went to the other side!!!!
Materials we used:
Balloon, string, straw and cello tape.

By Tanner & Zavier

July Reading Certificates

 In Te Maunga we continue to have some fantastic Readers.  Below are the students who have achieved a massive 90 nights reading.  You guys are amazing!

Here are the students who achieved 60 nights reading as well!  Keep up the awesome effort!

Library Challenge Winners Term 2 2017

Here are our Term 2 winners for Mrs C's library challenge.
Every Tuesday they bring their book bag, return last weeks books, and issue new books to read at home.
Mrs C will be running this challenge again next term. Let's see if we can have an even bigger group of winners next time!

Well done Cheyne, Joel, Asbjorn, Kyle, Laylah, and Mikayla. Keep up the great reading!

Puppet Pal - Story Telling

This week we were lucky to have a few extra children in our class for a couple of days.  Te Aranui and Jayden (from Team Moana) helped some of our children to create some puppet pal examples of stories they had been reading this week.  This groups reading goal has been to increase reading fluency and to read with expression.  Well done to you all.

Help Me.  By Dakota

The Little Red Hen.  By Sienna M

June Reading Certificates

Well done to our June 60 night certificate readers!  You guys are AMAZING!  

We love seeing you progressing in your reading and being able to move your plane around NZ (and the world) to show what level you are on in your reading!  We love that you are so independent in being able to explain to visitors and your parents where you are, what your learning goals are, what you need to do to achieve these goals.  Fantastic!  

Well done also to the children who got their 30 Night certificates in June!  Keep it up and you will go far!

PS>  Thanks Jake for the great photography.  Love that you take this on and just do it for our classroom!

Tirama Tirama Matariki Song.

Over the past few weeks we have been learning a new song to help us remember the stars of Matariki.

Here is a YouTube clip that we created to also help us learn the actions to the song.  We hope you enjoy.

What am I?

This week in class we have had a shared  book called Tails and Claws.  It gives you clues about an animal and then it tells you what it is.  So in writing we have been doing something similar. 

Everyone has created some fantastic work.  The focus has been on adding adjectives to add even more detail to our work.  Some of us have moved onto publishing because they were so fantastic.  

Initially we published some for our walls.  

Then some of us decided to publish using explain everything.  When we published on explain everything we decided that we wanted to use 2 different slides.  One for our clues and one for our answer to make our work more interesting for people watching it.  When we had put all the writing in, we recorded ourselves.  The finished work is what we are most proud of.  You can see a few examples below the pictures of our initial slide set up.

Watch out for more examples coming VERY SOON!!!

More Reading Night Certificates for the Month of May

A Big ups for Laylah and Andrew who have received their 60 nights reading Certificates.

xxxxx

Here are some more certificates of children who logged 30 Nights.  Well done Tanner, Sienna B, and Mikayla

Zaviers Tuatara Animal Report

Last week we continued with our animal reports and researching different animals.  One of the creatures we talked about (but didn't get around to looking into in detail) was the Tuatara.

Over the weekend Zavier did his own research and brought it back to share this morning.  It was a fantastic example of an animal recount from a year 2.  Well done Zavier.  Mrs S and I were so impressed with how your had researched, and written your report, that instead of doing more research with the rest of the class, you were able to move straight into publishing your report to share.  Well done on your amazing work.

Maths Standards Wall

Since our interactive board was fixed and we have been doing maths warm-ups in Room 6 again we have had a big focus on our maths standards learning wall.  So far the children have been mainly focusing on counting forwards and backwards in ones, twos, fives, and tens which has supported by both classroom warm-ups and learning sessions.

The Children all have a goal that they are trying to achieve.  Initially this was teacher selected, but now that the children are getting the hang of it they will select their own.  They then use their spare (or 'can-do') time in class to practice these independently.  When they feel like they are achieving this goal they write them name up in a special space, so we can check them during the day or maths session.

This morning we introduced the children to a new maths warm-up focus of 'what makes 10' and the video below is one that they enjoyed using and wanted shared on our blog so they could revisit it at home and at school to practice for their maths standards wall and our current classroom strategy focus.

Animal Reports Continued

Here are a few examples of Animal reports we have been working on in class.  We planned to share these as part of our assembly on Friday, and at the last minute we decided it would look cool to be green screened so EVERY ONE could see and hear our wonderful reports.  Here are two that we recorded.  These also will become a rewindable learning experience as we can look back to see how and what to include in animal reports in the future.

We recorded a third but I have to say we are really proud of the third child who said that his was not up to the standard of putting it up on our blog.  This highlights how we talk with the students about posting quality posts.  Well done Mason.  We look forward to re-recording your this week.

Backwards Rabbit

Here is the song that we sung in assembly on Friday.  The children in room 5 & 6 recreated the video.  First they created a story board to help them decide what video shots to take, Next they got an older child to help them take the shots and finally we put it all together using iMovie.  We hope you enjoy.

Animal Reports

Many children in our class are really engaged in our current writing topic of Animal Reports.  A number of children have been so excited about researching topics that they have been doing so at home as well as at school.  

The diagram below is one we created to help the children in class to remember the things that need to be included in an animal report, and this is helping them with their research at school.   This may support any one at home wishing to continue doing research.  

Feel free to email your findings to us, or take pictures of your child's work (or you researching together) which can be a lot of fun.  We always love sharing these at morning news time.

HAPPY RESEARCHING!!!