Our Picket Fence Finished!

It's been a while since our last post but we have been very busy with our Production 'Lost in Dreamland' and finishing off our Taking Action projects.

Today is the last day of school and thanks to the fantastic Mr Stephens we have completed our picket fence. We think it looks fabulous finished and think you will agree! It will be here for a long time to come so we can visit it with our own children.

Our Art Project

Our Art Project

Today in the senior class we have been busy with our 'Taking Action' art project. Our art project is mounting our Oamaru stone carvings (that we made a year ago) on painted boards. We split into groups and chose our paint colour and an empty wall on a building that board will be mounted too. 

Since then we have painted our boards with undercoat and many top coats. They have been finished off with a lacquer which has made them look shiny and will hopefully make the colour look brighter for longer.

Our task today was to place the various carvings onto our boards and then carefully measure around each carving to make sure they are evenly spaced. 

Mrs Hastie kindly came to help us drill the holes in the boards to we can screw our stones on. Our next step is to drill our Oamaru stone onto the boards, then mount the finished boards around our school.

We think they are beginning to look great and are looking forward to finishing off another project around the school.

Here is a sneak peek of what it will look like

Reading Research Presentations

TToday was the hand in day for our reading research projects, in our reading groups at the start of the term we were given a book or a choice of books and we had to complete a presentation using information from the book and some extra information. 

The books are as follows:

Dancing Dogs: After the spill, Rena Oil Spill

Fantastic Flying Foxes: New Zealand Fossils

Princess Pigs: Vulture Culture or Sharks

Happy Hobbits: Monarch Butterfly

Each group watched all their group members videos and peer assessed one, then the groups voted on the best, these were shown at assembly.

Dancing Dogs: Holly

Fantastic Flying Foxes: Lachlan

Princess Pigs: Tom

Happy Hobbits: Isla

Sling Shot Fun

On Monday the 3rd of November the senior class made catapults. W made them out of a maximum of 15 ice block sticks, one paper clip, four rubber bands, four forks, one spoon and as much masking tape as we wanted.

We got measured on height, distance and short distance.  We had people measuring the distance and the height was measured by eye.

Brendan won the height (his hit the roof) and the length (his was 5.52m). 

Isla won the shortest distant (she got 1cm). 

        Cameron, Tim and Harrison getting ready for shooting.

      

    

           Tiana, Cameron and Macleod getting ready for firing.  

       

Callum getting ready.

    

 

           Brendan and Blake measure.

Written by Cameron and Tiana

Science in the Senior Class

Today the senior class have been doing science with Mrs Hyslop.

We have made some non-newtonian liquid.

This is what we made.

To make this non-newtonian liquid, we used cornflour mixed with water mixed with food colouring to add some effects. Non-newtonian liquid is a solid and a liquid, if you apply pressure to it it turns hard, if you apply no pressure, it goes soft.

First we made our own non-newtonian liquid in groups of three, we had turns on mixing it up. This is every groups liquid mixed together, it is very colourful, but after not long, it got mixed up and looked like sticky brown water. The rest of the school enjoyed playing with it during play and lunchtimes and some are talking about making it at home now.

Written by Harrison

Picket Fence

Over the last couple days we have been painting our pickets for a whole school picket fence to be erected around our school.

We have had turns at painting the undercoat and two layers of white overcoat. 

Most of us have finished painting them.

You do two layers of white paint then you sandpaper them then you paint your picket using the following criteria:

- must include our name

- year level

- year it was painted

- things that are important to you

The process is taking a while and the weather is not being the best it could be which makes it hard for us to get them completed. We are hoping for another sunny day soon so we can continue painting.

Written by Tom and Blake

Oral language

This term one of our focus learning areas is Oral Language. It is important for everyone to become good at speaking to an audience and we get to practice in front of our peers. It helps us learn the meanings of new words and how to pronounce them by listening to others. Speaking, listening, reading and writing are all related and help us to become better learners.

Our task is to speak to the class on a set day about any thing of your choice. It could be a collection of something you have at home, your favourite sport, an article from the newspaper, anything that interests you and you feel comfortable speaking to the class about for at least 5 minutes. You need to be prepared to answer any questions also. You need to give this your very best shot as we are learning to take risks and push ourselves outside of our comfort zone.

Today we had Tim and Scott on Oral language, they both brought something with them to show us and help them speak for a while. Tim brought a photo album from his trip to Canada, it was awesome to hear his stories and look at his pictures. 

Scott brought his badges to school that he has earned from Scouts, there were many different ones, even some from overseas.

Other things that people have shared with us:

Antonio brought photos from his trip to Australia .

James talked about puppies.

Vaughan shared about his sheep.

Harrison talked about his trip to NZ20 Jamboree in Fielding from 2013/2014.

And there is a lot more.

Labour Day

For the morning today, we had our all-time favourite teacher from the middle class, Mrs Keach, and do you know that all morning we spoke about Labour day. 

We found out lots of information about what the public holiday was for, Labour day recognises the hard work that employees used to do and is a reminder of the important place of waged workers in New Zealand. 

Labour day is celebrated annually on the fourth Monday in October. It all started in 1840 when Samuel Duncan Parnell arrived in Wellington from London, where he had been campaigning for an eight-hour work day in New Zealand. All the employers didn't like this change, as they usually make their workers stay until the job is done, which meant that the workers usually had to stay at their job/workplace until late into the night. From 1840 to 1890, the eight-hour workday spread with the European settlement, as they agreed to Parnell's campaign, but it wasn't until the 28th of October, 1890 that the first ever Labour day was celebrated. In 1935, the eight-hour working day, five days a week was made law. Now, in 2014, Labour day is still a public holiday, but many businesses remain open, but the employers have to pay double and give the workers an extra day off when it suits them. Many businesses don't have an eight-hour working day because of discussions with their employees and the government. Unions are also in place to make sure that workers have suitable working conditions.

Written by Scott

Hip Hop with Mina

Today straight after play the Senior Class and the year 5's went up to the multi purpose room to do a hip hop class with Mina. Mina is a break dancer originally from Sydney, she dances in some famous music videos including some by Stan Walker.

When we arrived she asked us to say our name, age, a sport we liked and a super power we would like to have, some answers were - to be able to fly, to be a shapeshifter or to be very strong. Then we started to warm up by doing a series of running, jumping, and sliding moves.

We then did some moves like the running man, and the six step. After that we moved onto some moves to sit down, we could either choose to do the knee drop, or the corkscrew. In the knee drop you put your foot out the side, tucked it behind your knee, and sat down on your foot, if you let your foot come out of the back if your knee you could shatter your knee. 

We did a breakdancing combo of our sit, the six-step, and the baby freeze- Mina would say to us "keep your face off the floor!" .

To finish it off we did freeze, using body isolation (using only one part of our body), and did some dancing in circles and lines, we then re asked the superpower question and the ideas were much more creative. 

We all had a great time at our breakdancing/hip hop session with Mina and want her to come back again.

Holly

Senior Parents Digital Information Afternoon

Today we had a parent afternoon about digital learning.

We are looking at technology to show our parents what we are learning at school. We will show them Google docs and what we do and make on docs. This term we are using docs in most subjects. Our teacher can see what we are doing on her computer anywhere, anytime.

Mrs Hyslop showed all the parents how to get on the blog leave comments

We also introduced the parents the class site that Mrs Hyslop created in the holidays. It is where we can find some of our learning activities, newsletters, calendar of events and other important links.




The site is another place where our learning is stored but it has more on it such as the calendar, resources for learners and parents, important links and newsletters.

Why use Google Sites in The Classroom ?

• Google site is free
• It is very easy to use and has a simple and student friendly interface
• It can improve students digital literacy skills
• It can open up your classroom and make it a collaborative learning environment