Science Intensive: Wastewise

This week is Science Intensive Week at Glenbrae School. This means that each class rotates around the classrooms and spends a day with each teacher learning about a different topic. This term we are learning about sustainability and our topics are: Wastewise, sustaining the air, land and sea.

We started in our own classroom and learnt a bit more about recycling and rubbish with Miss Stone.

Some fun facts we discovered:

• Even if products that can be recycled end up at the dump, it is too dangerous to retrieve them so they end up in landfill.
• Products and waste that are made out of natural resources, such as vege scraps,leather, paper and cotton, tend to break down far faster than resources that are man made. 
• Landfills have to be carefully maintained. They cannot grow too large and the liquid that they produce needs to be managed so that it doesn't pollute waterways.

We then discussed the need to reuse, reduce and recycle. For our create activity we decided to reuse our plastic water bottles and turn them into something that will support the environment; bird feeders. We only used recyclable materials to create these so they can be easily deconstructed and recycled once the birds eat all of the seeds inside them. 

Food Technology

Every Friday the year 7 students from Room 8 spend the morning at Tamaki College for Technology. This means that a small group are left of year sixes are left with Miss Stone to follow their own technology program.

 

Room 8's Cafe!

This term we have decided to have food technology lessons. Our first session kicked off with us exploring what Food Technologists do and the process that they follow. We then went on to act out a testing scenario, to broaden our taste buds and vocabularies. We learnt about the five main tastes and tried an example of each, before writing a description using technical terms.

                                             Testing out a tangy, sour lemon

The decadent, creamy milk chocolate was a hit!

We found that the sweet banana chips and the salty pringles tasted quite artificial. It was interesting that the banana chips appeared to be a healthy snack, but we think that the supermarket added a lot of sugar to them, making them more of a treat like the pringles.

The 90 % cocoa dark chocolate looked delicious, but a small bite showed us how bitter it was. This was rated as repulsive and disgusting! Although Tumanako and Miss Stone thought it was nice in (very) small quantities. 

We learnt some great new adjectives from this activity, from luxurious to briney, to umami. We look forward to describing some of our own cooking next week!

Sustaining our Identity

In inquiry we have been looking at sustaining ourselves and our relationships. Each reading group looked at a story about Identity in one way or another.

Pukeko were reading about a student who learned her Pepeha and the importance of this. This was helpful as we are learning our mihi and pepeha in our Te Reo lessons.  Ruru and Kiwi read a story about a boy who had moved to New Zealand from South Africa and how this change had affected his life and himself. Tui read a story about a girl who was both Samoan and Pakeha, who was grappling with the idea of being bi-cultural.

The whole class are now in the process of creating their follow up activity: to create a poster that illustrates the important components of their identity. From our reading, we saw that places, culture and people can contribute to who we are. We also had some of our own ideas about identity, such as religion and our interests being important.  Check out some of the things that contribute to AJ's identity above.

Multiplication

This week we have been looking at multiplication in maths. Check out the strategy that Dekorah used to solve the problem 11 x 64:

Top Bloggers

In Room 8 we have some very diligent students who are committed to their learning even during the holidays. Six learners learners blogged in the holidays: Fasi, Francesca, Anita, Telesia, Alex, and Davarni.

Last week, Rachel came to Glenbrae to present certificates to the students who blogged. Of these students, Alex won 1st place and Anita won second place in the Summer Learning Journey for our school. The rest of the class were very proud of these two and we thought that the prize packs looked amazing!

I really enjoyed following all of the students blogging over the summer and we are very grateful to Rachel for creating such a wonderful program.

Telesia's Weekend

Today we started to plan a recount about something we had done at the weekend or during the holidays. Telesia managed to finish this during the day - check it out here:

During the weekend my whole family was going to my Aunt's Wedding. Everyone was very excited because we haven’t been to a wedding in a long time and because we have never met our aunty. The bride was only about 24 years old and was getting married to a Samoan man. My mum ironed the clothes and we all got ready to go. We travelled in our van to the Waipuna Hotel. We were all so excited because we had never been to a hotel before. As soon as we arrived we went to see where they were getting married. It was very beautiful.

Everyone sat down and waited for about 5 minutes until it started. The music was on and the bridesmaid and the bride walked down the path. Almost everyone was filming or taking photos. It was gorgeous. At the end of the wedding everyone took photos with the bride and groom and waited until the after party. The after party was in a white beautiful room with 12 tables for each of us to sit. We all sat in our seats and waited for everyone to arrive.

Once everyone had arrived the bride and groom had a quick speech. Then the bride Sandra’s dad came to pray before we ate the food. The food was very delicious. Some people from the family had a performance that they learned to do so they could show to the bride and groom. There was a tongan dance and samoan dance and niuean dance done by the bride's children. We finally had DESSERT! It was very yummy. We had pavlova cake and a chocolate cake. We also had the wedding cake but we had that the next morning.

The after party had finally finished and my mum took all the little children including me home. My mum and my older sister stayed because they didn’t want to go yet. My parent came back at 4:30am. As soon as I got home I went to sleep because it was 10:00pm. My weekend was very fun and I couldn’t wait for the next wedding we get invited to.

Testing Times

Today ended a long week of testing for us in Room 8. We have had at least one test everyday which has changed our class routines quite a bit and we are feeling pretty tired at the end of this week!

However, we were really happy to end our final test today and to end the day on a more positive note, with sketching, P.E. and some time out. While some of our class members went to practice some performances for the Gladiators of Change, the small group that were left spent 20 minutes investigating our Edison robots. We had a great time putting them on Sumo Wrestling mode - although one of the robots was determined to attack our reading chair!

Sustaining Ourselves

Sustaining Ourselves

We are learning to address the factors that can affect our wellbeing

This week in Health we have been looking at Hauora and the different aspects of health - Physical, Emotional, Social/ Whanau and spiritual. Check out some of the examples that Charlie created for each aspect of our health.

• Going for a run is helping your physical health

• Playing a sports game with others is helping your social and mental health

• Going to church, the marae, temple is helping your spiritual health

• Listening to your favourite music is helping your emotional health

• Eating fresh fruit and vegetables is helping your physical health

• Learning from a grandparent or caregiver is helping your whanau health

• Taking part in a cultural club or activity is helping your spiritual health

• Getting enough sleep is helping emotional health

Rainy Day

Today has been a very rainy day in Glen Innes, but that hasn't stopped Room 8 from being active and having fun!

We had a double dose of sport today as we had a swimming lesson as well as a Kiwi sport session with coach Campbell. As these sessions were back to back, we decided to head out onto the court and play tennis in the rain, which was great fun!

We then went down to the pool and got into our swimming lesson quickly. We were working on front crawl and backstroke, but we started with some activities that would boost our water confidence.

What is Rugby?

In Room 8 we have been looking at explanation writing. As a sport mad class, we decided to write a little about Rugby this week. Check out this piece of writing that Telesia completed, which was started by Miss Stone and Room 8:

What is Rugby?

Rugby is a sport that has been played since the 1800’s. It was first played in England, but it is now played around the world.  Rugby is a contact sport and the players have to follow certain rules. Rugby has become very popular and there are several competitions, including the rugby world cup.

It is not clear how the game of rugby first started. However, it is said that the first game took place at Rugby School, Warwickshire in 1823. The students originally played football, but they are said to have changed the rules so that the ball was carried.  This game began to be played by other English schools and by 1871 the Rugby Football Union was established. Official rules were then created and the first international game was played between Scotland and England. 

Rugby is always played between two teams. Each team is made up of 15 players who each carry out different roles. The different roles are Wing, Hooker, Flanker, Lock, Prop, Right Wing, Full back and Scrum Half. You can carry you can kick to the other side to score a try. There are no timeout unless someone is injured and each team is only allowed 7 replacements each game. After a team has scored they have to try to kick the ball into the goal post. If you get it in you get an 2 point advantage. The kick is taken from the spot in line where the ball was originally grounded, so scoring near the goal post is the best place to try.

Bibliography: 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union#History

Treaty Ceremony

This afternoon room 8 had their official treaty signing ceremony. We all sat in a circle and reviewed the treaty that we had previously written. We had to make sure that we still agreed with everything and understood what it meant. We also talked about what we could do when people broke our contract.

Once we all had discussed our treaty, we began to sign it. As not everyone has an official signature, we decided to sign using our fingerprints. So we made a tree-ty with our finger prints, which also fits in with our theme of sustainability this year.

Water Fun Day

Today was water fun day at Glenbrae School, which is a competition we complete in our houses.  We spent the morning participating in a range of activities that involved water. In each activity, we had to perform an action while holding a container full of water. We then had to empty our container in a bucket that aligned with our house colours.  To make this even trickier, many of the containers had holes in them so it was a race against the clock to make it to the buckets!

                                Check out this video to see some of the activities we took part in!


This was a lot of fun for the school and ended in a big water fight on the courts. At the end of the morning Mrs Tofa announced the winner (Kauri) and we left the court to have morning tea. Our class were particularly lucky because we had swimming straight afterwards  - what a fun day in room 8!

Kiwi Can

During our first Kiwi Can of the year we learnt a lot about positive communication and active listening. This lesson tied in really well of our class goal to respect each other and to listen to the speaker.

After talking to Mr Numia about active listening, we got to play a game that required us to actively listen. The game was called fruit salad. When Mr Numia called out the name of a fruit, we had to complete the action that went along with it. For example, when Mr Numia called out 'apple' we had to jump to the right.


This turned out to be such a funny game and we all had a great time completing the different actions!

We then got into our GKQ's, or general knowledge questions. Some of the questions Mr Numia asked were about the Treaty of Waitangi - which was perfect as we have been learning about it in class!

Our First Kiwi Sport!

Today we had our first Kiwi Sport lesson of the year. We are learning about tennis at the moment and we will have one session with coach Campbell a week. In this lesson we had to work in groups of fours. Our rule for the day was that we could only bounce the ball once.

First we got into our groups and practiced rallies. We got into a line and took turns to bat to a player on the other side of the court. The player on the opposite side was called the champion. The champion had to use two hands on the racket and could use forehand and backhand to play with the challenger, or the player on the opposite side. If a challenger got out, they would go to the back of the line and it would be another persons turn. If the champion got out, the challenger who won became the champion.

We played this game for a while and tried to see how long we could keep the ball going for. Our record was about 20. At this point, we started to play a game of doubles and had a great time trying out our new skills. 

Shared writing by Tumanako, AJ, Po, Amelia, Francesca and Miss Stone.

A Day in Room 8

This week, we have been establishing our class norms in room 8 and looking at how our days should run. We thought we would create a video to show our usual class timetable, on days that we do not have Kiwi Sport or Kiwi Can.

For the first half of term 1, our class will have a daily swimming lesson in our school pool. This is something our whole school takes part in, as we think it is really important to develop water safety skills. We also have 15 minutes of fitness (physical education) in between reading and writing. After lunch we cover other curricula areas, such as inquiry, health, the arts and te reo Maori.

                     

We usually blog during our lessons, but we will be blog commenting as part of our reading lessons. This not only improves our reading, but also allows us to connect with students in other schools as we are part of a Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu group.

We hope you enjoy our short video - it's our first for the year and we look forward to making heaps more!

Room 8 Infographics

Following our learning in statistics, our class have been making Infographics to display some information about the students in room 8. We will be using Infographics as part of our create activities in other subjects, but we think these are a great way to show visitors to our class a little about us.  Check out this infographic created by Davarni!

Starting with Statistics

In today's maths lesson Room 8 started to discuss statistics, a topic that we will be covering every Friday. After watching a video explaining the importance of statistics, Miss Stone explained that the students would be investigating the different ways that data can be presented.

The students were asked to draw the x and y axis of a bar graph on a piece of A4 paper. A lot of the students wondered how they would be able to complete the graph as they had not collected any data. It was then that Miss Stone explained that they would be looking at the statistics of MnMs!

We started by creating a strip graph. 

The students created a strip, pie and bar graph using the MnMs and discussed which graph they thought shared the most information. We then began to notice how different the packs of MnMs were, as different students  received different amounts of each colour of MnMs.

We then turned our strip graph into a pie graph. If we had identified the centre of the circle, we could have coloured in each segment of the pie. 

We found that the differences in packs became most obvious when we compared the bar charts and the pie graphs with eachother. The bar charts gave us a little more information as they told us how many MnMs in each colour we had received. Look at the difference between these bar charts!

Our First Swimming Session

We are very lucky at Glenbrae to have our own school pool and we make the most of it by running a daily swimming program for the first half of Term 1.

Today we jumped in the pool for the first time as a class. We focused on looking at the pool rules, safety and our swimming routine at the start of the lesson.

After swimming around the pool in the pool in the rotation, our lifeguards (Po, Fasi, Maselino and Charlie) noted some things that the swimmers could work on. These boys helped Miss Stone to make sure that everyone was comfortable and safe in the water.

We then ended the lesson with some jogging races across the pool, which was very funny to watch!

Our First Day

Today was our first day of school for 2017. Our small class of 15 students had a very active day and we were all shattered by the end of it!

After completing a scavenger hunt and  some reading and writing about the Treaty of Waitangi, Room 8 went to the hall and played some team-building games.  We started by playing a game where the students had to cross the hall without touching the floor, instead using pieces of cardboard to stand on.

The students then had to race across the hall without enough pieces of cardboard for each member of the group. This resulted in some very interesting strategies and a lot of cheating in the end!

We next played a game where we had to move a hoop around in a circle while holding hands. Again, this was a great laugh and people were very inventive about the way they passed the hoop along.


Overall it was a great first day and start to our year.