Year 6 Engineering; The Magic Triangle!

This morning the year sixes investigated Engineering as part of their learning in technology. We first discussed what engineers do and talked about their career path. We found out that they are technologists: they design products to solve real life problems.

We then read a book called the Impossible Bridge by Jane Buxton. We discovered that civil engineers are responsible for creating roads and bridges. We then attempted to design and create our own impossible bridges: we were given one piece of paper that had to hold the weight of a lego car and driver. We tried lots of different designs similar to what we had seen in the book.

Our first attempt

 The paper arch bridge and beam bridge were the least successful, but we found that the piece of paper could hold the weight of the car if we folded it lots of times, like the one pictured below.

Success!

We thought of lots of reasons why this might be. One reason was that there were lots of points at which the piece of paper was touching both the car above it and the table below it. We also saw that the folds of the paper looked like a series of triangles. It was then that we watched a video and found that triangles are the strongest shape and that they are often used to build bridges because the force or weight of the cars going over them is spread evenly between each of the three sides.

Creating a square shaped bridge

We tested this out by building a bridge out of squares and out of triangles, using the same amount of materials for each. The triangle bridge could hold far more weight than the square bridge. We then made a larger bridge, out of squares made up of two triangles, which was able to hold the weight of a toy car.

Our materials had to be an exact length for our design to work

Finally we learnt about another shape that is seen a lot in architecture: Geodesic Domes. These are made up of a series of triangles and the more triangles you add the more circular they become.This was a tricky build and a lot of problem solving was involved in order to finally make the dome! We are pretty proud of our final product though.

Traditional Architecture

Today we had a quick lesson with Miss Adcock about traditional Māori architecture compared with English architecture from the Tudor era. Then we read some texts about the different buildings and we created a compare and contrast map to share our learning. We all found different facts for our graphs, click on the images below to check out our ideas:

                                                                   By AJ and Maselino

                                                                    By Telesia
                     

             
                                                            By Charlie and Pelenise

Science Intensive with Mr Nath

This week the students have spent time in some other classes to learn about different topics. Today they visited Room 10 and learnt about fire. After investigating and learning about fire, fire hazards and safety precautions, the students created raps so that they would remember what to do in an emergency.

                             

They also made posters to share their learning with the rest of the school. This one was made by Telesia.

What's the Matter?

Today we have been learning about the three states of matter (solid, liquid and gas) and the changes of matter. Check out Anita's write up of the chocolate experiment!

In this experiment we learnt how to turn a chocolate bar into a solid again [in our own design]! 

We all got our baking paper and waited until the people came and gave us what we needed... After a while we got a bag full of chocolate which was melted in the microwave! It was served to us watery and like a liquid.This meant that the chocolate changed from a solid to a liquid when it melted!We used the chocolate in the bag to write anything on the baking paper then we waited! We then found out that the chocolate had turned solid and had became hard when it cooled down. This meant that the chocolate changed from a liquid to a solid!

                                    

H2O Molecule

Check out Charlies description of the water molecule snacks we created today:

Today my class and I created a H2O molecule using marshmallow and tooth pick. We put together the marshmallow and made a Mickey mouse looking figure, and it looks like this:

I used 2 hydrogen atoms which are the pink marshmallows and 1 oxygen atom which is the white marshmallow. Together this makes a H2O (water) molecule.

Did you know that there are over 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules in a drop of water?

Teaming Up!

In today's PB4L/fitness lesson, we participated in a number of team building activities. We were learning to work well with all of our peers by communicating effectively.

We played a few rounds of hand soccer as a warm up, before we played a game called the magic cane. In this game we needed to lift up a wooden stick using only our index fingers. We found this super easy and we were all successful in our first attempt!

We then played a game like Chinese whispers, only we had to describe a picture and the person at the end of the chain had to draw what we described. We realised that we needed to think carefully about how we would describe the picture and that we needed to focus on what we were told.

Finally we played a shape game. Each member of our team had to hold on to a piece of string and we had to create the shape that Miss Stone named. We started off with easy shapes like circles and squares, before we moved on to trickier shapes like a rhombus, octagon and a pentagon.

End of Term Celebration!

This afternoon Room 8 celebrated all of the hard work that we have put into our learning this term. We enjoyed a movie while eating the delicious brownie that we baked yesterday (which came out very well) and some popcorn brought in by Anita.

We were also celebrating AJs birthday and our house winners Kowhai and Kauri, so it was a very joyous occasion!

We hope all members of Room 8 have a safe and happy holiday and that they return ready for another term full of learning!

Respect for Others

This morning the year six students from Room 8 have been demonstrating our school value 'respect for others'. Aj, Tumanako and Mathew helped out in Room 9. They supported the year four students to use their devices for their learning and to complete their work.

Alison, Francesca and Anita helped in Room 1, but they were creating cultural costumes for the Tongan group. This was a wonderful way to support the school and Mrs Raj was very grateful for their hard work.

Cooking in Room 8!

Following on from our measurement breakout, we used our fractions and measurement knowledge again today as we baked as a class. We knew that we wanted a shared lunch to end the term, but our whanau have already brought in heaps of food over the last few weeks for camp fundraising. So instead we decided to bake a tasty treat that we can all share on our last day tomorrow.

We split into groups of four and began to make our brownie mixture. We were careful to read the recipe very carefully to make sure that it would taste really good.

Once we had finished making our batch we put all of the mixture into a large baking tray. Then Miss Stone and Charlie added the final ingredient: chocolate! The brownie came out of the oven really well and we are looking forward to trying it tomorrow. 

Breaking out again!

After the success of last weeks break out, the students of room 8 asked if we could have another round. This time we completed a far trickier game that involved some maths.  Not only was this challenging, fun and a great way to improve our collaboration skills, it showed Miss Stone what we need to work on when we learn about measurement next term.

After 35 challenging minutes, lots of discussion and running to grab different maths equipment, Davarni, Telesia, Fasi and AJ successfully broke out and received their bounty. It was wonderful to see everyone working so hard and persevering through!

Clubs

Today was our final session in clubs. We have really enjoyed learning about different things and working with students from across the school. Check out what Alex, Trent, Davarni and Amelia have got up to this term in cooking club!

Our Final Game

As it's the last week of term we have been finishing off our learning for the term. Today we had our final kiwisport lesson. After a quick game of bullrush and paper, scissors, rock we got straight into a game.

We had to put all of our skills into practice and remember the rules, as our refs were watching us closely and timing our game. It was great to see everyone swapping positions and having a go at something new.

We will have to play more netball as a class in the future!