A Visit from St John Ambulance Education

A Visit from Saint John Ambulance

Mrs Dickinson organised with  Jo from St John Ambulance, for the whole school to attend 2 first aid lessons with their class. 

Room 8 loved the activities, where they learned to identify safe practices when on their scooters, skateboards and bikes. They learned about the helmet fitting correctly and how to protect other parts of the body. They had a go at applying simple bandages and sticking plasters and later learned how to ring 111 and request assistance from the emergency services. 

It was important for them to know their address and phone number. 

Jo taught us how to put someone into the recovery position and we practiced on each other, even on Mrs Dickinson and Ani our teacher-aide! We loved the clever little jingle that helps us remember what to do...

" Dab, Dab, Mountain, Mountain, Ice-cream Scoop!"  This is after we say to ourselves, "I keep myself safe",  check for a response, open the airways and check the breathing. We are empowered! Thanks Jo and St Ambulance for making it possible.

Hut Day for Room 8 kids

Making Huts is Cool!

Room 8 joined in with the other junior classes to make our huts at the bottom of our nature walk.  We had to use available materials to make a hut big enough and strong enough for our team to sit in. We played in it and ate lunch in it and had an incredible and most enjoyable time! We also made some good friends!

Double Waka

Responding to Reading - Making Model Waka

Room 8 enjoyed reading about how to make double waka and were keen to make their own. Our parent help Mr Hohaia supplied the flax (harakeke) stalks from his farm and helped us put all the parts together. We designed the sails and collected enough wire and tape to complete the project.

We showed some of the waka to our Junior School Assembly but because the weather was so bad we decided not to have a waka race in the swimming pool. Let us know what you think about the final creations!

Nepia and his Dad prepare the sail for the waka

Waka line up

Melika's creation

Some clever thinking about giving our waka a name

A kiwi vibe to Cayden's waka

Painting pentagonal tessellations

Painting pentagonal tessellations

As the first step in our print making learning we painted tessellations (of pentagons) in shades of green and yellow.

Our cardboard printing blocks were all about mini beasts so we thought that a background in these colours would look a bit like the bush or plants.

To create the shades, we used egg cartons to mix and blend 2 of the colours. To each colour we added water to give the paint a watercolour effect.

Once the printing blocks were finished we rolled out sticky black ink and printed the mini beasts onto their backgrounds. In a few days we will add some photos of our finished art. We think the effects are stunning!  What do you think?

We also shared our art at the junior assembly!

Tauwharangi worked hard to mix interesting shades

Leeara painted a colourful pattern

Milan and Pippa created excellent patterns

Learning to use Explain Everything

Today we started learning how to use an app on our iPads called Explain Everything. EE is an interactive whiteboard platform where people learn, create and share. 
We learned how to start a new project, then take a photo and insert it on the whiteboard. We learned how to make the picture bigger and smaller and move it anywhere on the whiteboard using the Hand Tool. We then learned about using some other tools such as the Draw Tool, Highlighter, and the Bucket Fill. We made a poster with our photo and a drawing of something we like.
Here is a photo of Cayden with his brilliant creation.

Science- How does sound travel?

How does sound travel? 

As part of Room 8s Science learning we explored how sound travels. In pairs we attached string to a metal object like a spoon. While one person held the ends of the strings on or in their ears, the other person struck the metal object with scissors. WOW!!! We heard some very loud noise in our ears!

How had the sound travelled so loudly to our ears?
Why was it so loud?
Did everyone have the same result?

We discovered that sound travels in waves along the string to our ears!

Maybe you know a lot about sound waves and vibrations and would like to share your knowledge with us?

Learning the Place Value of 3-digit Numbers

Learning the Place Value of 3-digit Numbers 

Our Maths groups got busy with place value blocks to learn what each digit means in a 3-digit number.

After we had made the number that the teacher had written, we made our own numbers out of the ones, tens and hundreds blocks and wrote our number on a whiteboard. We learned that there are rules about how many blocks we could put in each part of the "trend setter house" like no more than 9 could 'live' in each part. If that happened,  ten had to move out to the neighbour's house! We had a lot of fun with the blocks and went on to add on in tens, add and subtract tens. It was so easy to understand!

Matariki GIF making animation

For the last few weeks room 8 has been learning about making animations.
To begin with we looked at the planning on our class site with Whaea Debb.
To start with we went on Google Slides on our iPads. We practiced changing our backgrounds and we practiced using the Shape Tool. We also tried resizing our shapes.
Then we talked about our Topic of Matariki and we decided to make an animation about what we have learned.
Next we made shiny stars, and coloured them using the gradient colours.
Then we copied (duplicated) the slide and made little changes. We then repeated that step about 5 times.
After that we then uploaded them to the website Talltweets, where it turns them in to GIF animations.

What we liked most about making animations was colouring them, making them move, making the shapes, resizing the shapes, and copying them.
What we found most challenging was resizing the shapes because we thought we could use the pincer movement but that didn't work for slides. We had to tap on the shape and drag the corners instead.

For next time we would like to try other animations about different topics.

Working with Clay!

Working with Clay!

We hope you enjoy looking at our clay face tiles. We learned how to keep the clay damp and blend the clay with our wet fingers. It was difficult to do but we are very happy with our finished tiles. Now we will let them dry and paint and varnish them, unless we can find someone with a kiln, so we can fire them. We love to read your comments so please write one.

Learn, Share, Create with ipads

Learn, Create, Share with iPads.

Each week we learn more about the Google apps and how we can share our learning with the iPads. As an introduction to creating GIFs we created shapes and filled them with colours and other shapes. The next step will be to make animations! We can't wait!

Technology Challenge- Making Catapults

This term our class is having loads of fun learning how scientists and technicians work and think. The students were challenged to make a catapult, from a set number of materials, that would flick a small pompom the furthest. They worked in groups and combined their expertise to complete the project. As they tried out their catapults they measured the distance the pompom travelled, in centimetres.  They then had a play off to find the winner. Our champ received a big bag of popcorn to share with his classmates. Following this challenge we discussed what made the winning catapult the most effective and had a chance to modify the design to achieve a greater distance!

Rocking Roosters Art Project

As a response to our Junior Journal Reading, one reading group made some Rocking Roosters out of paper plates. They completed the activity completely independently by reading the instructions.

Thinking Like a Scientist -Square Bubbles!

This term we are learning how to think like a scientist. We know that a scientist is very curious. Our first investigation started with the question, "Can we make bubbles that are square?". That got us thinking! Five of us predicted that we could, ten of us predicted that we couldn't and seven said they didn't know, with one not answering at all!

Mrs D. provided 12 short straws the same length, and pipe cleaners. We worked in groups of four. It was hard trying to make one shape out of all the materials because we wanted to make our own smaller shapes. In the end we tried out some of our shapes in a bucket of soapy water. None of them made a square bubble.

Our next job is to interview someone who has made a shape, that makes square bubbles and try their shape. We will report our findings in the next post.

Learning about how Maori lived in the past.

Room 8 used the skill of picture interpretation to find out about how Maori lived a long time ago. We used some large images of a pa from before the 20th century and set about recording on a Y chart what we would have seen, smelt and heard if we visited there at that time. We had great fun talking about our findings.

Learning From Garden to Table

As a special part of Room 8's learning, our guest teacher Mrs Meyers took a team of helpers to the garden to harvest a pumpkin and brought it back to school to make a pumpkin pie! There were many willing helpers to eat it!