🧠BRAIN BUILDING🧠

 In Kakapo class we have been learning all about the brain.  Today we got into groups.  Each group was given a different part of the brain to focus on.  Cerebrum, cerebellum, brain stem, amygdala and the temporal/occipital lobes.

Each group had to read through and choose the information that related to 'their' part of the brain.  After identifying this information the groups dicussed which information was important.  They conducted further research to answer any questions they had or anything that they may not have understood.

THEN... Mrs Cutler gave each group playdough. Each group had a different colour.  The task was to use the playdough to create their part of the brain into a 3D model.  For this each group had to collaborate further to check position, scale and to join them up to build our brain.

PCS Cross Country Day

 It is that time of year again!

Despite all the rain, the mud, the slips, the road closures the track on Mrs Cutlers farm was not muddy at all! While we missed the mud a little bit the weather was awesome and we had so much fun.

We are one of the few schools to still hold our own cross country races on a 'real' track.  Something we are very proud of 😁 We support each other, cheer on our whanau groups, encourage and celebrate in everyones personal successes.  There is always tuakana teina too when the littlest children in the school run.

Check out some of the pics from yesterday

Term 3 - The First Normal Term of 2020 😉

Term 3 already!
We are back and ready to carry on the great learning we had begun in Term 2.
This term we are lucky enough to have a student teacher, Mr Hobson, with us for the entire term.
Though this is our most normal term of the year so far, we have a very busy time ahead with speeches & cross country and lots of other tournaments
How is your term going so far?

In Class Mahi Tahi

Even though we are in Level 1 - we have decided not to engage in Mahi Tahi with the three senior classes for the entirity of the term.  So... this week Kakapo had a contract activity that was Mahi Tahi as we know it..but with only our class.

The task was to create a functioning water wheel using only a selection of resources and supplies - rubber bands, skewers, balloons, paper plates, paper cups, tape, hot glue, straws, egg cartons.

 

This task required all of the 4 Cs (Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Communication and Creativity).  The main communication came when groups were planning - there was a lot of discussion around everyone's understanding on what a water wheel was and its purpose.

Check out the video of one of our water wheel designs and see the individual blogs to find out how Kakapo Kids found this challenge. 

🌿 Rainforest Art 🌿

Lately, Kakapo have been looking at environmental sustainability and deforestation.  This led our inquiry to the rainforests of the world.  

From this, we looked at different rainforest plants.  Kakapo kids had to choose rainforest foliage to draw as their background.  We used crayon and dye. 

We learned:

• about foreground and background
• how to create depth and realism using colour (darker for objects further away and lighter for objects closer)
• layering for a 3D effect
• Adding detail and texture for realism

After our backgrounds were ready we researched birds that life in the rainforest.  Using the same learning, we created our birds adding detail with colour and texture.

We made our birds sit off the page to add realism and a three dimensional effect.

Our art is on display at the front of our class.  They are vivid and bright green against the navy walls - just how we think the rainforest would look. The photos don't do the art justice! Check out our individual blogs to read more about our integrated learning and see our art a bit closer 🌿

Figuratively speaking....

This week, Kakapo have been working on Figurative Language.

We have been doing a few different tasks focusing on our learning about metaphors, similes, personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia and idioms. 

Powerful Paragraphs 💥

In our literacy warm up's we have been looking at an image.  We use the photo to write a moment in time OR describe what we see.

We look carefully at the photo using our senses.  We look with our maths eyes.  We look with our imaginations.  We look at the small details.

We have ten minutes to write.  After we have written we have time to check back over our paragraph.  We share and discuss.  We share the figurative language we have heard.  As an audience could we imagine what was happening? Were we hooked? Did we want to know more...

We then have some time to rework our paragraphs.  We are trying to improve our paragraphs by checking for language features and organisation, spelling, punctuation. Do we have different sentence types to add interest?  

We share with a buddy and check again.  

Idioms 📕

In our contracts there has been a different idiom.  Without googling or asking someone we need to explain what we think the idiom means.  Our first idiom was "never judge a book by its cover"  

Poetry Bus Stop 🚌

We had five different poems spread around the room and a information chart of figurative language. We read the poem and discussed as a group what language features we found in the poem.  Then, Mrs Cutler would yell "BUS STOP" which means we moved to a different poem.  We could go to whatever poem we wanted to each time we moved.  This was a fun way of identifying language features.  

Check out our individual blogs to see some of our Powerful Paragraph examples! 

🦋🦋🦋

Last week when we arrived back at school, some students noticed that the swan plants had grown a lot over the lockdown.  They were healthy and big with caterpillars AND there were several chrysalis hanging in the plants and along the fence and classrooms.

We shared with the school to be careful and only look at them - no touching!

The following day, the same students watched a butterfly hatch.  They noticed another chrysalis was black and looking ready to hatch.  They set up an ipad to video the hatching.  The girls decided that a time lapse went too fast so they videoed with the idea of speeding up the footage and adding music once the butterfly had hatched.

The girls were SURE the butterfly would hatch soon..but when they checked every 15 minutes or so...still no butterfly! At lunchtime they ate next to the ipad to make sure nobody accidentally knocked the camera.  After lunch there was still no butterfly!

The end of the day arrived and all the children had to go home, luckily one of the girls is Mrs Cutler's daughter so she was able to stay and watch the camera and the butterfly because she did not have a bus to catch.

Finally the time came and the butterfly hatched!

The girls communicated all evening, sharing footage and deciding how they would edit, and what music they would add.

The next day the movie was sped up and shared with the school.  The girls also decided to take photos of all of the stages to share the butterfly life cycle with the junior classes.

The incidental learning that came from noticing chrysalis was huge! The school enjoyed watching the video, the junior classes especially.

Hanging Baskets

Today we finally got to pot up the hanging baskets that Mrs Cutler bought waaaaay before lockdown.  We used to have hanging baskets but the plants kept dying because we didnt have a proper watering system.  We tried really really hard to keep them alive!

This time the hanging baskets are different, they hold water a little better and we decided to put different plants in them.

We chose succulents because there are lots of different colours and shapes AND they don't need a lot of attention to live ... a bonus when we still haven't sorted a watering system.

We have learned about how succulents have 'pups', and how they can grow from a leaf!

We love to beautify our school and we cant wait for our succulent baskets to take off!

Emotion Wheel

This week one of our contract tasks was to think about what colours & patterns came to our mind when we thought of these emotions:

Excitement * Sadness * Happiness * Anger * Pride * Scared

We had to think of ways to represent what each of these emotions mean to us and translate that emotion into art.

The instructions were to only use colour, pattern, shapes and symbols to represent the feelings. No cartoons, faces or words.

This is what each member of our class came up with.  Have a look - can you guess which emotion is which?

Concrete Mural

One of the tasks I assigned the Kakapo Class this week was to create a concrete mural.

This could be on their driveway, a footpath, the path to the clothes line...anywhere they had a patch of concrete.  If children had no concrete they were tasked with problem solving this.  What else could they use?

We looked at examples of murals and how they were different to a regular chalk drawing we might do.

I will update this post when more concrete mural creations are shared.  Check out the individual class blogs also!

Float, Float, Float Your Boat ... ⛵

For Mahi Tahi last week Mrs Cutler gave out this challenge...

This task required all of the 4 Cs but especially Critical Thinking and Communication.

The time limit was a challenge but the boats that were created were amazing.

We looked at the successful designs and discussed why and how they were successful.  We did the same for the unsuccessful boats. Photos to come!

Kakapo Confessions

We read William Carlos Williams poem "This is Just to Say" about him admitting, and apologising for eating plums without asking. We discussed what it means to admit or confess something.

Kakapo kids brainstormed their confessions and ideas.

Using a similar format to Williams poem, children wrote their own poems.  We spent a lot of time re-working our writing to ensure we had interesting words that created a picture for the reader.  For example - rather than using 'yummy' to describe a chocolate, 'gooey' was used.

When it came to publishing our poems the criteria was to use a background image that related to their confession. The font had to be readable - so we had to think about the background picture.  Can the words be seen with a different colour, or was a bolder font or highlighting needed?

Children worked on a shared document to publish their poems.  There was a few challenges around this (such as accidental deletion of slides) but these were ironed out quickly luckily.

We really enjoyed reading each others poems.  We have given each other feedback and have reflected on things we may change if we did this task again.

You can read the poems by checking out the individual blogs.  We'd love to hear what you think so please leave a comment!

Fantastic Fonterra! 🥛

Today we had a visit from a Fonterra milk tanker. We learned all about how the tankers collect the milk from the farms and how they keep the milk cold on the journey. We heard about the sustainable practices that the Fonterra factories do. It was really cool to hear from the dairy farming families about cows and milk. Everyone got to have a close look at the tanker and the machine that monitors the milk. There were a lot of sore ears after everyone honked the horn!! Here is a picture of some of our students and the tanker.

Everyone was lucky enough to receive some yummy flavoured milk from Fonterra too. After the visit Kakapo kids had lots of questions about milk production, export and sustainable businesses. We continued with our own passion projects around these questions and presented them in different ways, sharing our learning with the class.

School Art History

Last year Mrs Cutler had a plan to beautify the face of some steps at our school. Every child in the school had to create a self portrait using only their house colours. Our whanau groups are inspired by saint - Aubert (red) Marcellin (yellow) Chanel (green) McAuley (blue).
The criteria for the portraits was to: 
Use only your house colour
Create a detailed picture of yourself 
Add your name 
Think about the background/foreground and how to manage the colour

                                 

This project was so fun, and as well as livening up the boring wooden steps this is a memory of the people who were in our school in 2019. Mrs Cutler is hoping to do this project each year - its almost like a time capsule! When you walk into our school you can see the colours and faces - we love it!

Lick, Lick, YUCK, YUCK!!

Today for Mahi Tahi the task was to collaborate and communicate .... while being blindfolded and tasting foods! The person blindfolded had to taste the food and describe what it was to their buddy.  
There were some interesting faces with some of the foods!
There was lime juice, golden syrup, baking soda, chilli sauce, icing sugar, rice bubbles, marmite, caper, salt, mustard and cocoa powder.  

Everyone had a turn at tasting and describing.  The children were pushed outside of their comfort zone! 
  

What would you have liked to have tasted??

🌏 Google Earth 🌏

Following on from our landmark learning - today Tui had a go on Google Earth!

It was so fun looking at the landmarks we have been learning about and seeing it in "real" life! 

We had great discussions and people shared information about the landmark they researched. While we were looking at the Eiffel Tower, Lily told us that there are two elevators in the 'legs' of the tower.  Raidon shared that the Taj Mahal is referred to as the worlds biggest onion.  Looking at the Pyramids of Giza started lots of chat around how the pyramids were built so large and accurately and without technology or machinery!  We talked about pharaohs, mummies and tomb raiders.  

After we looked at the landmarks we knew about we brainstormed other places in the world we might like to look at on Google Earth.  From here, Tui kids went and had a look at Google Earth themselves.  They had a play with the different tools and looked at other places like the Great Wall of China, Times Square, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace.

We are opening our eyes to the big wide world and thinking about the places we might like to see in person one day 😀

Check out the Tui kids individual blogs to read about the places they looked at on Google Earth.

What in the world would you like to see? 🌏

PCS Cross-Country 2019

Our cross-country is a REAL cross-country.

It is held on Mrs Cutler's farm.  There is grass, mud, streams to jump over, hills, gravel and cow poo!



This year was not as muddy as last year but it was still definitely there. 
There were only a few shoes lost in the mud 😁

Years 5-8 run 3 km
Years 3-4 run 1.8 km
Years 0-2 run 1 km


We have Zones next week so we are still training at school  three days a week.


It is so nice to go out as a whole school.  The day is about participating, trying your hardest, supporting and encouraging others and celebrating our talented runners. 

Sandra Silberzweig Inspired Portraits

Sandra Silberzweig Inspired Portraits
Kaitaia, 2019
Indian Ink & Chalk Pastel on wet strength cartridge
laminated for preservation

Bright, bold colour broken up with pattern and negative spaces.  Learning included (but not limited to) researching the artist and her inspiration through literacy, investigating shape, pattern and lines through maths, delving into colour (primary, secondary, warm, cool & complimentary) and coping with temperamental indian ink and messy, smudgy, chalky pastels

Check out the Tui Teams individual blogs to learn more!