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 🌿

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?

Safe At Home

Covid-19.  Global.  Pandemic. Lockdown. 

We are not stuck and home, we are SAFE at home.

We are three days into the lockdown. 

Since we have been at home we had a few 'hangouts' to keep in touch and see how everyone was doing. Kakapo Kids completed the work that was set for them from this week before we knew schools would be shutting.  Mrs Cutler gave the kids a challenge on Thursday and then gave us task about Anne Frank yesterday.  

We learned about Anne Frank, this put a few things into perspective for us.  We compared Anne's situation with our own, read, answered comprehension questions, took a virtual tour through the annex reflected on our own questions. We talked about what we are grateful for and what changes will happen environmentally because of this.  We talked about this being a reset... what changes will we make after this?  What little things do we really appreciate now? How lucky are we that we are home with our family and safe. During the holidays Mrs Cutler has made  a task board for us if we get bored.

The Kakapo Kids are writing in a diary like Anne did, recording their thoughts, feelings and activities during this time.  They are also making a time capsule.  Because this is a huge event in history and they are a part of it.  

Our learning has always been accessible online but these challenges gave us a chance to practice some remote learning skills.  Skills like being a problem solver, an active learner and how to be proactive and manage our time, ourselves and our learning. We will need these after Easter when Term 2 starts back remotely!

Check out the individual blogs to see what the Kakapo Kids are up to during this Rahui. 

Mahi Tahi 2020

For those of you who are new to our blog, Mahi Tahi is where the three senior classes come together and work on a range of tasks. We chose the name Mahi Tahi because it means 'working as one'.  We used to meet twice a week, but this year we have two new teachers in the senior syndicate.  So while Mrs Cutler is the "Original", this year she is making sure we ease into the learning for everyone who is new to Mahi Tahi ... the teachers, new students and the year 5s.

Search our blog with 'mahi tahi' to see some of the awesome activities and learning we did in 2019.

During Mahi Tahi we learn about the four C's.  Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking and Creativity. The activities range from STEM to baking to art to school beautification to maths challenges.  Children are grouped randomly - we do aim to have one person from each year level in a group.

The aim is to instill 21st century skills in a way that every person gets to shine, take leadership, share ideas, follow leadership and practice the 4C's.  Now that you know what Mahi Tahi is - keep an eye out for some 2020 Mahi Tahi posts!

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.

Te Hiku Manaiakalani Outreach 2 First Movie Festival

This year has been our first Te Hiku Movie Festival, the movies have been played on the big screen at the Te Ahu Cinema in Kaitaia on Thursday 7 November. This is one of the lucky movies to be chosen from our school. Congratulations to everyone involved in the production of this movie. Please enjoy and feel free to leave a comment below for the students.

Amazing 🤗, Scary 😯 and Relaxing😴

Welcome to Term 4!

This morning I asked the Tui Team to share something amazing, something scary and something relaxing they did in their holiday.

This was a great way to recap our break with our class - I have to say there were some responses I did not expect! I actually thought some kids were playing a trick on me... bungy jumping and sky diving..really!? 

After thinking, then sharing, the children blogged about their responses.  Check out their individual blogs for some amazing holiday recaps😊

Fair and Equal

It is Social Justice Week this week and we have been learning about being FAIR and being EQUAL.
We discussed what we thought each of these words meant.  Tui thought that the words basically meant the same thing.

Each child was given an 'ailment'.  The ailments ranged from a ache, a cough or sore tummy to a broken leg or cut head.  The children had to discuss who was worse off.

After this discussion the children came to the 'Doctor' for treatment.  Each child was given a piece of paper that they were not allowed to look at until everyone had seen the 'Doctor'.  The treatments were revealed..... everyone received a band-aid!  There was much discussion about this!

"How will a band-aid fix my runny nose?"
"A band-aid isn't going to help my broken leg!"
"Yay! I need a band-aid for the cut on my hand!"

We discussed this further as a class.  Was receiving a band-aid fair? or equal?
The penny dropped and the difference between fair and equal was clear!

Fair is when everyone gets what they need or deserve
Equal is when everyone gets the same regardless of need.

Check out the Tui Class individual blogs to see more!

World Famous

This week one of the literacy contract activities was for the Tui kids to pick a world famous landmark and create an information poster. 

There was the Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building, Leaning tower of Pisa, Statue of Liberty, Colosseum, Pyramids of Giza, Sydney Opera House and the Taj Mahal.  The children were challenged to pick a landmark that they didn't already know a lot about.

We needed to research our landmark, asking questions about it that start with Who? What? Why? Where? When? Which? and How?.
Together we created some success criteria for our posters. 
Tui decided that the posters needed:

• facts (not opinions) 
• history of the landmark 
• Picture/images
• Visually appealing to catch the readers interest

Everyone decided that they would like to create a digital poster, so we set up a shared slide doc.  Everyone took a slide for their poster.  Check out the individual blogs for more later in the week!

Take Note! 💰

Tui class have been learning about NOTEworthy people in NZ. We started with the people on our NZ money.  

Sir Edmund Hillary, Kate Sheppard, Queen Elizabeth, Apirana Ngata & Ernest Rutherford.

We read, researched and wrote autobiographies before looking at how the landmarks and birds on the notes also relate to the person.  Through our literacy contracts we got into groups and researched each note and created a wall display showing our learning, pictures and quotes.

We began to ask questions about other NOTEworthy New Zealanders.  We did a bus-stop activity with several other NZers - from Jean Batten to Whina Cooper.  We were brimming with knowledge and questions.

NOW Tui class are designing their own $200 note.  They are choosing their own NOTEworthy person, landmark and bird.  Once they have designed their note they are writing to explain the reason they chose who and what they chose. 

Keep an eye out on the individual blogs to see their amazing creative $200 note designs!

The Call of Abraham and Sarah

Today Tui class were learning about Abraham and Sarah from the book of Genesis. 

Abram and Sarai lived in Haran.  They had been married many years and had no children. One day God said he wanted them to move to a new land and that he would make their family a new nation of people.  Abram and Sarai trusted God.  After travelling for a long time with all of their belongings, their animals and servants they finally arrived in the new land of Canaan.  God said that he would give this land to them both and all of their descendants. Together, Abram and Sarai wondered how this promise would come true because without children there are no descendants!

Many years passed and still there were no children for Abram and Sarai.  Abram told God how disappointed he was.  God told him to go outside and look at the night sky.  God said "count the stars if you can, you will have as many descendants as there are stars in the sky".  He said that Sarai would give birth to a son whom they would name Isaac.  God also gave them new names - Abraham and Sarah. 

One day, three visitors arrived at Abraham and Sarah's tent.  The visitors were welcomed and given food and drink.  Afterwards the men talked to Abraham and said they would be back when Sarah had given birth to their son.  Sarah overhead this and was laughing.  The men asked Abraham why Sarah was laughing saying "is anything too hard for God?"  It was then that Abraham and Sarah realised their visitors were special messengers from God.  Nine months later God's promise was fulfilled when they became parents to Isaac. 

Tui class have retold this story through animation.  Look out for their creations on their individual blogs!  

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!

Human Digger Track

Today's Mahi Tahi task (where the Year 5 - 8s come together each Tuesday to work as one) was to create a human digger track.  All of the team had to be on the inside.  The track needed to be strong and the team had to communicate effectively to ensure the track moved them from one end of the court to the other. This task required critical thinking, communication and collaboration.

We saw the tracks being strengthened by folding paper, adding extra layers, laying paper over top of the joins in a brick like fashion. 

When everyone had finished we had groups test their tracks in our Mahi Tahi Space - Piwakawaka.  Then those that were successful went out to the court to race! It was great fun to make these and work together - we were really successful! 

It's that time of year again...

Speeches!

In Tui class we have been busy integrating oral language and persuasive writing into our literacy contracts.  We have had chatting cards, using drama with our shared reading, using expression and projection.... 
There were 37 English topics and 18 Te Reo topics to choose from.  
This week Mrs Cutler is listening to speeches in class.  Everyone has made her judging job hard! The speech topics were varied and props were used appropriately.  Tui class were supportive and encouraging of everyone.  Speeches are not a favourite for everyone but each and every student still stood up and gave it a good go!
Three finalists get chosen to go through to the PCS Speech Competition.  It was a super hard choice, but everyone can be super proud of themselves for the hard work and effort they put in to their presentations. 

Ancient but earthquake proof!

We read a story called "Ancient but Earthquake Proof" which was about the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.  The Parthenon was built over 2500 years ago and while it has some walls and carvings missing it is still an impressive structure.  

We were amazed that the ancient builders were able to create such a building using only their brains and their two hands.  The Parthenon was created using a strong foundation, pedestals and then the columns which were made of blocks stacked on top of each other, just like our spine.   Inside the columns are iron rods surrounded by lead (to stop the rods rusting and to absorb force and vibrations).  The Parthenon is a strong yet flexible structure able to withstand earthquakes.  

Modern builders tried to preserve the Parthenon by inserting more iron rods into the columns...only they didn't add lead so the rods have become weakened meaning the columns are now cracking.  

We answered comprehension questions and then used a venn diagram to compare the Parthenon with New Zealand Parliament building (The Beehive in Wellington). 

Then we tried to build our own flexible structures thinking about what we learned using only marshmallows and toothpicks.

"Our structure had a big foundation base, and we used the toothpicks as rails and rods like the Parthenon"  - AL

"To make ours strong we used extra toothpicks and we had cross beams.  Ours was the tallest" - QS