What makes us happy!

We have been talking about how great life is and all the things we love about life. Sometimes we might forget how good life is so we drew these pictures and wrote all the things that make us happy so we can put them up in our houses and see them every day. We know looking at these will be a great way to start the day!

What would you include on your drawings? What makes you happy?

Our digital footprints!

We have been learning about making smart decisions about what we share online.

We talked about what we use on our iPads every day and the digital trials we make creating and sharing online.

We traced our digital footprints to all the apps we create and share with and made our digital footprint trails to share.

We never realised just how much we do online! We know we need to make good choices with what we do and what we share!

What do you think your digital trail would look like?

When we grow up…

Reach for the moon. Even if you fall short you’ll land among the stars

Room 9 have been talking about our future and what we might want to be when we grow up. We talked about careers we may have, things we may do, and being good people. We talked about this quote and that we should always aim high because even if we don’t quite reach our goals, we will still be doing great things and land “among the stars!”.

We also talked about when we reach our goal we can always have a new one and try something new! Who says you have to only be a doctor or a teacher or a baker when you can do all three?!

With all our goals, we know we all have to be good at reading, writing, and maths to reach them!

Check out our video below where we show what we might possibly be when we grow up.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

The Battle of the Mountains

Last term we were learning to describe why Taranaki Mounga is important through pūrākau. We listened to different retellings of pūrākau around Taranaki Mounga and the other mountains. The stories say the mountains are alive and have feelings.

We were inspired to create our own art of the different mountains and show the mountains are alive with human faces and ta moko. We know the mountains don’t really have eyes and mouths, so we drew them to look like humans so we can show they are like humans and have feelings too!

We also wrote why we think the mountain we drew is important.

Check it out! Can you think of another reason why mountains are important?

Ngā Atua Māori

We were learning about the Māori gods and how the world began. No one knows for sure how the world began but there are lots of stories from different cultures and religions that people believe in. We say you can believe what you want to believe in, but you can’t change people’s minds!

We learned about different creation stories. We learned a lot about the Māori creation story and the different atua (gods). We thought it was interesting that the story says when it is crying it is because Ranginui is missing Papatuanuku.

We really enjoyed taking turns acting out the story. We also made a piece of art together and proudly displayed it on our wall. It is so great to see everyone’s different styles coming together.

What is your favourite creation story? We would love to learn some more!

What do seeds need?

Nearly two weeks ago (PJ day!) some of our tamariki planted cress seeds in different conditions to experiment and see the best conditions for seeds to grow.

We thought we might have done it wrong at first, but they suddenly shot up over the weekend! It really goes to show that a lot of work is happening under the soil before we see any progress above!

  1. Seeds, soil, water + sunlight
  2. Seeds, soil, water (not direct sunlight)
  3. Seeds, soil, water, no light (in the cupboard)
  4. Seeds, soil + sunlight

Interestingly, the seeds that had no light also grew very tall but the colour was different! We wonder if it would continue to grow without sunlight?

We also think the one that was in direct sunlight must be getting too much sun and drying the soil too quickly.

We found this experiment to be very interesting. Do you have any questions about this that we can test next?

 

 

Te ika a Māui Retold By Room 9

We have been learning how to compare versions of Pūrakau and retell the story with all the main points.

First, we read one version of the Māori Creation Story. We then re-ordered pictures of the six main events of the story and glued one on each page of our writing book. The next day we labeled the pictures with who was in the picture and what they were doing. On the third day we started to write our story using the labels to help us remember what was happening. On the fourth day, we read a different version of the story and then filled in this Venn diagram together to compare what was the same and what was different. This gave us a chance to check we have all the important information that was the same in each story.

On the fifth day, we drew a picture to publish our stories and made it into a book for our class library. We then decided to share them here.

What do you think? Did we include all the main points of the story?

We are thinking of trying this again with a different story. Do you have a favourite story that might have different versions of them?

Home Learning T3, W4 + Attendance Challenge

Here’s this week’s home learning.

Don’t forget to click on the picture of your child’s reading book and practice reading together!

Also, starting this week our class has a challenge to improve our attendance.

Every student who is at school every day, on time, for a whole week will be able to spin the wheel for a prize. We will be doing this challenge every week this term and are very excited to give it a go!