Week 9 - Healthy Eating - Healthy Lunch

Kia ora,
In Week 7 we had a visit from the Community Health team based at Starship Hospital: Sione, Hannah, Gina, Brayden and Lynette.

They shared with us about how healthy food helps our bodies to be ready to learn at school. We revisited some of our class learning about nutrients in different foods, drinking water, why fruit and vegetables are good for us, and why sleep and exercise are important as well.

Lynette sang us a song that connected our learning about Matariki to the different foods that can be gathered and shared.

They also brought us a healthy lunch! We could choose different healthy (and tasty) foods to make our own filled roll or wrap. Some of us had special choices because of food allergies, but there was still lots to pick!

We could choose from chicken, tuna, cheese, carrot, cucumber, tomato, spinach, hummus, mayonnaise, pineapple, and apples!

Everyone found something they liked.

Thank you to the team, and sponsors who provided our lunch: 5+ A Day, New World, Countdown, and AP Civil. It was so yummy! We have been busy writing thank you letters to send them all.

What options would you have chosen for your healthy lunch, if you had been with us?

Week 8 - Doubles and the creation of Pixel Art

Kia Ora bloggers,

For the past few weeks, we have been developing our multiplication skills.  This week we have been using our Math skills to create some Pixel art. We have been learning how to enlarge drawings using our knowledge of doubles.  As part of this learning, we have also made a connection between doubles and the 2x tables.

Firstly, we investigated and made connections between the doubles and 2x table facts. You can see this in Daiki's example below.

Then, we worked on this activity.  Mr Riceman showed us how to use doubles to make an enlargement.  This activity is also available on the Math pages of our class site.  If you are up for the challenge there is a help video inside the video that you can use to have a go at creating and enlarging one of these designs too.

During creation time, we had two designs to enlarge.  This was challenging but we were able to use our knowledge of the 2x tables to help us.  Once we were confident with this, we had the chance to create and enlarge our own designs.   You can see examples of Morgan's and Daiki's creations below.

One of Daiki's patterns

One of Morgan's creations

We would love some feedback.  If you have created pixel art, or have any questions, please leave us some positive, thoughtful and helpful feedback.

Week 7 - I Spy A Warmer Winter

Have you felt the chill in the weather lately? We certainly have! Ever wished you didn't have to get into school uniform but wear your warm woolly hat and comfy pants all day? Or go to work in your pyjamas? Or break out your onesie with your slippers?

Some of our wishes came true on Friday. Even though it poured with rain, and then hailed, we weren't chilly at all because we had our Wacky Winter Warmer mufti day. For a gold coin donation we could wear whatever warm, wacky or wintery clothes we wanted. Whoopee! Can you spy a unicorn, a giraffe, a dinosaur, a teacher in a dressing gown, and lots of warm kids?

We were raising money to add items to our Winter Warmer Hampers of dry or tinned grocery items, blankets and pyjamas. There is a stack of flexi-buckets in the office all waiting to be filled with donations from our school community. Just a few things have been brought in so far, and our mufti money will help top up what is still needed at the end of term, when they will be given to Mt Roskill families. If you are able to share some warm goodies with others, please bring them to the school office by Thursday, July 4th.

What would make your winter warmer?

Week 6 - Hip Hop

Kia ora! Our class has been learning Hip Hop dance for the last few weeks. This week we focused on isolations.

Isolations are when try to move just one part of your body at a time. It might be your head, or hand, or hips, or some other body part. It's a lot harder than you think! Our faces look so serious because we are so focused on our teacher, Miss Tayla, while we try to work out how to move just our ribcage.

Here we are, trying different isolations to music in this video.

Then we added our isolations to the different ways we travel. We played a game a bit like Follow the Leader where we travelled in a line doing different isolations and using different movements to travel, thinking about the floor patterns we were making too.

Phew! That's a lot to think of at once! At least we can laugh at ourselves when we get mixed up or make a mistake... and we're getting better.

Have you tried Hip Hop? What's your favourite style of dance? We'd love to hear in the comments below.

Week 4/5 - Persuasive writing

Hi Bloggers,

We have been focusing on persuading people when writing. Persuasive writing is when we share what we think and use examples to convince readers to think like us.  We used the traditional tale "Jack and the Beanstalk" as our motivation.  First, we read the book.  From this, we discussed reasons whether or not Jack should have taken the hen that laid golden eggs.  Our thinking is shared below in the padlet.

Next, we decided whether we wanted to argue that Jack should have taken the hen left it with the Giant. We made sure our writing had an introduction and some convincing reasons.  Kaiwhare did a great job with this writing. Here are two examples below.  Have a read and please let us know what you think with by posting positive, thoughtful and helpful comments.

Najwa's persuasive writing:
I think that Jack should not have taken the golden eggs because it is never good to steal other peoples property. 

First Jack climbed higher and higher until he reached the top he quickly took the big brown hen and ran as fast as he ever could. It was not his stuff and it is very wrong to be a thief.

Secondly when Jack climbed up and stole the hen the giant saw him and stomped after him. The giant got hurt because Jack cut down the green magic beanstalk. It is like if you pushed someone got hurt and it is not ok to hurt other people they could feel in real pain.

Lily's persuasive writing:
I think that Jack should have climbed the beanstalk and taken the hen/chicken that lays golden eggs because they could have more special things in their life.

My first reason is they can buy a big clean new house. When they have the new house it  won't be dirty moldy or stinky any more.  It will have new nice stuff in the nice new house. It will be nothing like the house they had before.

Secondly  they can now afford juicy food from the shop.  If they have food to eat they will be healthy not hungry. It was really hard for them when they didn't have any food. However they would have food if they had the hen/chicken  

Finally they would never be poor again They want be poor if had the hen/chicken. They would have money and they would have friends. However they might go out together with their friends. When they have the money they would get to buy whatever they want And maybe they will be really rich. If they had the hen/chicken...

I have told you three reasons why Jack should have taken the hen/chicken that lays golden shiny eggs.

Week 3 - Bullyfree NZ Week

This week is Bullyfree week across New Zealand. We have been focusing some of our learning around this important topic. Today, Mr Riceman challenged us to create some word clouds that showed the type of people we want to be and to be around.

First, we came up with some ideas for words. Reading the book 'Oat the Goat' helped us out yesterday.  We added these words into the site www.wordart.com . Mr Riceman then helped us to format our words in different ways. This was lots of fun. Then it was time to share them so that they can be added to this blog post. You can see some of these word clouds below. We may add in some more as they are finished too.

 Please have a look, have a read and let us know what you think with a positive, thoughtful and helpful comment.

Week 2 - Taha Tīnana

Kia ora!

This term, our learning in Te Reo Māori is linked with our Inquiry focus on healthy living - hauora tīnana.  We have been learning about different types of food and how it helps keep our bodies healthy.

Here are the different names of food we have learnt in Te Reo.

This poster is displayed in our window so we can practise finding the word matching the picture.
Here are Paige, Lewis, Ashwin and Cyan matching some. You might like to have a go when you come visit, too.

This week we also practised our manners for mealtimes... asking where a food is, asking someone to pass it, and responding politely.

"Kei whea te _______?" means "Where is the _______?" E.g. Kei whea te pata?=Where is the butter?
"Homai he _______," means "Gave me (pass) a/some ____." E.g. Homai he pata. = Pass some butter.
"Anei he _______," means "Here is a/some _______." E.g. Anei he pata. = Here's some butter.

Here we are, practising asking each other to pass an item of food.

Ka kite ano!

Week One - ANZAC Literacy

Talofa Lava bloggers and welcome to Term Two,

We have had a busy start to the term this week. During our Literacy learning, we have been focusing on the theme of ANZACs and ANZAC day. This is because ANZAC day was acknowledged during the second week of the school holidays.

For creative writing, we described what we thought it would have been like in a Trench and wrote home to describe this experience using our senses.  To help get a better understanding we read two picture books, Jim's Letters by Glyn Harper and The ANZAC Puppy by Peter Millet and Trish Bowles. The illustrations in these books helped us to learn and plan what we would include in our writing.

Using our plan, we then created a piece of writing, focusing on using simple and compound sentences to describe what we saw and what was happening.  Here are two examples of writing below,

Daiki's writing:
 Dear Mum and Dad,
How are you both feeling? Here in the trench it is not going well!  It is not good for children to stay here. I am feeling sad because bandage around  my friends bodies. Now we are going to get our guns out. On the top of the hill I can hear the gunshots coming close to me and I can also hear the Bullets going into the water or sea. I Could smell the blood  from the people that died  in the war. I can feel the pain in the injury that I have and I can also feel the dust going into my eyes. I miss home because we don't have time to have showers. I can’t sleep that well because of the explosion of the bombs. BOOM! CRASH! BAM! I wish that I could be at home right now. My clothes and socks smell like the sewer YUCK!. MY tummy is saying I want to have a Barbecue.
I hope you guys are having fun.

TJ's writing:
Dear family
How are you all? The trench is not a safe place for the children. We are feeling sad because people are getting shot, even some of my friends. When I run  through the water, I can hear lots of splashes. The gunshots and bombs smells like smoke.  My dirty stinky clothes feel gross .I can see rain dropping. I am worried because I hope the children won't do this when they are my  age .I am scared because I think I'm going to be dead. I am afraid  because we're getting less soldiers. I'm looking forward to getting home I can't wait to taste  mums best biscuits. And I can't wait to play with the children.
From TJ

We hope to use our creation skills to publish these on a postcard too. Please feel free to leave some postiive, thoughtful and helpful comments.

Week 9 - The Drain Game Caravan

Kia Ora bloggers,

This week the Great Drain Game Caravan came to visit our school.  This was an opportunity for us to learn more about water, waste water, wetlands and our school environment.  The Great Drain Game caravan has an awesome interactive model.  As a class, we got to see where our water flows to when we put different waste in different places.


One important message was that anything that gets into the drain will end up at the sea, without any treatment.  That is why it is important to remember the phrase "Only rain goes down the drain". We did a survey of our school to find the different drains that we have on site and added these to a map.


Any dirty water that goes into the sink will travel to the 'Waste water treatment plant'.  Here, the dirty water that has gone down the sink or toilet gets cleaned before it is released again. Wetlands also do a super job slowing down water to stop flooding and naturally cleaning water.


Most of Kaiwhare decided that putting on the special headsets and exploring Virtual Reality environments was their favourite activity.  Overall, it was a great session of learning. We finished by making a pledge which will help to conserve water. Check back as we share these in a DLO next week.


A big thank you to our parent and adult helpers on the day.  If you would like to find out more, please leave us a positive, thoughtful and helpful comment.

Week 8 - Zupelz Maths and logic

This term we have been working really hard on our Maths.  We start our math sessions with a warm-up.  This week we shared an investigation to solve a zupelz puzzle. 

We need to use lots of mathematical thinking to solve this.  We can recall combinations that add together to make numbers, understand and identify even and odd numbers then finally, use logic to explain why certain numbers fit in a particular place.  Below you will see our whiteboard discussion about even numbers.  To our maths group the word even means something fair or something that is shared evenly. Our definition of an even number was a number that could be split into two groups and the groups were the same size. You can see how we proved the numbers in the list were even.

Then we had four numbers to organise into the grid.  Each row and column needs to add up to the number on the outside.  We started by placing the number four in the even box.  We then used our knowledge of combinations to place the three and the two in the correct boxes in the grid.  This left us with one digit to place which was one and it only had one place to go.  

We used lots of thinking, discussing and reasoning to solve this with our buddy. Our next challenge is to solve larger grids using the same thinking. We would love some of your positive, thoughtful and helpful feedback about our mathematical thinking.

Week 6 - A-Z Thinker's Keys and Inquiry Work

Hi everyone,

This term, we have focused our learning on Hauora and healthy communities.  We have been busy thinking about what a community is, what places are important for us in our community and who we see.

Last week we watched a video which helped us learn a bit more about what a community could be.  We then used SOLO hexagons to organise our thinking.   This week, during our big class discussion, Mr Riceman challenged us to come up with a place or person in our community that begins with each letter of the alphabet.  The ideas were flowing and we made it, the most challenging letters were Y (yoga studio), X (X-Ray) and Z (we included the Zoo in our wider Auckland community). We have included a picture of all of our thinking below.

Next, Mr Riceman asked us each to create  something to show each of these letter.  Some of us chose to use our new google drawing skills to create this, while others preferred pen and paper.  These are coming together nicely and there are a few of these below for you to look at.
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Finally, we are using this blog post to share  this learning with you.  Please have a look at our ideas then think, are there any other places that you could add?  What is special to the community you are a part of?

Thanks for reading, we would love some positive, thoughtful and helpful feedback.