Week 3 - Assembly

Kia Ora bloggers,

This week we were very lucky to have our turn to host assembly. It has been a very busy start to the year and we have had plenty to share.  Some of our highlights were the fabulous poems we have written about summer with help from Mrs Law.  We also introduced ourselves using maths numbers and shared a little bit about how to be Cybersmart with our new Chromebooks.  It was really fun to find out about emotions and use our drama skills to show these. Below is a copy of our assembly slides and a link to our emotions video.  We hope you enjoy!

If you came along we'd love to hear what you thought! If you couldn't make it, please drop us a positive, thoughtful and helpful comment so we can share more with you.

Thanks for reading.

Rights and Responsibilities

Kaiwhare has been very busy in Week 2, learning more about the Treaty of Waitangi. Did you know that some Māori signed the Treaty with a mark showing a pattern from their tā moko (tattoos on the face) or from their area?  You can see them on the eight sheets of the Treaty that travelled around New Zealand from February to September 1840.

Photo: Archives New Zealand

We have started developing our class treaty, to explain our rights and responsibilities as we learn.  We've also started some artwork, using symbols to represent ourselves and our families in different ways.

In cybersmart, we are learning about using our chromebooks safely and our responsibilities for looking after them - our Kawa of Care.

Some of our parents have been invited to a meeting to learn about their responsibilities with their child's new chromebooks too. (Remember to send back the form that was sent home with your preferred meeting time!)



We practised:

• moving carefully around the class
• holding our chromebook with our "thumbs up" 
• typing gently on the keyboard and closing the screen softly, so it doesn't click
• putting the chromebook in a safe position on a desk, and turning it carefully with two hands
• logging off the chromebook when we finish working, and storing it safely

Then we made a digital poster sharing at least one of the Kawa of Care responsibilities. 

Check out Freddy's poster below.

Welcome to 2019 - Out of the box day

The 2019 school year started for Kaiwhare today and we have had a very exciting first day.  We spent time getting to know our new friends and class mates making connections with others in our syndicate.

It was great to share "The Treehut Treaty" a valuable story with an important message. This helped us to describe what we would like our classes to be like. It will help us to come up with ideas for our syndicate treaty too.

After morning tea, we worked collaboratively to talk about how we could look after the Chromebooks that we will be using for our learning this year.  We then opened our new chromebooks and explored  our new syndicate site. It was great to get up and running and we are really looking forward to sharing our learning with you on our blogs. Please check back regularly to see what we have been doing.

Week 3 - Bigfoot Cycling Skills

This week we enjoyed two cycling session run by Bigfoot Adventures.  Our first session involved learning lots about cycling safety, including important concepts like visibility when cycling and how to put on a helmet safely.

Our second session was a practical one.  We were outside on a beautiful day (as you can see from the photos below) working on our skills.  Those of us who brought along our bikes were also very lucky to have these safety checked by our expert instructors.

If you would like to find out any more about our day, please leave us a positive, thoughtful and helpful comment below.

Week 2: Designing and Prototyping

Early in Term Three, we started our focus on Technology.  We gained an understanding that Technology helps us to save a problem.  As a school, we have a small native bush area that has been developed a bit by students and staff over time.  Our challenge is to design and build something that we think will improve the bush area.

To start out, we identified some problems that we face in the bush area.  Some that we are looking at solving are:

• the amount of rubbish that is left/blown into the bush
• the lack of native birds
• not having habitat for insects e.g. wetas
• finding out if mammalian predators are a problem.

We then had a go at a crazy 8s design activity.  During this activity, we are challenged to come up with eight different ways to solve a problem.  This really challenged our thinking.  We then evaluated these and chose our top three designs.  It was then up to us to choose and explain the best idea to a buddy.

Now we have been creating prototypes for these designs.  A prototype gives us the chance to make a mini version of our creation to test out how it will go. It was pretty clear that some of us needed to make changes.  You can see a few photos of us as we create these prototypes.

Our next step is to reflect on what went well and what we will have to change as we get ready to build these creations.  Please check back to see how we are getting on.