Week 6 - Assembly sharing time

At Waikowhai, we have whole school assemblies every Friday that are run by the kids in each class. This week it was Manukau's turn.  It was great to have the chance to present some of our different learning and also have the chance to use our big confident voices when presenting in front of a larger audience.

As you can see from the slideshow below, the range of things we have been working on so far this term is wide and varied.  If you are interested in anything further, please comment below and one of the Manukau blogging stars will get back to you.

 

You may find examples of some of this work on the student's individual blogs too.  Be sure to check the list at the side of our class blog further down the page.
Blog you later...

Show not tell, setting writing

This week we are working on using descriptive language by sharing our writing straight onto our blog.  The challenge we have is to describe a place using only six sentences.  After reading the description you need to guess the place that has been described. It would really help if you say what clues helped you come to this conclusion. Here is the one that Mr. Riceman shared with us to start.

1.   A blanket of white surrounds me in every direction I look.
2.   Mist escapes from my mouth with every breath I exhale.
3.   Small patches of exposed rock stand out like islands in the sea.
4.   Bright sun rays stream down, pounding onto the tall white cliffs.
5.  Crack, a block of ice tumbles down a cliff and into the sea.
6.  Strong gusts of wind whip frozen icy particles into the air that whip at my face.

Leave a comment below thinking where you think I could be and what clues you have for this.

Sphero makes an appearance in Manukau Class

It was Friday, it was supposed to be the annual beach trip day but the weather and water quality was against us and unfortunately the trip was cancelled. We were very disappointed about this so Mr Riceman planned a few fun activities for us back at school. One of these was a coding challenge that involved using our new Sphero robots. You can see the challenge below.

We had a great time working in groups scoring as many points as we could in short amount of time we had. There were lots of opportunities for creative thinking and problem solving as you will see in the videos below.  We can't wait for the next challenge.

Are you doing something similar in your class?  Would you like to find out more?  Please leave us a positive, thoughtful and helpful comment, we would love to hear your feedback!

Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu, Getting to know you.

This year we are looking forward to making new connections through the Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu blogging group.  As a class, we have made a simple google drawing to introduce ourselves to the students and readers of our blog who we will be connecting with.

It is important that we are cybersmart when sharing information.  Please have a look through this presentation and make a connection with us by leaving a positive, thoughtful and helpful comment.  You might also like to explore our individual blogs. At the moment it is just our Year 6s with individual blogs but the Year 5s will contribute to their ones later in the year.

We look forward to hearing your feedback.

Welcome to 2018

We would like to extend a warm welcome back to all our blog followers and readers for 2018.  We have been back together at school for three days and have already achieved so much.  This post will have a few of the highlights for you. Please read on.

Manukau, one of the three classes who make up Te Waka Ako (the canoe of learning) are a digital class. This meant that for many of our Year 5s, new to the senior school, got to unbox their new learning device.  Once we discussed how to best look after these valuable resources we were underway.  All students did an amazing job bookmarking and accessing their learning on our new Te Waka Ako syndicate site.

Getting to know each other has been a big focus for us over the three days. We have participated in a design challenge. We had to create a shelter for one teammate using newspaper, string and tape that could withstand high winds (Dave's leaf blower). This really got us thinking, talking and doing. Check out the photos below.

Mr Rattenbury, our new Waitemata teacher led us through a definition of learning. This helps set us up for a successful year as we know what we need to do to help ourselves learn. We have also touched on our new Inquiry theme of Curiosity.  We have already found out that we are curious about lots of things and we look forward to exploring this more over the coming weeks and year.

Oscar's DLO describing our definition of learning for this year.

We look forward to sharing our learning with you throughout 2018, please check back regularly.

Blog you later.